Check out these knitted garments.....

The museum in Akureryi wasn't particularly exciting, except for the following exhibit of clothing worn by the first elected woman head of state of any country, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who was president of Iceland from 1980 to 1996. 

The exhibit included 2 hand spun and knitted outfits that were pretty amazing.

 The first outfit was a suit  designed and knit by a local Akureyri knitter (Steingerdur Holmgelrsdottir) who sent it to Vigdis with the understanding that it was to be worn only if she won! So on June 30th (or was it April 30th?) 1980, the first day after she'd been elected, Vigdis made her first public appearance as President wearing the dress, vest and jacket featuring the natural Icelandic colors. 

The next handspun/handknit piece was designed and knit by another artisan ( AStrid Ellingsen) a year later. It was quite fine  lace weight singles (not plied) and we wished that the information plaques had shared information like how many yards were spun or how much the entire garment weighed! But obviously the museum curators were not knitters since they didn't think to include this important information! I've provided a closeup shot so you can see the detail in the stitch.

And this next photo is actually from the Textile Museum in Blonduos, but when I wrote the post featuring the textiles from that museum last week, I couldn't find this particular photo. It just shows some lovely historic garter stitch wristwarmers. Since they also feature the lovely natural colors of the Icelandic sheep's fleece it seemed appropriate to share this photo here with Vigdis' handknit garments!

And this next paragraph is totally unrelated to fiber, but on the subject of the natural colors of Iceland, I thought I'd share this new website which was just launched about the equally colorful Icelandic Horses which I love!