Point Me to the Podium! February 25, 2006
My Olympic Broadripple socks are done! Tomorrow I’ll take another shot at grafting the toe of the first sock and weave in the yarn ends, but all the important bits are rifinito! (That’s Italian for ‘finished’… I think. 
)
Olympic Broadripples – Day 13 February 24, 2006
This photo was taken at the beginning of Thursday’s work. By the end of Thursday the heel was nearly done – just a few decrease rounds left. It was then that I took a closer look at my progress and discovered a boo-boo. And not a recent, just-a-few-rows-back boo-boo. No, this happened on Wednesday when I was furiously trying to catch up after having knitted an embarrassing 4 rounds on Tuesday. (Four measly rounds in 24 hours!) My count got off at one point, so there’s yarn over that’s one stitch off. And, naturally, it happened not in the back of the leg but right smack in the middle of the instep! Despite that, it didn’t take much soul searching to decide not to frog back for the following reasons: 1) Fixation doesn’t have great stitch definition so it’s not too visible, 2) with my irregular tension, it doesn’t look very out of place, 3) when the foot bends, that part of the sock will scrunch up anyway, 4) these will be gifts and I’m certain the recipient won’t care, and 5) unravel a completed heel – ARE YOU NUTS?
It’s also unlikely that I’d meet the Knitting Olympics deadline if I had to re-knit the heel, but frankly, I’ll be glad when the KOs are KOed. I am not by nature a one WIP knitter, and, other than early one morning when I reverted to dishcloth knitting while waiting for the sun to rise so I could tackle a tricky sock bit with good light, I haven’t touched anything else in the past 13 days. The monotony is starting to grate so much that there are times now when I start to hate knitting. I’m a little bit scared by that. Still, I don’t regret participating at all.
The Bluegrass Festival of Books February 20, 2006
Whoo! Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (Yarn Harlot and mistress of the Knitting Olympics) is coming to town! Not that it’s likely I’ll be there (sigh), but I’ll be pathetically happy just knowing she’s nearby. Heh.
The Halfway Mark February 19, 2006
We have sockality!
Day 7: 15 rounds (1″)
Day 8: 17 rounds (1.5″)
Day 9: 12 rounds + toe decreases
I reached my goal of finishing the first sock Saturday despite two days where I was so fed up I seriously considered throwing in the towel. Thankfully, that weird mood swing is over now.
The little pile of yarn shows how much I had left from one ball of Cascade Fixation. Since Fixation is super stretchy, there’s more there than it looks like, but I still had a few anxious moments near the end.
Olympic Broadripples – Day 6 February 16, 2006
Day 6: heel decreases
Kindly forget what I said earlier about it being impossible to reach the intended gauge (7 sts/in) with this yarn and needle size. Why? Because during the heel I was clocking nearly 8.5 sts/inch! Unfortunately, I have a tendancy to tighten my gauge as a project goes on. At this stage in the game, frogging is not an option, so I stopped two decrease rounds short to compensate. Later I’ll face the challenge of making the second sock like the first.
Olympic Broadripples – Day 5 February 15, 2006
Day 5: heel turned & gussets picked up
No photo today because there’s not much new to look at. Blissfully, the short rows went OK, but I had several stumbles trying to decide how to situate the Magic Loop with the newly picked up gussets. (I’m ashamed to admit that although all of my previous sock attempts spent some time in the Magic Loop, none made it to the gusset stage!) The instructions for 2 circulars [.doc] say to put the instep stitches on one needle and everything else (heel and both gussets) on the second, but when I tried that with Magic Loop I had a hard time maneuvering the long Addi needle (the ‘handle’ part, not the cable) around the heel. I can see now that the divisions are supposed to be at the back of the heel and the middle of the instep, but I still find knitting the first few rows difficult. Hopefully I can get past the awkward section today so it’ll be smooth knitting on Thursday and Friday. The sock is still scheduled to be completed on Saturday.
I wonder if other Team Wales participants have had the same idea as me (watching Welsh movies) because both How Green Was My Valley and Human Traffic are showing as Short Wait in my Netflix queue. I’ll likely get Solomon and Gaenor shipped to me today for weekend watching.
Olympic Broadripples – Day 4 February 14, 2006
Day 4: 2 rounds + heel flap
Thought I might get ahead of the game and finish the whole heel, but alas, all that k1, sl1 proved too tedious. I went to bed early once the flap was completed.
Today’s task features my frequent nemesis: the short row heel. In my head I completely understand the process, but it’s rarely that simple in reality.
Olympic Broadripples – Day 3 February 13, 2006
Day 3: 36 – 4 = 32 rounds, nearly 3 inches
Had to frog a few rounds but still surpassed Day 2’s total. The stitch pattern only has two rows, and yet I still managed to get them switched. What a smeghead. :p Safety pins mark progress from previous days.
I have a concern that despite my swatch, if anything, being a bit on the large side, the sock so far feels almost alarmingly tight on the leg. If it weren’t for the elasticity I could hardly get it over my ankle. Perhaps I shouldn’t stretch the yarn as much as I’m knitting, but I have difficulty imagining how “the average knitter” would reach 7 sts/in. with this sport-weight yarn and a size 3 needle without a goodly amount of tension on the yarn. I mean, I’m a tight knitter and my swatch was close to 6.5 sts/in. Then again, I think most socks are knit at an absurd gauge. (10 sts/in?! Are these people insane?) These socks should fit Mom quite well, which, I have to remind myself, was who they were intended for all along. When I knit a pair of these for myself (which I most certainly will!) I’ll just have to remember to adjust for my, err, sizable ankles and calves.
Olympic Broadripples – End of Day 2 February 12, 2006
This is the progress from the first 24 hours.
Day 1 (Friday): 12 rounds (the garter stitch portion)
Day 2 (Saturday): 28 rounds, roughly 2.5″
Saturday’s total was helped enormously by the fact that library DVDs were due, and I still had three movies to watch. TV to my right, snow-filled window to my left – wonderful!
The current goal is to turn the heel on Valentine’s Day on the way to finishing the first sock next Saturday. Given the way things have gone so far, I think that’s well reachable.
I’ve really fallen in love with Cascade Fixation. It knits up fast and is very soft and non-splitty. Plus, the elasticity is fantastic for tight knitters like me. Oddly enough, the fact that I don’t have to struggle to complete the stitches makes me unconsciously loosen up a bit.
Little Knits intriguingly has Fixation Bulky 50% off at the moment, but I’m unable to find much online about this yarn.
