Monday, August 25, 2008

The honor of competition

I am not a Ravelympic winner, but I was a competitor.


My first week of knitting wasn’t very strong. I underestimated the challenge facing me and only finished one sweater front in the first week. I kept thinking those infamous last words:

“I only have the sleeves after this.”

Experienced knitters already see the fallacy of this statement because, first of all, the sleeves weren’t the only thing I had left. Blocking, knitting the front bands, sewing up, knitting the collar, and sewing in the zipper all remain to be done after finishing the sleeves.


Plus, the idea of only sleeves belies a fundamental ignorance of how BIG long sleeves really are.

A large amount of knitting goes into a 2x2 ribbed sleeve. In fact, finishing one sleeve turned out to be all I could manage in the entire week--the thing is so huge it’s practically a scarf.


But, even if I’m not a Ravelympic winner, yesterday I started the second sleeve. This challenge didn’t end in a finished sweater, but it did get me to pickup a languishing project and make significant progress toward its completion.

It may not be finished today, but soon I will wear the first sweater I’ve made for myself.

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Hey, progress counts in my book :) And the finishing is really a bitch. I'm thinking of only doing patterns with minimal finishing from now on. when you get to the zipper, follow the tutorial from Chicknits, it's really good. i still had to do mine twice, but from my own stupidity (bought a non opening zipper), not the tutorials. I handbasted and then hand sewed the zipper in and it went well.

I'm looking forward to seeing your completed Ribby in the near future. If I ever get around to getting a webcam, maybe we can knit and skype and drink coffee, it'll sort of be like old times :)
*hugs*