Ravellenic Color Affection-- Anyway

Quite awhile ago, I wandered around Simply Socks, holding skeins together trying to find three I liked for a Color Affection.

Then I set the three skeins together on a shelf and walked away. The Ravellenic Games were a good motivator to get this knit. It's a lot of garter stitch and not a lot of counting, so it worked well to knit while watching the Olympics.

Color Affection (mine ravelled here),

knit in Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in Charcoal,

Tanis Fiber Arts Yellow Label in Dove,

and Cascade Heritage Solids in 5648 Strawberry Cream

I was surprised when I ran out of the dove-colored yarn. When I looked at the label, I realized why it had happened: Yellow Label is DK. Rookie mistake.

It ended up fine anyway.

Then, many, many rows into the third and final section, I realized I hadn't read the pattern carefully enough and hadn't increased two stitches on the end every fourth row. I had just increased one stitch.

It turned out long enough anyway.

I thought for sure I'd left enough yarn for the bind off. Of course, I ran out with a few inches of stitches left. I used dark scrap yarn to finish, and it looks great anyway.

On one hand, I feel ridiculous I made mistakes I could have avoided if I'd just read a little more closely and been a bit more cautious.

On the other hand, I like it anyway.

While I'll try to learn from this and read more carefully before I begin knitting, this project didn't turn out to be a cautionary tale. It turned out great, and I hope to wear it a lot this and future winters!

Ravellenics Medals!

Ravellenic Medals have been awarded! I entered two projects.

Ravelled here

The mittens were entered in the Mitten Moguls event with the colorwork technique.

The mittens were also part of the "rainbowllenics" event. Ravelry recognized projects that were made with rainbow colors, whether they were made in support of the LGBT community or not. You can see those projects here.

Ravelled here

The socks were entered in the Sock Hockey event with the added entries into lace, using no more than a single skein on the project, and using yarn that had been in my stash for over six months.

  

I think the Ravellenic games are a lot of fun. I like looking through the events to see what other people have made (entire sweaters? I'm impressed.), and it's nice to get some Bob medals!

Danima banksiae socks

Turns out that I could get the socks finished as part of the Ravellenics. Yay!

Danima banksiae socks (mine ravelled here),

knit in Fleece Artist Trail Socks, Blomidon colorway

I was in between sizes and chose the larger one, and they fit well. There's a lot of stretch in these because of the lace pattern. This yarn was probably as busy as this pattern can handle--there's a lot more black in the yarn that the photos pick up. It took me until partway through the second sock to really "get" the pattern. This is no fault of the pattern--it just takes me awhile to really see what's happening. Knitting is an act of faith for me. I knit and trust that the directions will take me somewhere lovely, and I'm often halfway through the project before I can tell if that's true or not.

I used these as my second Ravellenics project. They fit in lots of categories: Sock Hockey (eventsock), Lace Luge (eventlace), Single Skein Speed Skate (eventsingleskein), and Stash Skeleton (eventstash)!

Birthday Mittens

The mittens one of my sisters requested for her birthday are complete!

Smaragdi Mittens (mine ravelled here),

knit in Cascade Heritage Silk, Real Black and Knitpicks Felici, Rainbow colorway

(Rainbow is now discontinued, but I'm hoping they bring it back again.)

The pattern is written so that the mittens are identical. Since our hands aren't, this means that the back of one is the palm of the other. The fact that the backs of the hands didn't match made me twitchy, so I changed it.

See?

These were my 2014 Ravellenic project, which was excellent motivation to keep moving on them. Now i am wondering if I have enough time to get a pair of socks finished...

Anybody Seen the Bandwagon?

I'm often slow to adopt new things.

I had my first drink at age 22.

I became a vegetarian at 31.

I got my first tattoo at 33.

I often don't start watching TV shows until they're already off the air.

I've come to accept that part of myself that likes to look carefully at other people trying something new and wait to see if it blows up on them. I recognize it takes me a long time to decide that it's actually safe.

In the spirit of this, I have never knit a clapotis. There are over nineteen thousand entries on Ravelry for clapotis projects. I think that's enough to ensure that there's not a horrible mistake in the pattern, no?

Clapotis (mine ravelled here), 

knit in Alpaca with a Twist's Mojito yarn in Hugs and Kisses colorway

I had yarn leftover from my Off-Rib Cardigan, and that's what I used for this. The pattern calls for yarn of this weight, but tons of people have knit it with much, much lighter yarn as well. I think it looks great either way.

It's an easy knit, and it's surprisingly satisfying to drop stitches and pop pop pop them down their diagonal row. Purposeful destruction in knitting! No wonder nineteen thousand people are talking about it on Ravelry.

One of my goals is to wear things like this more often. I am very much a utilitarian dresser. My preference would be to wear jeans and a t-shirt every day. (You've heard about this before.)

Maybe I'll now occasionally wear jeans, a t-shirt, and a clapotis.

Baby steps.