Not the most original title, I'll admit, but it does make the point. It's that time again! This time I joined the Ravelympics. I'm the captain of Team Hudson Valley only because I looked and couldn't find a local team so I made one. (I'm not really sure what to do as team captain so I'm sure I'm not doing a few things that perhaps I should.)
I had joined the original Knitting Olympics and three days in the flu hit our house. My original project is still in a knitting bag, which is really just a bag into which I stuff knitting, and it awaits completion. It was ambitious: a Meg Swansen fairisle sweater in shades of blue with some black and white. One day I will finish it. This time I'm not so ambitious. I'm making mittens. Not just any mittens; what would be the challenge in that? I'm making Fiddlehead Mittens in KnitPicks Telemark and they are lovely.
The challenge for me is the colorwork. Aside from my original Olympic failure project I've never done colorwork. The pattern is lovely but not overwhelming and it's just two colors per row which works out well since I have two hands. Getting those hands to maneuver the yarn into place without pulling too tight has been the challenge. I knit continental and so I started with both yarns in my left hand but they twisted too much and got on my nerves. Letting my right hand find it's own way to hold the yarn and throw it around the needle took most of the first mitten. The result was a bit puckery.
I kept going. A friend on Ravelry gave me a heads up on this yarn/pattern combination and that she had them turn out too large so I started with the smallest size in the pattern and that wasn't small enough. To get gauge I had to go down to a size 2 (2.75mm) needle. When I finished the first one, blocked it, dried it and tried it on it fit just fine. Then I remembered: I have to knit a liner.
Wool is stretchy, right?
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