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Olympics Update

I faced facts last week and decided that while I like my olympic sweater, it is not meant to be for these olympics. I was finally able to cast on for the Falk version on Wednesday, so there's just no way it's going to happen. Rather than torture myself with it, I'm just going to pick it up and knit on it periodically.

Oh! I owe you all a big thank you regarding the alpaca allergy post. I think washing a swatch to see how I react is a great idea. I will give that a try. For now I'm sorta annoyed with the yarn, so it will go in a bag in the stash for now.

New WIP

While working on getting the Falk yarn I cast on for a new sweater. I'm using Stampato. I *love* this yarn! It's one of the stretchiest, bounciest yarns I've ever used. Plus, the colorway is so versatile. It's made up of 6 plies, most of them are black. But there's also a gray/white ply that seems to vary from gray to white to black -- giving it a tweed effect.

view a closeup of the yarn

I'm doing a bottom-up in-the-round raglan -- a pretty basic sweater. I'm planning on doing a V neck with a slit below the V (I don't know what that's called) and some slightly belled sleeves.

I got the yarn in the sale bin at Rosie's a couple weeks ago. I bought all they had but I'm a bit concerned about yardage. So, once I complete the body I'm going to do a provisional cast on of the sleeve stitches and knit the yoke. Then, I'll pick up the provisional stitches and knit the sleeves down. Once I'm done with the yoke I'll split the remaining yarn in half and use it to knit each sleeve. No worries about running out of yarn, and I maximize the possibility of getting long sleeves (which I'd really like for this sweater).

You knew it was too good to be true, right? Swatching success, colors looking good together, a pattern all mapped out and ready to go.

By Sunday morning I was able to do some decent knitting on the sweater. It was chilly all weekend so I had been wearing a fleece hoodie and some pajama bottoms (*perfect* knitting attire if you ask me).

When I woke up on Sunday though I felt really warm, so I switched to a short sleeved t-shirt. I sat in front of the TV and got started on some good quality knitting time.

Within a half hour the under part of my forearms started to get tingly (the skin, not the tendons or muscles) but I didn't think much of it. By the time an hour rolled around I was scratching and when I finally looked I had hives! I thought about what I had eaten recently (the same breakfast I eat at least 5 days a week). I thought about any other changes I might have made (same soap, same body lotion, same laundry supplies).

I was left with one thing...my sweet, soft, cuddly, halo-ey alpaca. I'm allergic to the alpaca!

The odd thing is I've made at least 2 things out of alpaca (including a scarf I made back in November). This alpaca seems a bit more hairy than the other alpacas. So, I'm allergic to Frog Tree Alpaca. Damnit.

Of course, since I was a good girl and swatched the colorwork, I've now used 8 balls of yarn. So I can only return about half of my order.

I've decided to switch to Dale Falk. It's the same gauge as the alpaca so I won't have to modify my pattern. My closest LYS carries it but they were closed on Sunday (due to snow) and regularly closed on Mondays. So come 11 o'clock I'll be calling them and hoping they have enough of the gray. I can always order the other colors online and get them here in a couple days.

I know it means I've little chance of actually finishing on time, but like the cross country skiers who see the race to its completion even when they're several lengths behind, I'm planning to stick this one out and give it my best shot.

Designing color patterns is hard. Really hard.

At one point I had every stitch dictionary and knitting magazine I own spread across the dining room table (you all do this, right?). If I could only merge this stitch pattern with that color sequence and that there border, it'd be perfect.

The exercise was very helpful though.

In the end I used my Stitch & Motif Maker software to help make a stitch pattern of my own.

What a challenge! I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but it still took several hours to get the right one. If I had to use colored pencils it would have taken all day. I'd be ready to declare success when I realized the color change I made 20 minutes ago forced half of the rows to have 3 (and in one case 4) colors. Pretty but crazy! Back to the drawing board...

I finally got to one I thought I'd like. Two rows have 3 colors but I can manage that. I couldn't figure a way to preserve the pattern without it.

What do you think? My current idea is that this would be for the band around the sleeves, and for the upper body I'd use this and maybe another small border at the top and bottom.

Stranding the alpaca was as hard as I thought it would be. One of the first stranded knitting swatches I made (almost two years ago) looks better than the one I made this weekend. I'm excited for the challenge, but I'm also glad that it's not on the entire sweater.