knitting olympics: February 2006 Archives

Thank you all for the suggestions last Friday! I was shocked at how many of you commented. You brought up a few yarns that were new to me and I'm excited to try them out (Polo and Tahki Willow come to mind).

There is one that I won't be using and that's Calmer. I know it's rather surprising, but Calmer just doesn't knit up well for me. I have bizarre tension problems with it and it makes knitting a real chore. I love the garments I've seen others make, but unfortunately it's not in the cards for me!

I'm such a joiner. I have absolutely no right participating in this challenge given the timing (between work and a project that's a surprise and therefore can't be blogged about). But my ability to be an adult and do the right thing is even weaker.

I can't show you a picture of what I'll be making because I'll also be making up the pattern. Here's the yarn though.

Here's my best stab at a sketch.

It's mostly medium gray with shades of blue, tan and brown. The pullover will have a fair isle band across the chest (above the armholes so the front porch isn't overly accentuated) and the sleeves will be bell-shaped with a band of fair isle somewhere near where the bell shape starts. Below the fair isle band I see a rib or drop stitch to enhance the bell.

This sweater is a challenge in a few ways:

• The gauge is a little smaller (22-24 sts over 4 inches) than I'd like for the time, but 100% alpaca is warm and I didn't want to go larger than that.
• I have to come up with a FI color sequence that I like. I have 8 colors in there so I'm pretty confident I have enough. The surprise knitting project needs to be done beforehand though so I might not be able to figure out the stranded pattern before the start date.
• My stranded knitting skills still need improvement. If I wanted to make it easier on myself I would have picked a resilient yarn with at least some wool in it. But I just didn't like any of the wool options I came across locally and I wasn't about to pick out 9 colors of yarn based on the way it rendered on my laptop monitor.
• I've never steeked but given the placement (above the armholes) I will need to unless I want to do standed purling (I don't). Truth be told I'm not terribly concerned about the steeking part but this could be because -- I repeat -- I've never steeked.

I do have one thing going for me though, and that's the fact that Paul will be out of town 5 of the olympic knitting days. I would have probably spent much of my time on the couch watching the olympics anyway, so this might just help me focus and follow through on a single project.