Olympic Fail - kinda

I had really high hopes for the Knitting Olympics this year.  For those of you who don't know, Knitting Olympics or Ravelympics is an event started by the Yarn Harlot for the 2006 Olympic games.  The premise is to chose a challenging project, cast on during the opening ceremonies, finish before the end of the 17 days of the Winter Olympics.
This year I decided to work on my languishing Works in Progress because well, I had a pile of them, as you know since I bared my soul last month.  In the meantime I dealt with a bunch of them, but I wanted to work on a few of them using a "balls to the wall" approach.  Sigh.  My plans have been foiled once again & I'll tell you why.

Triple S Shawl
I'm using this yarn:

My intention when I chose these colors was to go against what are really safe color combinations for me.  This was a stretch but I really like it & I was excited to see how it turned out.  I finished one strip of the shawl & I just have to say it - I don't like the brown & green skein mixed into the shawl.  It actually has some orange tones in it & I really really don't care for orange.  Everyone who has seen it assures me it is pretty so I thought I could push through.  I got about six more squares in & just came to the point where I know I won't be happy with it.  Brooks Farm will be at DFW Fiber Fest in April, so I figured I'll bring what I have up there & try to find another color that I'll be happy with it.  I put it to rest so guess what?  Disqualified.  No medal.

Noni Adventure Bag

This stupid bag.  I put this down sometime in 2007 because my yarn was all tangled up.  What a wimp!  I literally only had to knit the i-cord handle, felt the thing, then do the finishing.  I finished the handle in like an hour on the first day of the olympics.  I needed to do the felting & have read that you really should put it in a zippered pillow case so that your washer doesn't get clogged up.  I wanted to take that step because well, I can't really have my washer screwed up right now.  So it took me about a week to get around to going to Big Lots & finding a washable sham that would work.  Have I felted it yet?  Hell no.  Don't ask me why - it's like I have a huge mental block about this.  Check with me in a few years - maybe I'll have it done by then.  (or maybe after the olympics as I seem to be rebelling against the deadline).  Disqualified.  No medal. 

Not So Striped Tee
This is the best picture I have of the way the yarn was knitting up. 

I put this down because I was honestly just bored.  I picked it back up & knit about 4 rows on it then decided I needed to have a little talk with myself.  Would I honestly wear this sweater?  I like the sweater.  I like the yarn.  I wasn't really a fan of them together.  The yarn was striping a little more than I wanted it to, and I seriously don't need any horizontal stripes across my stomach area.  This yarn is great & I love it, but I think it is better suited for a shawl in this colorway.

This is actually how far along I was on it - sorry for the crappy photo.  I couldn't find my camera when I decided to tear it out but needed to click a quick picture for the committee. 


So I tore it out & ended up with this:


I really consider this a fail because I didn't end up with a sweater.  BUT......it did qualify for the Aerial Unwind event in the Ravelympics, so the act of tearing it out earned me this:

HOORAY!  I love a semi-happy ending.



Ophelia
This was a sweater that I started in March 2008.  I never thought I would wear this the way it was written since I'm not much of a vest-ish person.  I figured I could just add some sleeves & it would be a great spring sweater to wear over sun dresses & such (you know, since I wear sun dresses so often).  Well, I finished the sweater nearly as written.  The only change I made when I was knitting the body was to not do the gathered shoulder - I just did a 3 needle bind off which made the shoulder seam pretty long.  To be honest, I just didn't know how to approach adding sleeves.  I got stuck & put it down for nearly 2 years.  There really was not much actual knitting left to do, it was just a matter of sitting down with it & figuring out how to add some type of sleeve that would look good.  And I needed to do something about the fronts that were curling like crazy. 

I brought my problem child to the smartest woman I know, Alissa Barton (aka Knitting Fairy) and she helped me out.  For the curling she had me crochet all the way around the front & when that didn't fix it, I did a reverse double crochet around again.  That took for-freakin-ever because I'm a sucky & slow crocheter.  She also gave me some advice on picking up for the sleeves.  Well, let me tell you, that crocheting was a cake walk compared to the trouble I had with the sleeves.  I pulled them out..oh, I don't know...probably 3 times?  It was like Goldilocks - too many stitches, not enough stitches, just right stitches but the pattern looked like ass.  I finally settled on stockinette sleeves edged with the lace rib pattern that is at the bottom of the sweater.

I'm not entirely happy with the sleeve length - I had hoped that there was enough yarn for me to do do 3/4 length of long sleeves.  Somewhere in the past 2 years I wised  up to the fact that I likely won't be throwing this on over a sun dress & that a cotton long sleeve sweater in Texas would be useful.  I went so far as to weigh the yarn I had left & figured I would knit sleeve #1 until I was half way, then knit the other.  It hits me right below the elbow, which I suppose is acceptable, but I'd still prefer it to be longer.  Here she is in all her glory:

I thought about adding one button at the bust, but for now I'm going to operate under the assumption that I can use a sweater clip to keep it closed.
Ophelia earned me this medal:


After I realized that some of my projects weren't working out, it seemed that I was going to have more time to work on a new project.  I had been really stalking these colorwork mittens:
Deep in the Forest Mittens
I had some yarn in my stash that I thought would work for them

Well, as it turns out, that ivory yarn was too thick.  I also had some ivory cashmere in my stash & I tried to use that.  Yeah, that didn't work out either.  So new last minute entry: Disqualified.  No medal.

What I learned about myself is really what I already knew.  I really don't like knitting on a deadline & I rebel against time lines.  This is my hobby & is supposed to be fun - this go round I wasn't having fun.  I did start something new I'll talk about another day & I'm happy to say that I only spent about a week in no-fun knitting land.  It's good to be back to normal.