Now that the cardigan pattern is off with the test knitters, I’ve allowed myself to get a little… distracted.

Okay, a lot distracted. First I thought that a nice quick pair of socks would be lovely,

but almost immediately after finishing the foot got pulled away by a semi-secret project that has a deadline of, um, Tuesday.

I know I knit better under pressure, but this is just silly.

Even the little itty bitty kitty agrees, and trust me, she knows from silly.

Tsocktsarina uses this word sometimes to describe the process of withdrawing a bit to get into the right headspace to write a pattern—at least, that’s how I interpret her use of it. Which is why I haven’t been around; even though this isn’t a secret project like some of tsock’s are, it is still really, terribly boring, and I’ve gotten so sucked into it that I’m pretty boring too. My head is all filled with numbers

and descriptions for weird little techniques

and my hands are busy pen twirling rather than knitting.

‘Tis a sad state indeed. But hopefully I’ll get a rough draft of the pattern off to my two testers this weekend, and then I’ll come back with more interesting things. Wish me luck!

Fifteen days. 1300 yards of yarn. Lots of math. One very determined knitter.

Words cannot express how much I love this cardigan. From the neckline to the fit to the buttons (not to mention the fact that I designed it myself!), it turned exactly how I originally envisioned it when I drew out that silly little sketch two weeks ago. And even though I struggled (a bit) and panicked (a lot), it was all worth it because I finished with 30 hours left before the torch is extinguished. Tomorrow I’m going to take a break and crochet myself a little gold medal. I think I deserve it.

Pattern: my own—coming eventually!
Yarn: Valley Yarns Colrain Lace, 1260yds or about 80% of a cone
Needles: US5/3.75mm Knitpicks Harmonys (kindly lent to me by Hillary)
Notes: There are very extensive notes on the exact design and knitting process on Rav (see link below), but the gist of it is: math. Lots and lots of math. None of it was particularly complicated (er, says the former math major; YMMV), but juggling all of it at once (especially with the top-down shoulder shaping) was a bit of a head spin at times. Fortunately for the rest of you, I’m going to put together a pattern so you won’t have to work it out for yourselves, hopefully in time for spring but we’ll see.

On Ravelry here.

Kitty Carlisle just wants to know if I can make the snow go away.

After an all day applied i-cord marathon yesterday, the body of my Ravelympics cardigan is DONE.

The i-cord was the reason I had to do the button bands before the sleeves; since the bands are just a continuation of the i-cord bind off at the bottom hem (and the i-cord around the collar, as well), I didn’t want to have to break the yarn in the middle of it. Fortunately I was able to get it done because I went out to the local sewing shop yesterday and found these:

So now all I’ve got left are the sleeves, and four whole days to do them in! How are the rest of you doing?

The sweater this week has just had one problem after another, I swear. Yesterday morning I had a fit issue, and stressed out all day about it (as followers of my tweets witnessed—there was much worry), but as of this morning, the fit is fine, so I apparently wasted an entire day of knitting over the issue.

Then I went off to knit night, finished the stockinette on the body, and started in on the i-cord bind off only to discover…

ACK. This is not what I want!

I talked it over with my fiber friends and decided that while I could do folded hems, I really, really really did not want to. So instead I dragged my sweater with me into the bathroom of the coffeeshop, stuck it in the sink, and washed up the corner:

This is the kind of thing I want to point to every time someone scoffs at me for blocking my knitting. A five minute bath and laying flat for half an hour made the hem lie properly, and it looks like as long as I’m careful about blocking the rest of the sweater, it won’t flip back again. Phew!

Now the only thing I have to worry about is, well.

I love and adore these buttons, especially for this cardigan, but I only have five of them. Do I button it just over the bust? Swing cardis are in this year, right? Or maybe I could go button shopping. But I need to decide fast; I can’t get to the sleeves until after the button bands are finished!

I’m a little late to the blog this weekend, since I’ve gone KIP-ing the last four days in a row. And I don’t even have anything to show for it except an ever-lengthening sweater body:

I had to run inside and snap this picture right as I came home today—the days are getting longer but there’s still not enough light as far as I’m concerned!

With any luck I can buckle down tonight and get through all the hip increase rows; I’ve got about twenty left. Then maybe another inch or two of plain stockinette tomorrow and I can start in on the i-cord around the whole body! Er, which I just realized may not stop the stockinette from curling. I may be making a switch to ribbed bands, if that’s the case. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here’s a kitty to keep you company.

After my dismal performance for the first five days of the games, I mostly caught up yesterday by knitting non-stop and getting all the way to the underarms.

The good news is, it fits perfectly so far!

The bad news is, I won’t be able to work on it much today—deadlines for some other design projects are looming so I’ve got to get on those first. Oh well!

It’s about a third of the way through the games and I… am most definitely not a third of the way through my sweater. I ran into a bit of an issue yesterday when I got concerned about the fit of the yoke, but since I was away from home I didn’t have an opportunity to wash and block it and assess the situation until late last night.

Fortunately my fears were unfounded; the yoke fits just fine!

But then I was held up today by my utter lack of planning for the underarm and bust shaping. I figured I could wing it when I got here, but as it turns out, I’d really rather not have to try things and rip them out and try again and rip again. Especially not while I’m on such a tight deadline! So I broke out my design books and my rusty mental math skills and finally got everything plotted out precisely.

Hopefully I can get a couple of rows into this tonight, and the rest of the body and sleeves will be stockinette, so if I don’t get too terribly bored I should be able to whip right through them.

So my local knitting group decided to rent a hotel room for our Ravelympics kick off party, so that we could relax and hang out and enjoy ourselves all evening (and all morning, apparently, since some of us are still together at the coffeeshop!)

Some of us were quite enamored of the bathtub in the swank bathroom.

The rest of us chatted and hung out and had some wine and did a little (emphasis on little) knitting:

Yes, I managed to cast on and knit an entire twelve rows last night. Hopefully today will be more productive!

Kitty Carlisle is trying to hunt down the giant glowing polar bear that was in the opening ceremonies. I think she wants to be friends.

*Clearly if staying the night somewhere is a sleep over, staying the night with yarn friends is a yarn over, right?

By some miracle, in the past two days I’ve managed to formulate a vague plan:

make about half a dozen charts:

(Only one of said charts actually work out properly, but that’s all I need, right?)

and whip up a swatch:

Now all that’s left is to wait ’til nine o’clock tomorrow night and start knitting. This may be the longest thirty hours ever.

Oh! And I finished a certain cowl, too! (Kits coming soon if I don’t get too derailed by this silly Ravelympics thing. Hopefully before the end of the month.)