Pre Olympic Report

Well, tomorrow is the start of the Knitting Olympics, and I figured I'd give a progress report.

Following on from yesterday's post, Gundel suggested that the odd looking heel might be due to a tension thing ... so I did end up ripping out both heels and reknitting them, taking care to keep my tension fairly tight. Here's the results - not perfect, but definitely an improvement.

My right foot isn't quite as deformed as it seems in the final photo, and there is a tiny gap where one of the heels rejoins the foot, but for a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with it. Plus that'll be hidden by my shoe most of the time, right? Sadly, the finishing of these socks, and the Jaywalker, and the starting of the toe-up Pomatomus, and my Sockapaloooza socks will all be put on hold for... Threadybear!.

This is my project of choice for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics, which, scarily, has more knitters participating than there are athletes in the actual games. (I'm also somewhat impressed that in a group of around 3000 knitters, I'm the only Kirsti-with-an-i.) I'm pretty well set: I've got my yarn, needles, pattern, all the notes from the Yahoo group. And the wonderful Amby has made us official "Team Detroit" tote bags to proudly keep our Olympic projects safe. Threadybear, by the way, is a traditional fair isle sweater, knitted in the round, with (eeps) 7 different yarn colours and (double eeps) steeks! Steeks are where I take a deep breath, and a sharp pair of scissors, and actually cut into the knitted sweater to make armholes. It's a somewhat scary thought, and hopefully the Olympic pressure will give me the courage to do it. I was going to calculate the number of rows so I could figure out what my daily target needs to be in order to finish in time, but that may be a tad too geeky even for me. Anyway, here's the "pre cast on" pics.

I'll try and update with Olympic progress over the next 16 days, but obviously most of my time will be actually knitting. Feel free to leave encouraging comments and cheer on my progress.