Challenges in Knitting And Beyond

I really love the idea of an Olympic Challenge. Aside from being a fabulous excuse to sit and watch the actual Games it's nice to challenge yourself.  Maybe the level of difficulty doesn't quite rise to the level of the giant slalom or skeleton (yikes!) or figure skating but a well chosen project that goes a bit beyond what you've done before can be every bit as daunting.



This year I decided to knit a sweater for Miss M as my challenge. It turns out that choosing the pattern was the most difficult part of this knit. It was complicated because I wanted to knit a rainbow and I ordered a set of rainbow yarn that I then tried to match to a pattern. Should the rainbow be at the yoke? Should it be everything but the yoke? Colorwork? You can see the problem.



After weeks of sifting and sorting patterns on Ravelry I finally found Lillian Lucy by Ann Molvik. The simple body was perfectly suited for a rainbow and I loved the sweet ruffles at the cuffs, neck, and bottom. In this case the rainbow was not just bright, it was practically neon, so I tried to balance it with soft grey for the ruffled bits.



This was such an easy knit.  Once I figured out how many inches each stripe ought to be I flew through the knitting on the body. Then came the sleeves and not only did I have to figure out how wide each stripe should be - I had to make sure I had enough of each color.  Because I was so nervous about it I weighed each remaining ball of yarn and kept doing so as I knit the sleeves. In the end I had plenty of each color.



I really love this sweater. It all came together so smoothly that I finished in one week flat. That includes the blocking, the installation of the zipper, and the covering of the inside of the zipper with pretty ribbon. It's a new personal best for me.  I guess I'll have to reach higher next time.

Gold!

For those of you who have not yet seen them on Ravelry, here are my finished Ruba'iyat Mittens. Words cannot adequately express how pleased I am with them - mostly because I expected that they'd be an epic fail.

This was not my first experience with stranded knitting but it is the first success. The other 2 items are long standing UFO's and unlikely to ever see the light of day. They are puckered and pathetic. This history of failure is why I chose stranded knitting for my Ravelympic project. It's not a challenge if it's a sure thing.



I used a combination of Dream in Color Smooshy in Spring Tickle and KP Essential Kettle Dyed in Soot for these mittens. Not only are these yarns incredibly soft and warm but I think that the subtle variegation in the colors adds a pleasing depth to the pattern.



Of course the yarn is only part of the story and the project would look like total crap if the stitches were puckery. It's a little indulgent but I just have to share these 2 pictures to demonstrate how smooth these stitches are. These have been finished since last Thursday and I still can't believe how even the stitches came out. Inside out or rightside out - they make me smile.



The pattern was really easy to follow and I found it to be a good one for learning stranded knitting. I especially like the way the cuff pattern isn't pefectly centered so it doesn't look all matchy.

There was only one place where I had trouble and that's the thumb. Three times I tried to pick up the stitches so that the palm pattern would continue perfectly and three times I failed. You can't see it most of the time and it's really pretty close but I know the imperfection is there and it's making me a little obsessive about getting it right. I'm wondering if there is a pattern out there where the thumb instructions are written in a foolproof way or at least explained better.



So, what's the takeaway from this experience? I really like stranded knitting. I know myself well enough to know that I'm way too ADD to tackle a sweater and get it finished in a reasonable time frame but there are certainly more mittens, and maybe hats, in my future. A whole mess of KP Palette and the Latvian Mittens book may have arrived on my doorstep I the last week or so. And did I mention that I saw (and fondled) a Starmore hat kit last weekend. To. Die. For!

Ravelympics Update - Nearing the End

I am so relieved to say that I am finally nearing the end of my Ravelympic challenge. In fact, I am just one thumb away. One left thumb!

Not only am I close to finishing these mittens, I'm also just 5 rows away from finishing a lace shawl. If I can get these blocked fast enough then maybe I can squeeze in a photo shoot this weekend. No guarantee of that though.

Annie and an Ooops!

It was an exhausting but really good weekend. There were errands to be done, Olympics to be watched, and GS events to attend but the focus of most of our energy was Annie! After being delayed a week by the snow, my girl (and a bunch of others) finally took the stage and it was great.



I cannot adequately put into words how happy it made me to see my girl do so well. For those of you who don't know her, she's the one with the blue ribbon in her hair during thise scene from Hooverville. She's singing her heart out.

I was amazed at how well the cast did considering how the snow interfered with their rehearsals and set building. Most of the reports I've heard concurred that these kids did a great job.

I had hoped to have lot's of news of finishing to report but it turns out that I was a wee bit off base with that. Part of the trouble was that I had way less time for knitting than expected. The other problem was with the knitting itself.

At left is a picture of the first mitten which I posted a week ago. I felt kind of proud at that point because it was moving along so much faster than I expected.

I was less cocky when I posted the picture at the right because it represented my second attempt at the second mitten. I had gotten up past the thumb before realizing that I'd forgotten a few plain black rounds.

By the time I posted the picture I had once again passed the split for the thumb. Because of the similarity between the pictures of the first and second mitten I noted that it was indeed a picture of mitten two.

Do you see where this is going? I bet you do now but nobody said anything at the time and no warning bells went off in my head.

It wasn't until I finished mitten two and proudly held them up to admire my work that I realized that they were way too similar. Not just similar but identical!



Thankfully I have plenty of yarn and I have started mitten number three. It's such a good thing that I'm enjoying this project so much because I'm not nearly as close to finishing as I thought. Predictably my dear daughter has already offered to take the extra pair off my hands. Such a generous offer - don't you think?

Ravelympic Update

Earlier this week I hit a small bump in the road to a finished pair of gloves. I was just a bit beyond the thumb divide when I stopped to admire my work and noticed an error. It wasn't puckering or a misread of the chart. Nooooooo I missed something dead simple - two rows of plain, one color stockinette. I felt so silly.



I frogged back a few rows and it's all good now. I'm knitting and having fun and, by rights I should be done by now except that I'm restricting myself to working on these while watching the Olympics and who can concentrate on knitting when you're watching such cool stuff? Did you see Shaun White, the Flying Tomato? He is simply amazing. He makes it look so effortless and beautiful. And did you see Lindsey Vonn skiing? What about Apolo Ohno's qualifying skate when he overtook that guy at the last minute? Or Shani Davis winning his race? Go USA! Is it any wonder my knitting pace has slowed? I'm busy cheeering.

By the way, in that picture is the second mitten just before I went to bed last night along with my mitten knitting gear. I got a magnetic guide thingy to keep track of the chart and my yarns are being held in an awesome bag that was made by my friend Jessalu. Isn't it cute? I could use a bunch more for to hold all my projects. Jessalu is celebrating her Blogiversary today with a contest so go on over and wish her a happy one and you can tell her I sent you. Who knows, you might win a bag too!

Let the Games Begin

Late last week, actually the night before the Olympics began, I did a bit of swatching for my Ravelympic prject. I instantly started to panic because nothing was working for me. The yarns were wrong and the swatch looked horrible.

So I turned to Ravelry to try to come up with an alternate yarn selection and it only got worse because it seemed like all the project notes were talking about how these mittens took so much longer than people expected. I was convinced that this project was doomed before I even began. Both of my previous attempts at stranded knitting have been failures and neither of them ever crossed the fuinish line.

Because I am a Ravelympian I pressed on. I toyed with the idea of changing it up totally and picking a different pattern and yarn. I may have panicked a little too but I finally chose a new yarn, Dream In Color Smooshy in Spring Tickle, that I hoped would work better with the KP Essential in Soot.

I did a little last minute reading about Fair Isle knitting and yarn dominanace and on Friday night, during the opening ceremonies, I cast on and I was shocked.



I have exceeded my incredibly low expectations by quite a lot. I'm doing stranded knitting and it's working fo me. It's not terribly puckery and it's flying on my needles. This picture is from Saturday morning. I have a mitten now and the second cuff is under way.