Olympic Knitting

Four years ago this week I dove back into the world of knitting after about 15 years of dabbling. For 7 of those years my knitting had been hostage to a situation similar to my Tangled Yoke ordeal. In the end, I finished the thing and it is one of my all time favourite knits...

Its a fingering weight unbleached cotton pram cover from a Pinguoin pattern. Anybody remember Pinguoin?

With that behind me just before the last Winter Olympics and riding high on a wave of self satisfaction I timidly ventured into Passionknit (then still at its old location) where Debbie - founder and then owner of the shop took me under her wing to find the yarn with which I then cast on to make this...

I knit the majority of it as I watched the Turin Olympics. In fact when I don that blue pullover I'm reminded of the exciting Men's Curling final in which Canada won Gold.

At that time I was unaware of knit blogging, knit bloggers, Ms. Pearl McPhee's Knitting Olympics, Ms. Pearl McPhee herself or pretty much any aspect of the on line knitting world from which I now derive so much inspiration.

Fast forward to 2010. The Yarn Harlot posted about how she started a big ball rolling with the Original Knitting Olympics but since it has morphed, multiplied and raveled into many variations - just the kind of thing knitters are wont to do! (Think February Baby Sweater, Lady Sweater, Fitted Pullover, Socks kind of thing - all based on the Gull Wing Lace Pattern - really nothing to do with February except the appearance of the baby sweater pattern in the February chapter of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Almanac!)

This is one of my favourite things about knitters! The variations, differing approaches, adaptations knitters come up with. So I've been happily reading about everyone's Olympic knitting plans over the past couple of weeks...

Knitting on Impulse - living right in Whistler B.C. is working a sweater now to wear as she gads about her very own Olympic town during the games, is posting her process and has invited others to follow along. The sweater is a top down funnel neck featuring a design evoking the waving lines of multiple skier's descending through virgin powder.

Veronique Avery is running a kind of on line class in designing your own mittens now to knit during the Olympics. I love this. What's more evocative of winter knitting than mittens?

Of course Ravelry has the Ravelympics - first run during the last summer games and now apparently bigger and better and more diverse than last time with hundreds of teams and thousands of members. I don't know much more than that I'm afraid, the details as listed seem to likewise have hundreds of aspects and thousands of links - too much for my impatient mouse to click through.

Brenda's amazingly prolific bunch of knitters has formed a team I'm keen to watch no doubt produce mountains of FO's over the course of the games.

So much variety.  Wouldn't it be fun to do them all? (I'm still working on how to get Einstein's theory on the dilation of time to apply to knitting - but I won't have anything ready by a week from Friday ;) )

My plan for the Olympics is to use that gorgeous Alpaca yarn I won last fall at the DKC, with the addition of a darker charcoal grey I have since sourced from Romni and to make a big cozy cowl based on the red and navy beauty from the Winter 2009/10 Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine.

I know the idea is to make something slightly challenging to encourage knitting that is better, faster and stronger. The pattern is straightforward but I plan to adjust the sleeves to make them less voluminous and in so doing less straightforward. This will require less yarn - I'm worried about running short. It will affect the shaping for all pieces. My hope is it will also make the finished piece suit me better. Bottom line I think the changes will make it more challenging for me to work, however simple the mock rib stitch may be to knit.

Since my last "Knitting Olympics" I've had my mind blown open by knitblogland et.al. but it seems I'm still happy to be in my own little knitting world during the games. Again, I'll dive in on the heels of a bit of a knitting ordeal which should make a new project all that much more sweet.

And as for the current ordeal?....

Things are looking pretty sweet there as well! (Again thanks so much for all the support in getting me through it!)

Short Row Shaping for the neckline here I come!

Thanks so much for dropping by!