Ravelympics is done

The Olympics is over, so Ravelympics is over. I finished knitting two items and received two medals. The first is a cabled scarf made from the aran yarn I bought in Ireland. I started this on the first day of the Olympics and had 1/4 of it done by the end of the day. It took 12 days to finish the other 3/4.

At that point, I was running low on time so I started the second project right away (on Aug 20). It took four days to knit up the purse. Then I felted it on Sunday. The knitting part is done, so I claimed my medal. But I still need to add the zipper and liner before I can really use the purse. Hopefully, I'll get that done tonight (I had to wait for it to dry).

Visiting Gramma

This is chapter 2 of the Colorado trip (see previous post). Gramma is actually my grandmother-in-law, but I have no other living grandparents so it should be clear to whom I am referring. After climbing Mt. Yale on Thursday, we continued the drive on into Denver to Gramma's house. At 91 years old, Gramma has limited activities that she can do. Her favorite is telling stories and talking. So I spend a lot of time sitting in the living room knitting and talking (listening, mostly).

On this trip, she made an odd comment about how she always sees me starting projects but never finishing them. It's odd because she sees me in the middle of projects... she almost never sees me "start" a new project, and she actually has seen some of the finished products. Anyway, it was Thursday evening... the night before the start of Ravelympics. Which of course meant that on Friday I would be starting a new project. Therefore on Thursday I was working on a sock that I knew I wouldn't finish before starting my Ravelympics scarf. So on Friday, for once, her comment was actually true.

On Friday, I took a badly needed rest day from running and hiking. By the end of the day, I had used up most of my first skein of Irish yarn on this scarf:

Swatches

It's August 1, and that means that I can upload more photos to Flickr. So, here's the rest of the Ireland photos.

This is also a landmark post because I'm actually at home enjoying high speed internet... YAY, it's about time! No more need to cart the laptop around in search of bandwidth.

We have formed Team Albuquerque for the Ravelympics. This just means that a bunch of us knitters/crocheters have signed up to start a new project on the first day of the Olympics and finish by the last day (it's about 17 days). This sounded like a good challenge, but for me it also means that I'm trying really hard to finish my pair of socks before the Olympics start, so I can then work on the other projects.

Of course, I learned my lesson with those socks which came out too small. So, in preparation for my Ravelympics projects, I made test swatches. This first is using my Irish aran yarn, which will become a reversible cable scarf. Can't you just picture this yarn with cables? The gauge came out just right, so no adjustments needed. Now, I just need to learn to make cables, and buy the correct needles. I used my size 8 double points to make the swatch, because I don' have size 8 straight needles.

The next swatch is Magallanes hand-dyed yarn. It's variable-width and it could make a cool felted purse. Although I was getting tired of felted purses, they are quick to knit, so I'm hopefully going to produce a purse that I actually want to use. Getting the dimensions right is critical because I'm rather picky about purse sizes... must be big enough to carry the essentials, but no bigger. And it needs to have a zipper to keep it all in.

Ravelympics

Update: we have an Albuquerque Ravelympics team. You have until August 7 to sign up.
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Do any of you knitters or crocheters know about the Ravelympics? I just saw this on SaunShine's blog today and it's really the first time I've been excited about a knit-a-long. But first, let me mention that I went to high school with SaunShine and just recently got somewhat in touch with her again thanks to the wackiness of the Web. It turns out that she has been knitting for six years or so... and has many of her own designs. She's truly a knitting prodigy!

Back to the Ravelympics. Basically you cast on a new item during the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics and finish the project before the Olympic flame goes out 17 days later. Or you can do the WIPs wrestling, rather than starting something new. We could start our own team and enter whichever events we like. The WIPs Wrestling event is particularly inspiring to me as I just uncovered lots of unfinished projects recently, however none are knitting projects. So I may do my own unofficial WIPs Wrestling, and also a Scarf Stroke event. Who wants to make a team?

I'll end with a photo of the knitting needle roll-up, from my todo list, that I made this week. Since taking the photo, I have added a velcro closure.