During the Winter Olympics earlier this year I participated in a knitting challenge on
Ravelry.com called the Ravellenic Winter Games (yes, that’s spelled right, I checked it 3 times). Once upon a time it was called the Ravelry Olympics but the IOC, International Olympic Committee, threw a huge hissy fit over the use of the word Olympics. I understand their position, but damn, that was surprising to see the IOC be completely up in arms about a bunch of knitters. But I digress. I’m not even going to try to describe all the teams and events and medals and how it’s all run, but I participated on 3 teams. The 3 teams being “Team Knit Knack”, “Team No Spoons”, and “Team Vintage Knits” all of which I got to make avatars for, that was a whole lot of headache and fun put together. For each team I did one project and all 3 projects were sweaters. In the true spirit of the games, I really wanted to challenge myself and 3 sweaters in just over 2 weeks sounded like a big challenge, and oh boy was it ever!
First came the most important sweater for me, a
RAINBOW BABY SWEATER. In protest of Vladimir Putins’ anti-gay propaganda bill, which punishes people for homosexual “propaganda” and imposes jail terms and fines on those who offend religious believers, a large group of knitters decided to knit in Rainbows. Oh those kooky knitters!
I giving this to a dear friend who just had an adorable baby boy. I’m still looking forward to a picture of the little bugger in it.
Second sweater on the needles was my
MAUDE SWEATER. I had been wanting to make this one for a while but was waiting till I had the right yarn and the right motivation. Thanks to my mom and my sister I got some lovely Sunshine Luxury Sock yarn that would do very well. The color is called Lone Wolf and its a grey/beige color.
I did my research on this one and found that a lot of people were having problems with the pattern with sizing and pattern construction. Thankfully, enough people had taken great notes and worked out the kinks for me. I felt confident that I could get through it without too many problems.
I did make some alterations to the pattern. After the cast on ribbing I changed needle sizes to 3.5‘s instead of the recommended 3.75 as every thing I read said that the sweater runs VERY big in the lace section. This is also why I did a size small (I am by no means a size small). I worked 2 lace repeats then switched to the 3.75 just to make sure that it would fit over my big ta-ta’s. In hind sight, I didn’t need to do that. I also continued the button band all the way down the sweater because I really like the look of a cardigan.
Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out. The top lace part does pucker in the back which is not ideal and the neckband is very wide and doesn’t like to stay in place well but I’m brainstorming on ways to fix that. Considering I made a whole top with sock yarn involving sz.2 needles (think toothpicks) in less than 2 weeks, I think this was a win. And oh my golly, I have 2 more days to bust out one last sweater.
I’m calling this last one the
GRAYSON PULLOVER. It’s a modified version of a generic baby sweater made with some sock yarn I was given last year for Xmas. It’s still waiting on a button for the top, but hey baby Grayson won’t be here for a few more weeks.
Wow, 3 sweaters on just over 2 weeks. Believe me, nothing else got done in that time. I think I did the dishes once and missed out on some social events and stayed up way too late a few nights, but I made it.
Here are my medals that I earned:
No comments:
Post a Comment