Little yarn pile

This weekend, I finished rewinding my frogged yarn into balls, finally completing my 1^st Ravelympics project, part of the Aerial Unwind.

When I planned this in my head, I envisioned myself ripping the t-shirt on Saturday, washing it on Saturday evening, and winding it back into balls Sunday/Monday, depending on how the drying process went.
Of course, there were several things I forgot to take into account when planning this, such as my optician appointment, the piles and piles of ironing, baking brownies, and my current obsession with knitting socks.

Ripping the yarn took a lot more effort than I thought was going to, but the curliness kept me amused for hours! It was quite impressive the change submerging them in warm water made (warm water and Soak). Excitingly, the yarn seems to have leaked most of its dye already, and the water was barely blue-ish.

All the winding was achieved this weekend, while watching Alex play Mario Kart Wii. It's ready to use!


I will try to cast on for the next incarnation of the t-shirt before the Olympics finish. It would have been a stretch to finish it before the end at the best of times, but having a cast-on will make me feel just as successful, as I mainly wanted to use this opportunity to get it going. If only socks weren't so interesting!

Ravelympics prep!

These Olympic Games, I will be taking part in the Ravelympics¹!

I will be participating in two events: Aerial Unwind (frogging² a project and reclaiming the yarn) and Sweaterboard Cross (knitting a full sweater, although what I will be knitting is more of a t-shirt).

The project to rip is the Green Tea. Although I liked it at the time (denial ain't just a river, baby), Alex correctly identified that it was much to big. After having worn it a couple of times, I had to agree with that, and it has been sitting in the frog pile for a while. This is it's opportunity.

It's just so wide!


I will be reknitting the same t-shirt, but this time so that it fits me. I have the gauge, and my measurements, and hopefully a better understanding on how ease works, and I really hope it will be wearable this time round! Knitting it smaller will also allow me to make it a tad longer, which won't be a bad thing.


I will not be awake at cast-on time (2 am!), so I will start my adventure with some hours of delay over other people. At least the ripping shouldn't be too difficult!


See you at the other side of the finish line!



1: In parallel with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, knitters over at Ravelry are doing their own knitting Olympics. There are teams formed by affiliation (instead of country) and different events you can compete in. ↑
2: Ripping it apart, frogging comes from "rip it, rip it" ↑

Knit Goggles

Google has a feature, Mail Goggles, which allows you to set times of the week when you need to test your sobriety/wakefulness before sending an email, by answering some maths problems.

I wish my knitting came with something similar. After knitting the all the waist deceases of Demeter, I decided I wasn't using the right needles, so ripped it all off and started with new needles. What would you know, two attempts later, I went back to the initial needles. The first cast on ended up twisted, the second progress only to discover all my decreases were wrong.
So I'm about to cast on again (it's not too late), starting a new ball of yarn, I think the current one needs a rest.

The attack of the unwanted frog

Yesterday I finished the neck decreases of Sizzle, and was very happy and proud. I only needed to continue until shoulders, and then I could seam it!
This is a rendition (super high-tech, as you can see), of how much I had knitted.

I counted the shoulder stitches, and noticed I had one extra per side. Thinking it was odd, I picked up the back and checked the stitches. Then I noticed the problem.
The back has seven darts from hip to waist. Guess how many mine has.

Six.

This six darts render my front quite a lot shorter and completely mismatched with respect to the back. I couldn't even cut through the middle, knit a strip and graft it to both ends, as the extra dart meant one less stitch throughout the rest of the top.

The following picture is a rendition of how much knitting I have now, with the darts marked for clarity.



I am not a happy kitten.