Olympics Knitting - Not Hardly Out of the Gate

Well, my knitting plans for the Olympics this year haven't gone off in a stellar way as I would have hoped. They started Friday, on a day I had minor surgery, and I slept most of the day and didn't even cast on until Saturday. The pattern I'm doing Oatmeal by Amy King started out with the sleeves. A part of the garment I usually avoid, but I thought, "Hey, it's good getting these out of the way at the beginning of the project instead of the end."

For some reason, I didn't realize that I had to do them on DP needles. And that they are done in the round. Every other sleeve I've done before has been knit flat and then sewn in after the fact. This sweater is designed where most of it is already knit together so there isn't so much sewing at the end. That's good. But harder to conceptualize for me. What's weird is that the sleeves are knit in the round, and yet the body is knit flat. Huh? Go figure. There's an interesting discussion of this whole "Knit circular" or "Knit flat" over on Kim (Knitting Matter's blog on the February 9th.).


Anyway, my yarn is still not spun, because it took me so long just to get the right 3-ply yarn and consistency. I'm going to be spinning as I go along. That way maybe I'll spin the amount of yarn needed and not a bunch extra. We'll see how the "spin as you go" concept works. This is my first major spinning project.

In terms of knitting: So far, I've only finished the 8 rows of twisted rib for the first sleeve cuff, because when I tried to knit the cably diamond part of the sleeve, I couldn't get that right and had to rip it out. This whole thing is off to a slow start. I don't feel in a "fast" mode AT ALL so I'm going to give up on the idea of the official Ravelymics thing and just go at my own pace, doing my own thing.



This is what the sleeve will eventually look like. This is not MY sleeve, mind you, but one that I found as a close-up photo to help me figure out what the pattern is telling me to do. Maybe if I stop trying to read the directions and just look at what I'm trying to accomplish, I'll get farther along?

I'm not disappointed in myself at all for dropping out of Ravelympics. It just doesn't feel "right" for me this time. Frankly, this whole last 12 month period has felt very odd - like I'm striking out in my own direction, on my own timetable, with my own road map, and competing only with myself, which is something Phyllis has urged me to do for years.

Phyllis' famous Competition quote: “I do not copy, compete with or compare myself to others."