The Three R's

One would think, on an 8 hour drive, that serious knitting would happen. One would expect results. One might, and not entirely unreasonably, expect to show significant progress. So not the case on this Nashville trip.

In part, that's because I did more driving than I expected. I'm not sure if it's that Their Father likes to drive more than he thinks he does, or if he thinks I hate driving more than I do, but as a general rule, once he gets behind the wheel, there's no dislodging him. I anticipated miles of Grey Sweater Knitting for The Oldest Nephew. That's miles of yarn, not miles of road. I did knit for miles of road, just not as many miles as I expected. Factor in the late start thing, so we drove more in the dark on roads that accommodate non-glacier-modified land forms (those caves in Kentucky? They're under hills. Big honking hills. Did you know?), and, well, on-the-road knitting just didn't happen.

The knitting at the conference? Not so much. Jinxed by a sliver of wood that caught the sweater about 3 inches down and sliced through 2 strands of the yarn - enough to make me feel I had to go back and splice. The sweater got traded in for blanket squares.

Once back home, I dealt with that repair (thank you spit-splicing gods)and, still in that delusional place where I would get the sweater done in days, started the sleeves. Then noticed they looked awfully wide for their length.

Through some mysterious concatenation of knitting circumstances, and despite the huge gauge swatch and previous sleeve-in-the-round experience with the Lord Protector's sweater, my gauge on the sleeves is horrendously off, almost a full stitch. I now have a second huge swatch, this one to determine which size wooden DPN's will render a sleeve that is in proportion to the body of the sweater.

The Three R's? They would be Repair, Remeasure, Recalculate.

Off the Road Again

We're back. Nashville was hilly and beautiful.

The view from the back porch.

And sad and historical.

Stone's River Civil War National Battle Site (A.K.A. Murfreesboro to us Yankees).

And surprising.

An exact replica of the Parthenon, built for Tennessee's Centennial in 1897.

And even more historical.

The Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson, A.K.A. Old Hickory. Which nick-name he bequeathed to a confusing number of streets in Nashville and its environs (or maybe it's really one multi-directional street).

So you see, I haven't been neglectful. I've been Travelling. Circumstances combined to send us off to Nashville at the end of July (I know, who goes south in July? It hadn't been hot enough here and we needed to suffer heat more intensely?) It was wonderful. Even The Lord Protector said he'd go again.

And wait 'til you see my souvenirs.

Yeah, I Did

To continue (you never dreamed I could milk a grey sweater for three posts, did you?):

I really did lose the original chart. I think it's probably somewhere in my Temporary Storage Locker (formerly known as the Dining Room), but I'm not about to disassemble that fragile ecosystem. I made a semi-valiant attempt, a sort of scratching about the edges of the thing, but determined pretty quickly that I was courting disaster at best. At worst, the EPA would have been all over me.

Then The Nephew had to go and get accepted at Grad School. Shouldn't he have his sweater before he goes? Would a Loving Aunt send him off to the wilds of Higher Education without a sweater? Yes he should. And no, she wouldn't.

The obvious solution was to go back to the sample sweater with which I had been entrusted, check the measurements, pull out the books and start again. Presumably this time I would end up with something I would like - at least well enough that I wouldn't have to lay it aside for months before I could convince myself it was worth knitting.

Behold, Chart #2. On real knitting graph paper, even.

Here was something that would work, I thought. Here was a sweater I would just love to knit. With this chart, Priscilla and Gladys at my side, I could produce a Knitted Wonder. I got as far as knitting the front and back welts. I even achieved the first join.

Then I did that thinking thing again. First, I bought Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein (photographed by Jared Flood) and read through it. I quote:

"Rule #2: Men Resist Change. . . . If he's over 15, he's probably got his style locked in - and he likes it."

Then I took a good look at the sweater he had given me. At which point I figured I might as well lose Chart #2.

I can't quite bring myself to knit a fine-gauge, v-neck, grey sweater entirely in K1P1 rib. Is it any surprise, though, that I'm knitting an EZ Hybrid Sweater? For my knitting excitement, this time I think I'll knit saddle shoulders instead of the Shirt Yoke variation.

Easy as Pie

First off, let's establish that pie is not easy. Anyone who has ever made pie from scratch will tell you it is a process fraught with danger, a theater of high drama indeed, resulting in a dessert that gladdens the eye and heart or a tough, soggy, bitter-tasting disappointment of no small order. Forget the salt and you're eating mushy fruit in baked wall-paper paste. Don't ask how I know. Hey, I was a newly-wed at the time.

Precisely so, the quest for the simple grey sweater was not without its pitfalls. This is, in part, due to my nature. Just as I can never follow a recipe for pie exactly (I do not approve of skimpy pie filling), I can never make the simple straightforward knitting choice. It seems the path must always be convoluted. Twisty is the only way I know how to go.

Back when all this started, when I began to realize The Nephew was serious, I was fired by ambition. I would do some Real Knitting. I would knit a gansey, or at least gansey-style. With this goal I bought up what I think of as key texts (I can't help it; I was indoctrinated at an early age to research and original sources): Beth Brown-Reisel's Knitting Ganseys, Gladys Thompson's Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans, Sabine Domnick's Cables, Diamonds and Herringbone, and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts Knitting in the Old Way. Over the months I added XRX's Arans and Celtics and Alice Starmore's Fisherman's Sweaters.

I am so contrary. None of the patterns pleased me. Or if the pattern pleased me, I didn't like the construction. I wanted to knit the sweater in the traditional method, which meant in the round from the bottom up, split for the front and back yokes, join the shoulders and finally knit the sleeves in the round from the top down. This wiped out the XRX book. I didn't (and don't) like the wide necklines on the Alice Starmore sweaters. The Beth Brown Reisel patterns were mostly for children and women. That left me with Gladys and Priscilla, nether of which was big on actually giving a pattern to knit a whole sweater.

That's okay, I thought, I can be an Intrepid Knitter. I decided to go really traditional and make up my own. I charted out a knit-purl pattern for the yoke that pleased me, planned a welt instead of ribbing for the waistband and studied up on gussets. I had the yarn. I had the swatch. I adjusted for stitch and row count.

Then I set it aside to incubate or marinate or something. And then I lost the chart.

Strawberry rhubarb, anyone?

I Have So Been Knitting

Right around the time I posted last month, it occurred to me that a summer of, "Here's a square," and "Oh, look. Another square," followed by "Surprise! I started a square," might not make for the most fascinating summer blog reading.

I began to cast about for a supplemental project, something to relieve that endless iteration, to vary the fugue on one note. Perhaps I could pull something out of the archives. I could knit on a project that I had been ignoring. One I had seemingly given up on. One that will let me take a high moral ground as I knit with stash yarn and clear out a knitting promise. It can't be Their Father's sweater - I still haven't resolved my cable up the front but not the back issues. An afghan in the summer seemed foolhardy to the point of madness.

Ah yes, just the thing. The Nephew's Grey Sweater.

Because nothing says fascinating summer blogging like miles of stockinette stitch in dark grey yarn.

Summertime

I have summer knitting. I hadn't actually focused on this before, but the only time I work steadily on the Barn-Raising Quilt (from Knitalong? Remember?) is when we're on the road. And we are only ever on the road in summer.

In fact, we were on the road this weekend and I'm still recovering. To and from St. Louis in two days. All five of us. And while we had to book it on the way down (Exchange/Renewal of Vows at 6 and Their Father asked to take the part of Best Man), the ride home was almost leisurely. We didn't get close to the Gateway Arch, but we stopped at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers - you know, where Lewis and Clark started off.

There and back and in public at the breakfast buffet/Sunday brunch at the hotel on WWKIP Day, I expanded my collection of Barn-Raising squares. They're perfect travel and/or warm weather knitting. Small. Portable. Easily remembered even if I leave the pattern behind and easy to read if (when) I make a mistake.

I've added some colors. The dark green that shades closer to brown than I expected --over there on the right -- is Claudia Handpainted in Navy Olive. I note that she seems to have lost the navy in this dye-lot. The brighter green on the left is Claudia Handpainted in Jungle. See, I needed the Olive Navy because the colors were all too bright. Then the Olive Navy turned the Moss into kind of a bronze-ish gold, so I needed a real green to take it's place and . . . never mind. It made sense at the time.

At the rate I'm knitting them, I should have enough squares to complete the afghan in, oh, say, about four more summers.

Recovered

Within the hour of reporting the loss here. Never underestimate the importance of actually emptying out your knitting containers.

Amazingly, my sense of humor, sense of perspective and general good humor were found at the same time and in the same place.

No such luck on the modicum of patience. I suppose it's a sad truth that what one never had in the first place cannot be restored (Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after surgery? . . . The wonders of modern medicine! I never could before.).

Missing

1 sense of humor.
1 sense of perspective.
1 measure patience.
The sense I was born with.

More importantly, though:
1 skein Claudia Handpainted Fingering/Sock in Taupe.
1 partial skein ditto in Moss.
5 Barn-raising Quilt Squares, 1 each in Claudia Handpainted in Walk in the Woods, Moss and Taupe, and ShibuiKnits Sock in Dragonfly and Pagoda.
1 set 8" KA bamboo dpn's, US 2/2.75 mm.
1 set 6" (5"?) KA bamboo dpn's US 2/2.75 mm.

I know I had them. If I doubt myself, I can look right here. As of a year ago yesterday they all existed, ergo they must all exist now. It's called object permanence, or maybe it's the conservation of energy and matter. Something like that. So where did they go? And when I find them, will I also find my sense of humor, my sense of perspective, my measure of patience . . . ?

Knitting in the Tunnel

It isn't a very good place for knitting. For one thing, it's dark. Also kind of twisty. Not to mention dank. But I'm not actually digging through the rubble at the moment, so it seems a better place than it's been. Undeniably, though, knitting has been rather thin on the ground. I can give you a litany of all my failures or a fantasy preview of all my plans. Perhaps both, clearing the decks and then going on to prove my cockeyed indomitable determined optimism (Hark. Is that Bernstein's Candide playing in my head? "Once one dismisses the rest of all possible world's one finds that this is the best of all possible worlds . . . .Objection! What about snakes?").

Anyway. It is said that confession is good for the soul. With that in mind, a not comprehensive, albeit indicative, exposition of -- let's err on the side of charity here and call it -- interrupted knitting.

The Great Race for Afghans for Afghans? Lost it. On three counts, because I didn't even manage to rid my house of the purple sweater.

Their Father's long-dormant cardigan? I am seriously looking at frogging the back because I don't want the cables from the front to just stop at the shoulder seam. Right now I just avert my eyes from it. Some ostrich-ish notion that if I keep it out of my direct line of sight I won't have to actually do something about it.

The Ab-Fab Afghan I Intend to Absolutely Love? Not even cast on. Even a one row, 17 stitch repeat of Old Shale is apparently too much. (One of the reasons the Great Sweater Race fell apart was because I kept blithely --blindly? -- knitting stockinette when I should have been reading the pattern, with the result that the green sweater lost it's cables and the blue one needs to find it's neckline decreases.)

Enough. On to the fantasy part.

Er. Hmm. It's seems that well is dry. How disconcerting. How fortuitous, then, that I have been invited to produce a piece of knitting that -- based on the above recitation of aborted knitting projects -- precisely fits the current shape of the knitting hole in my life.

Small.

Simple.

For someone else.

Too bad it's a secret so I can't tell you much more. How about this, though? I have to make one decision.

Which color? I can't be expected to decide - the light in this tunnel is terrible.

Two Hours

Less, even.

Yarn - Tess' Designer Yarns Hand- dyed merino bulky in colorway Maine Woods and Waters.

Needles - US 11/8 mm Addi Turbos.

Pattern - Paddington Neckwarmer by Roxanne Wood/netofbeing.

Buttons from stash.

Skinny buttons and bulky yarn do not a good match make. I stripped one strand off a short length of the yarn, pulled the rest through the button holes with a fine crochet hook and knotted it several times to make a shank. I fastened the buttons on by tying the yarn around a stitch (as opposed to threading both ends through the same space).

I continue in the Tunnel of Life. While I am not yet convinced that the light at the end is an oncoming train, I grow mightily tired of finding out the light is only a place where the tunnel has collapsed and, not only have I not reached the end, I have to dig through all the rubble and repair it before I can go on. If someone could please send me a sense of humor I would be most grateful.

Two hours only, but it was two hours with my knitting needles in my hands.

Giddy

Such excitement over here at Chez WoolGathering. We have been hoping and planning for some time, but now it's definite. We are to have a Guest from a Foreign Land this Summer.

We're taking her to Stitches, even though she's not so much into the knitting thing.


Yet (cue sinister and diabolical laughter requisite for villainous, knitterly plotting of the taking over the world variety).

Racing Myself

Sometimes, I can focus on a single project. I can knit with dedication, determination and purpose. This is not one of those sometimes.

Sometimes bribery works (see past four posts). This is also not one of those sometimes. When one has already in effect bribed oneself (note photo here with observation that I purchased enough yarn for 2 sweaters), the whole motivation thing is gone and one must admit that all one is doing is accumulating stash. More yarn is no longer a bribe, it's just pressure.

Sometimes time is incentive enough. A deadline can work wonders. I may have ended up with an afghan that I hate, but the time pressure of the Knitting Olympics assured that I ended up with an afghan. It's just not enough incentive this time.

The sad and sorry truth is that the fun part of the Puntas Sweater is done. It's straight stockinette in the round from here on until it's time to split for the sleeves and yoke, at which point it will be largely straight stockinette back and forth. So I've decided to set up a little competition. A race with myself, if you will. The knitterly version of playing checkers, right hand against left. I'm knitting this, too.

This is Rosemary's Little Sweater. Like the Puntas Sweater, it's a Green Mountain Spinnery pattern (That yarn for 2 sweaters? It's all Green Mountain Spinnery yarn, remember?). At this point it is also straight stockinette in the round, but I have little cables to look forward to.

a4A wants sweaters for youth. They want them in hand by May 14. That gives me 17 days until the sweaters have to be in San Francisco. That's the same number of days as the original Knitting Olympics. I owe them for completely blowing the last campaign.

It's an all or nothing challenge. I'm risking not finishing either sweater in time. The victory, however, will be on multiple fronts. I will be knitting against a deadline. I have to allow time for shipping, but I have already started, so I'm still looking pretty much at 17 days. It will be a victory over undue stash accumulation. The yarn will have been here less than a month. I don't think it will count as stash at all. And in some sort of twisted sideways way, it will atone for knitting a hideous afghan for the original Knitting Olympics when I could have been knitting sweaters for kids.

That, and sometimes project monogamy is just not what it takes to actually, you know, finish a project.

Epilogue

" 'Sisyphus, Sisyphus,' hissed the snake,
'Sibilant, syllabub,
Syllable-loo-ba-lay.
Scylla and Charybdis
Sumac, asphodel,
How do you spell Success?
With an S-S-S!' " *

Details, details.

Pattern: Orphans fro Orphans Sweater from Knitting for Peace.

Yarn: Malabrigo Bulky in Velvet grapes, I don't remember how many skeins but suspect it was at least six. Bulky because I wanted a sweater that would fit an older child/14 year old. For some reason I convinced myself that lots of people would, as I had with the original Orphans for Orphans sweater, knit for the 8 to 10 year old group, leaving the 12 to 14 year olds in the lurch.

Needles: Addi Turbo's, US 11/5mm.

Adjustments to handle heavier (much heavier) yarn: Numerous, but I did a very bad job of keeping them straight. Some of them are scattered throughout the blog. Mostly they involved math to adjust stitch and row count to accommodate a gauge that had nothing to do with the original pattern. Also to place decreases, which were fewer because the row count was significantly lower.

Bottom line, though? I win.

* Excerpted from the poem "Cheers" by Eve Merriam (because April is National Poetry Month).

Part the Third

Sometimes you just have to get your hands on new yarn.

Or a new pattern or a new technique. Or all of the foregoing.

Then you can feel rejuvenated enough to finally finish off the last bits of an old project which seems to consist entirely and debilitatingly of old yarn, old pattern, old technique.

Now, will someone please explain where all those ends came from? I think perhaps some more bribery is called for.

Part the Second

String Theory doesn't just carry wool/mohair blends from Peace Fleece. They carry Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair.

I used up my credit. In fact, I more than used up my credit. It's the Lord Protector's fault. He couldn't tell me which color combination worked best, so I had to get enough for two sweaters.

By Friday evening I had Kitchener-ed the remaining side of the Knitting for Peace Sweater and picked up the stitches and knit the waistband ribbing.

But only on the strength of the bribe promise that now that that part is done, I can wind the yarn for a Punta Sweater.

Bribery - A Tale in Three Parts - Part the First

Look familiar?

It should. Progress on the Orphans for Afghans sweater? That would be none. Zero. Zip. Zilch. It would seem my distaste for this sweater had reached irrational proportions. Even the promise and planning of the Punta sweater couldn't persuade me to move forward. After I posted here a week ago Friday, I admitted that serious bribery was called for.

I decided I didn't want to wait for an order of Mountain Mohair from Green Mountain Spinnery. Peace Fleece, I thought. Peace Fleeces is a wool/mohair blend. String Theory carries Peace Fleece. And I still had most of the Sidewalk Sale credit to spend.

String Theory is Far Away. It almost can't be called a local yarn store. I can't get there and back in time for The Pirate's school bus unless I plan very, very efficiently.

Both The Pirate and the Lord Protector were off from school that Friday.

Guess where we went.

I did say serious bribery was called for.

Duty Calls

I bet you're wondering if any knitting is happening here, or if I'm just doing my best to replace all the yarn I donated a few months ago. As it happens, I am. It's purple. It involves large needles. It's almost a sweater.

It's been flopping around here for way too long. The repertoire of feeble excuses I have devised for not working on it is truly underwhelming (the latest was I had to wind up a new skein and spit-splice it on to finish the second sleeve). The time has come. I need to undo and re-do the Kitchener stitch up the left side, and then Kitchener the right (the yarn is so bulky; I don't want that thick seam). Once I've done that I need to pick up the stitches along the bottom and knit the waistband ribbing. I need to mattress-stitch the sleeves. Then I need to crab-stitch the neck edge. Most importantly, I need to get it out of my house. The current a4A campaign (items due in early May) is again (still) asking for sweaters.

I can't help but notice how many times the word "need" arises when writing about this sweater. If I said I was enjoying the knitting, I'd be lying. I need a bribe. One of my acquisitions at Stitches this past fall was the Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book. I think I may be falling in love with the Punta Sweater. It's the pink one.

Surprisingly, no one on Ravelry has knit it up yet. At least, I can't find it. It's not even listed on the Green Mountain Spinnery designer's page (although the cute little matching hat is).

I completely blew the last a4A Youth Campaign (yet another thing to hold against the Not-So-Absolutely-Fabulous Afghan). I'm not going to let this one stumble down the same road. At the very least, maybe I'll finally get Kitchener stitch down.

Local Custom

The Pirate is on Spring Break this week. There are certain traditions that must be maintained. The first day of Spring Break requires lunch at Wendy's (double order of chicken nuggets, a Frosty, save the fries for the Lord Protector), and visits to Michael's to pick a craft project for the week and The Yarn Store to replenish his Rainbow Yarn. His Regia sock yarn has already been absorbed into his stash; I have no idea what the colorway was.

And I think I know what I'm getting in my Easter basket this year.

Dream in Color's Knitosophy in Be your own Superhero. Lantern Moon crocheted flower stitch-markers.

Unless, of course, the Easter baskets are still barricaded by the (stalled) Spring construction project that followed the great Autumn plumbing reconstruction. I think they might be. Maybe I should check on that. Maybe the new local custom will be Easter plates.

Did I Mention It Was My Birthday?

It was. Last week. I got a present.

Then I picked out another one.

Have You Any Wool Luxe Worsted in Rage.

And I decided that by hook or by crook I was going to get an Absolutely Fabulous Afghan that I absolutely loved. So I went out and got still another one. Or eight.

Colinette Mohair in Velvet Damson and Copperbeech; Classic Elite La Gran Mohair in Claret; Mountain Colors Moguls in Sunburst; Colinette Skye in Velvet Damson and Tapis; Muench Yarns Touch Me in Redwood; Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Chunky in Red Rover.

I just love birthdays.

Converted

First off, Sarah Peasley is brilliant. I went into the "Basic Intarsia Techniques" with mixed feelings at best. I didn't want to be converted. I didn't want someone up there burbling on about how adorable those animals in colors never found in nature on little kids' sweaters are. Sarah Peasley is not a burbler. She didn't get good at intarsia because she's devoted her knitting to it. She got good (if I'm remembering the story aright) by knitting through a vast number of intarsia kits for a friend who couldn't knit them anymore. She might even have gotten paid for it. She got good at intarsia because she had to. It was sort of self-preservation. This attitude toward intarsia I could get behind.

I had an arsenal of reservations about this technique. Intarsia is fiddly. Intarsia gets tangled. Intarsia leaves you with lots of ends to weave in. Intarsia can leave you with holes in your knitting. Three out of those four are unavoidable, but can be rendered bearable if you want the end product badly enough. The fourth, the holes in your knitting part, is completely avoidable if it's done right. If it's done right, it can even leave the back of your knitting looking extraordinarily presentable.

Fiddly? Undeniable. You're juggling awkward lengths of yarn in however many colors required for your pattern. You have to hold your yarn a certain way when you change colors in order to "lock" them. See the little vertical dashes of color on the wrong side? That's how your knitting should look if you're knitting along a straight line and have locked your color changes. Those diagonal lines on the picture below? That's how it should look when your knitting a pattern where the colors shift.

Tangled yarns? Well, yes. So you stop and untwist them periodically. Not actually all that big a deal.

Ends to weave in? That, too. One of the best things I got out of this class, though, was how to weave in ends. I'd always done it by guess and by golly before. The only rule I knew was to go in the direction the yarn/knitting was going. So beginning ends should be woven in going back and ending ends should go forward. It never occurred to me to go down or up on the diagonal, and then to double-back parallel to the first line of stitches. It's astonishing how much more endurable a task becomes when you're confident of the technique you're using.

Sarah also recommended this little gem from Sealed With a Kiss.

There's a whole intarsia sample in there. Not unlike the band sampler's worked by embroiderers in the 17th and 18th centuries (I used to do those, too). I've got quite a ways to go, but I expect I'll enjoy the getting there.

Into Intarsia

You know what? I never told you about my Stitches class.

It's going to take a couple of posts. To begin, as sort of back-story, let's review my attitude toward two-color knitting. While I remember that I liked it while I was doing it, the fact remains that one of the longest running UFO's in my knitting repertoire are Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts, dating back to when See Eunny Knit was an active blog and last mentioned in this blog here.

Second, how about my expressed attitude toward argyle? (Read the comments, too.) Not promising, is it?

Lastly, I associate intarsia with Annie's Attic, Herschnerr's and acrylic, which conspire to foist truly hideous sweater's on children. Kay says it so much better than I, so let me quote from MDK2: "Intarsia is a big offender, and not just because it so often portrays our animal friends. . . . . I can hear you saying, 'But what about knitting a groovy catch phrase . . . - wouldn't that be super?' NO. That would not be super. Stop it RIGHT NOW."

Why then, did I take a class in it? Not because it was the only thing available. I registered early enough to get the early bird discount.

I took it so I could learn to knit argyle.

Excuse me. What was that?

I said, "I took it so I could learn to knit argyle."

I'm sorry, I still can't hear you.

Okay, fine! I said, "I TOOK IT SO I COULD LEARN TO KNIT ARGYLE."

There, was that loud enough for you?

Closing Ceremony

I meant to write this last week, or the beginning of this at the latest. Except I mistook feeling better for being well and lapsed back into whatever bug it was that made things miserable during the Olympics. Here, then, is the final post on the World's Ugliest Gold Medal Winner.

I came up with some survival techniques. First, a cheat sheet. A sample of each yarn with it's corresponding color code. It meant I didn't have to keep track of which yarn was Fandago or Wigwam or Zanziba (Colinette is not so good at the giving their yarns meaningful names). I didn't have to label the yarn or keep the ball-bands with me wherever I was working. I didn't have to keep flipping the pattern pages over to check against the yarn list. Saved me time and infinite annoyance.

Lantern Moon small taffeta bags. The three mohair yarns lived in these throughout the project, color-coded, thus saving my sanity and themselves from annihilation. Mohair is really, really sticky. It's a parasite and will latch onto anything like a lamprey - all those teeth.

Post-it notes. Worked even better for keeping my place than the highlighting thing I did for the Not-Quite-A-Blessingway Blanket. Since the repeat was 56 rows long, this kept me on the right row until I could read the pattern from the throw.

General Observations -

The pattern just isn't that hard. I could be over-committed the first week and sick the second and still finish in a timely fashion. Granted that Friday and Saturday were intense, but that's two days out of 17.

Mohair is deeply annoying to knit with, and I will probably impale myself on a set of dpn's before I knit with it again, but it's not particularly difficult.

I have knit Art and I don't want to ever again. There is such a thing as too much. Too much texture (although that's the only thing The Princess likes about it). Too much color. Too much novelty yarn.

With all this dissatisfaction, perhaps you can understand why I felt a little queasy about claiming a gold medal.

I earned it for the discipline I didn't know I had before this project. I made very sure to keep track of the pattern so I wouldn't have to rip back. I marked off the repeats with stichmarkers and I devised systems to make the knitting more coherent. If I learned nothing else, I know how to count to 17, which was the number of stitches in the pattern repeat. I counted it so faithfully and with such consistency that I never want to see the number again. The Lord Protector will have to go from 16 to 18, bypassing his 17th year entirely. So will any grandchildren I may have.

I earned it for my persistence. By the time I reached the last repeat, the only thing keeping me going was a kind of grim determination and the knowledge that I wouldn't have to knit with that particular yarn again. By the time I knit the last 12 rows, it was the knowledge that with each row completed, I would only have so many rows left to knit. By the time I reached the last 4 rows, it was a matter of counting down the stitches. By the time I reached the last bind-off stitch, the only yarn I ever wanted to knit with again was the Skye.

I earned it for what I think of myself as a knitter now, as opposed to when the Olympics started. Maybe the knitting was that simple. On the other hand, maybe I am a better knitter than I thought I was. Maybe I am even a good knitter. And maybe the next time someone, with a faintly kindly patronizing smile, tells me that that pattern, that book, that technique is probably a little too hard for me, well, maybe I just won't believe them anymore.

Pattern - Scallops from Colinette's Absolutely Fabulous Throw Kit.

Yarn - also (mostly) from Colinette's Absolutely Fabulous Throw Kit, approximately 4 years old and therefore with some discontinued yarns. One skein each of:
Color A - Mohair in Renaissance.
Color B - Skye in Copperbeech (Substituted for Velvet Bilberry).
Color C - Mohair in Copperbeech (Substituted for Mist).
Color D - Zanziba in Autumn.
Color E - Wigwam in Lichen (Should have been substituted. The yarn that killed the project. I hated knitting with it more than any of the other fibers. And that's saying a lot. And I hate the way it looks in the finished throw. Completely and utterly, color and texture.)
Color F - Fandago in Venezia.
Color G - Mohair in Tapis.
Color H - Zanziba in Jay.

Needles - Addi Turbo's, US 11/8 mm.

Finished size - 42" by 55".

Got There, Except . . .

So, where were we? Ah yes. Friday. When knitting was fun again and I was still in love with the project.

By the time I went to bed Friday, I had actually finished with one color, had only the last 38 rows left to knit, and was beginning to fear that my Olympic Project was destined to be the single ugliest piece of knitting I had ever accomplished. Will I, nil I, I had entered a fourth event - the Relay, a.k.a. How Fast Can I Get Rid Of This. Completion of this event only required me to continue knitting with my eyes closed and I had gotten pretty good at that.

The plan for Saturday was to finish the knitting and start the blocking. If I missed that deadline, I knew there was no way I'd get the tassels made and attached by the time the torch was extinguished. Despite my increasing dislike of the project (and it was increasing exponentially with every row), I abandoned all my other responsibilities, put my head down and doggedly stuck to my needles. I may have gotten to bed a few hours later than I meant to -- and that may not have been the wisest decision I ever made, since I wasn't exactly at peak performance in the first place -- but I finished. I Soaked it and left it rolled in towels, hoping it would look a lot better to me in the morning.

It didn't.

My family tried to be tactful. This involved a lot of silent head-nodding because they couldn't think of anything actually pleasant to say. The Princess broke first. Silent head nodding gave way to silent head-shaking followed by a quietly apologetic, "No." The Lord Protector, with all the brutal honesty of a 15 year old, observed that "You know, it hurts your eyes if you look at it too long." The Pirate looks at it only to look away very, very quickly; I don't think he actually winces. Their Father has maintained his silence, in itself a very bad sign indeed.

My only consolation is that I dislike the Ab-Fab's in the Versace colorway on Ravelry (which kept to the all the original colors) even more than I dislike mine.

Getting There

It would be untrue on a massive scale to say I'm not glad to win my personal Knitting Olympics. It's just not what I expected. Not the winning part. I was pretty determined. The knitting part.


Let's go back to where we left off. When I was looking at 6 days to finish an afghan that had haunted me for 4 years. When I had decided I had had enough of regretting that I hadn't signed on for the first Olympics. When I decided that I wasn't going to make excuses and, even if I had serious doubts about the project, that I was going to commit.

Up to that point, I had been hedging my bets. Making alternate plans. Telling myself I didn't need to finish before the Olympic Torch went out. I know I was, because I didn't cut the yarn at the color changes. I was planning on giving up, ripping out, and salvaging the yarn. To prove my new-found determination to myself I used my scissors for something other than holding down the pattern.

That was before I got sick. In retrospect -- and more accurately -- that was before I realized I was sick. I just thought I was tired. Okay, tired and cranky. Fine, I was tired, cranky and achy and looking back the part about not being able to get warm was probably chills. I make this diagnosis because, when the possibly that all was not well in a not-normal sense finally flitted across my brain I dug out a thermometer and discovered I was had a temperature.

I found this hard to believe. I wasn't sick enough to run a fever. I didn't think I felt nearly awful enough. Except my knitting needles were way too heavy, and I don't think it was just because the pattern called for US 11/8mm. Except I slept through Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Except that night I let The Boys talk me into a DVD even though it was a school night. Except that over two days I knit a total of 8 rows, tops. Running in the Viral Dash lifted my Olympic challenge to a whole new level.

For the record, the difference between 101.2 and 99.7 is more than 1.5 degrees. 99.7 means you can knit more in two hours than you have knit the previous 3 days. 99.7 means you remember that the way to deal with that ache in your throwing arm (English-style knitter, here, remember?) is to stretch it out and rest it periodically. 99.7 meant that by Friday night, I had one 56 row repeat left to knit, instead of only one repeat done.

99.7 meant I was back in the running.