Casting on my Olympian challenge
I'm off to a cast on party to get started on my own personal Olympian Challenge. I'm so indecisive sometimes, and missed the Real Knitting Olympics deadline this week. But I AM participating in the challenge in my own way and I couldn't be more thrilled.
I am casting on tonight for my first self-designed sweater for me. To make it easier on myself, it will be short sleeved. I am using the top-down construction techniques we learned a month ago in our TKGA knitting guild, Knitspiration of Silicon Valley.
My training so far has included measuring a bunch of my sweaters as guidelines, attending a Perfect Fit class at Commuknity, and swatching my chosen yarn. I've evicted all distracting projects from my knitting bag and I'm ready!
My yarn is an angora/lambswool/nylon blend I have 1030 yards of ArtFibers"Oz" bought 2 years ago at ArtFibers. Being ArtFibers, of course they ran up a pattern on their Knitware software before I left the shop and I can use that as a guideline for things like when to do the waist shaping. But becuase I'm working top-down, I'm not actually following their pattern.
[Complete aside -- the pattern was printed on Feb 14, 2004. My visit to ArtFibers was a Valentine's gift from Bill that year. He had agreed to go out "foatering" with a friend all day in San Francisco before realizing that "Saturday" and "Valentine's Day" were the same. So to make me feel loved on Valentine's day, he printed out an intenerary of yarn shops in San Francisco, with internet maps to each one and reviews saying what they did best. So while he took pictures all day, I shopped yarn. Then we met up for schmoopy dinner. Aww!]
This afternoon I shared my plans with my very good friend Marilyse, who runs the Mission City Coffee nearest my office. She has been such an encouragement to me in my knitting for the past 5 years. Today I told her how the yarn had been talking to me and telling me it does not want to be a shell, it wants to be a little short sleeved cardigan, with seed stitch edges and a cute neck treatment, still up for debate. Mary totally connected with my ideas and drew me a picture of my design, which I will post when I get home from the cast on.
I am absolutely thrilled to be making something for myself (a challenge!) with a deadline (a challenge!) from no pattern (*gulp* BIG challenge!) using this knit-in, set-in sleeves concept (new to me.. also a challenge.) I give myself a degree of difficulty rating of at least 4. On what scale, I don't know. But if I succeed at this, I may never take the sweater off, ever. Just to remind myself how cool I am.
Here I go to the cast on! Wish me luck.
I am casting on tonight for my first self-designed sweater for me. To make it easier on myself, it will be short sleeved. I am using the top-down construction techniques we learned a month ago in our TKGA knitting guild, Knitspiration of Silicon Valley.
My training so far has included measuring a bunch of my sweaters as guidelines, attending a Perfect Fit class at Commuknity, and swatching my chosen yarn. I've evicted all distracting projects from my knitting bag and I'm ready!
My yarn is an angora/lambswool/nylon blend I have 1030 yards of ArtFibers"Oz" bought 2 years ago at ArtFibers. Being ArtFibers, of course they ran up a pattern on their Knitware software before I left the shop and I can use that as a guideline for things like when to do the waist shaping. But becuase I'm working top-down, I'm not actually following their pattern.
[Complete aside -- the pattern was printed on Feb 14, 2004. My visit to ArtFibers was a Valentine's gift from Bill that year. He had agreed to go out "foatering" with a friend all day in San Francisco before realizing that "Saturday" and "Valentine's Day" were the same. So to make me feel loved on Valentine's day, he printed out an intenerary of yarn shops in San Francisco, with internet maps to each one and reviews saying what they did best. So while he took pictures all day, I shopped yarn. Then we met up for schmoopy dinner. Aww!]
This afternoon I shared my plans with my very good friend Marilyse, who runs the Mission City Coffee nearest my office. She has been such an encouragement to me in my knitting for the past 5 years. Today I told her how the yarn had been talking to me and telling me it does not want to be a shell, it wants to be a little short sleeved cardigan, with seed stitch edges and a cute neck treatment, still up for debate. Mary totally connected with my ideas and drew me a picture of my design, which I will post when I get home from the cast on.
I am absolutely thrilled to be making something for myself (a challenge!) with a deadline (a challenge!) from no pattern (*gulp* BIG challenge!) using this knit-in, set-in sleeves concept (new to me.. also a challenge.) I give myself a degree of difficulty rating of at least 4. On what scale, I don't know. But if I succeed at this, I may never take the sweater off, ever. Just to remind myself how cool I am.
Here I go to the cast on! Wish me luck.
posted by spinnity at 2/10/2006 06:20:00 PM
2 Comments:
Good luck! It sounds like the perfect project for you as it includes many of the challenges that you've been considering for a while. I'll be cheering from the stands!
You are an Olympian knitter in my mind; whether it's official,or not.Your project sounds daunting to me, but I know you will come through it a champion. Mom
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