FO: Olympic Blues

Yikes, I haven't blogged in quite a while! It's been a very busy last few weeks, but thankfully things are slowing down again so I have some time to write a bit.

Ravelry Project Page

As you Ravelers will know, I finished my Olympic Blues cardigan within the time limit and was very happy to have done so! It was certainly a lot of knitting!

Knitting Olympics Medal

Overall, I'm not entirely thrilled with this project. At first when I tried it on, I loved it. But after a quick peek in the mirror, I was a bit disillusioned. The drape of the cardigan makes it sortof swing out around the body, which means any waist I have disappears and so it accents my hips.

I think I'd like to try this with a belt, because I prefer the way it looks when pulled around more like a blazer shape. If I ever purchase a belt (finding a cute one that fits my waist is a challenge...they're all too big to wear at that point!) I'll get some more photos to show you what it looks like. Otherwise, I may consider adding a button closure with a crocheted button loop.

Ok, sorry! Now for the positive!

The yarn is pretty nice, it blocked soft and drapey and is fairly comfortable to wear. I like the stitch pattern and the sweater is cozy to wear (though the construction tends to make it feel like it may fall off my shoulders) so I know I'll get use from it. And of course, since I finished it in 17 days I don't feel like I wasted eons of knitting on it! Even though I sort of did...I just don't feel like I did. ;)

My swatch lied.

I'm blocking out the first piece of Solaris, and while I managed to arrange it so that the width measurements are correct, the piece is a whole 3" longer than it needs to be.

Yeah. This should be interesting. Hopefully the other pieces follow this new gauge otherwise I will be in deep water.

On a different note, I've been taking lots of breaks as I knit to keep my hands feeling good so that has left time for sewing...these are some new fabrics I recently bought from Sew Mama Sew:

This one is so sweet:

Progress: Day 3-4

I had a great time kicking off the Olympics with Celeste on Friday. Though I didn't get a ton of knitting done that night, the pace certainly picked up the next day.

I watched quite a bit of Olympic coverage over the weekend, and my highlights were the Pairs Figure Skating last night and the Speed Skating Short Track 1500m race the night before with Apolo Ohno and J. R. Celski. Great race to watch.

Anyway, here we have the progress of three days of knitting (haven't knit yet today) on Solaris:

Back: Completed

Front piece (both fronts and the collar are in knit in one very long piece): About 8" down.

So far, I'm on track (in fact, I'm ahead of my self-imposed schedule).

I am definitely concerned about yarn quantities. If I don't have enough I will either have to make shorter sleeves or go over the craft store and try to match my dyelots with another skein. Eek.

Olympics Project

So, I finally made my decision on my Olympics project!

It took me forever to decide, but eventually all patterns but one were ruled out for some reason or another. I hope to knit most of the sweaters I posted sometime during the year, but for the Olympics I think the perfect 17 day sweater for me will be...

Solaris


Random updates will be appearing throughout the Olympics :) Good luck to everyone else who is participating!