Olympic Progress
As of last night, the back measures just over 8" long. I'm pretty happy with my progress! A blizzard will do that for you, hours and hours to knit, interrupted only by having to eat, check email, and stretch your hands out.
As you can see in this picture, the back spans almost my entire Addi Turbo needle. That means that my gauge is only slightly tighter than the original, so my finished sweater may turn out closer to 43" around than to 46" around. Which would be fine with me! The only problem this presents is with the sleeves -- I had planned on knitting a sleeve at the same time as the back, but now I have to wait and recalculate the sleeve length before I continue. Which, really, I could do at any time, but psychologically I want to finish the back before making any decisions.
Good news is that I still absolutely LOVE this pattern, and it's still fun to work on. The downside of my love affair with this sweater is that I feel compelled every other row to spread it out and stare at it. Precious knitting moments are being wasted every few rows! But it's ok, I have to remember to take breaks anyway, my hands start to cramp up otherwise. I'm into the 3rd ball on the back, and into the 2nd ball on the first sleeve, so in terms of yarn usage (assuming I don't end up needing extra yarn), I am about 1/3 of the way through this sweater. Isn't that amazing?
So I worked on Olympic Knitting most of yesterday, while watching Olympic coverage and other programming (how sad for Michelle! I really admire her for making such a hard decision). Then when Grey's Anatomy came on (great episode, wasn't it?) I got that old "itch" to start something new. And just in case any of you had money down on how long I would succeed in being a one-project knitter, whoever had 3 days wins.
I cast on for the Frost Flowers shawl that Eunny is making as her Olympic project. I tried to take a picture but it just doesn't want to be photographed at this stage. Last night I allowed myself to work on it for exactly one hour, during Grey's Anatomy, and got about half-way through Chart 1. I've been planning to make this shawl for a long time, and seeing Eunny's gorgeous center square (which is not visible in the book pictures) put me right back in the mood for some lace knitting. I'm using Koigu (what else!?) in a mostly-solid dark burgundy color, on size 4 needles. The shawl is written for laceweight and is huge (72" square) so I plan to do fewer repeats of the main body to compensate for using thicker yarn. (My hands can't knit laceweight yarn at all, the thinnest I can go is fingering) Ideally I'd like the shawl to be more like 60" square.
Now, I'm not saying that I'll be finishing BOTH these projects for the Olympics, I'm not that naive. But it's nice to have two projects to switch between, and since they're both opuses (I looked it up, that's the plural of "opus"), I feel they both fit into the Olympic feeling I have going on right now.
And, frankly, the Winter Olympics don't do much for me -- I much prefer the Summer games. So the knitting gives it that extra something for me, I've never watched so much winter games coverage before!
5 Responses
Nicole
Consider your staring time as much needed resting time for your hands
vanessa
little rivers is looking beautiful :-)
christine
Your Olympic sweater looks wonderful! I’m doing an AS pattern too, and am feeling a little pressured………..I’m doing Fern. I love that color….shows up the pattern beautifully! Keep going………..
Isela
That is looking beautiful.
Cookie
February 13, 2006
I love the pattern you have going there! For olympic knitting, I’m going to try something I am usually unable to do—stay monagomous to one project. :-)