Knitting Olympics

Some random things to get out of the way:


1. Recipe #4 was very good. I had a bowl of soup with some lime hot sauce and sour cream last night. I also put some multigrain bread under the broiler for a few minutes. It was astounding how good it was. I'm not sure why I don't do that more often. Now I will. There's a very good chance I will eat the same thing tonight for supper... and maybe the night after that.


2. Remember how I spent all that time picking patterns and yarn and planning for vacation knitting? Turns out I did a lot more reading than knitting, so the only socks I finished were Cat Bordhi's Knetted, which were the September, 2009 Rockin' Sock Club socks.






I love them. I would note that regardless of how good a knitter you are, I would not recommend knitting a toe in a dark minivan on the road. The first one, surprisingly, went well, and so I got cocky on the second. I also spent the next day ripping it out and reknitting.

3. I just had my first hamantaschen of the season. See also: Reasons Why I Struggle With My Weight




Now, to the main point of this post. As you know, the Olympic Winter Games are in progress. As you may or may not know, this means that the Knitting Olympics are also in progress. The short version of this is that you pick your own knitting project, cast on not before the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Games, and finish by the end of the Closing Ceremonies. That means you have seventeen days to complete a project. One group of participating knitters and their intentions can be found here. There's also a giant Olympic knitting celebration on Ravelry, so I've listed my intent both places.


My goal is to finish the 2009 sock club. For me, this means that I needed to complete the November pair and knit something with the July yarn. The November socks don't technically count as an Olympic entry because they were started before Opening Ceremonies, but I have finished them and they are stellar.




I'd like to give you a better picture, but they're hard to photograph since the yarn is so dark. Really, really pretty though. I'm currently wearing them, and I'd be happy to show them to you if you come to my work. My colleagues are used to weird stuff like that.


Now that they're finished, I've moved on to my official Knitting Olympics project--using the July yarn Garden Daze. I'm using the Leyburn pattern because it's supposed to work well with multicolored yarn. I'm smitten.


Super, super pretty, and it works very nice with this yarn. I've checked out pictures of other patterns people have used with this yarn, and there's a lot of pooling going on--there's even pooling happening in the little bit of ribbing at the cuff. I think this pattern will effectively avoid that.


Now, I love me some Internet. I love that the online knitting community is such that I was able to send a message to the designer yesterday asking her opinion about a modification I was making to the sock. (It's designed toe-up, which I find much more fiddly than cuff-down, so I'm knitting it cuff-down.) I was worried about the number of stitches I was using on the leg of the sock and whether it would be too big. Knitting Olympics! Time constraints! Must not have to frog!


Her prompt response:


My response:I would like to take this opportunity to thank the designer for her kindness. She could easily have ignored me or said something like, "Oh, I don't know, why don't you KNIT A SWATCH like every pattern in the history of patterns tells you to do?!"


I love knitters.