Kitty: Day 8 of Knitting Olympics

2010 Knitting Olympics - Day 8 Can I distract you with Orchids or maybe a cute snail that there was no knitting on Day 8? :)

kitty: second gold medal at knitbuddies

The Specs: Pattern: Kiri Shawl pattern that is free from All Tangled Up Yarn: 2 Spools Tsumugi Silk – Habu Textiles -Cranberry around 870 yards Needles: Size US 2 Circular Addi Turbo Modifications: 20 repeats vs the 12 the pattern calls for and the edging from the pattern

MG: olympic kiri

Kiri Shawl: pattern-free pattern from All Tangled Up. yarn-less than two hanks of KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in sunlight. needles-4.25mm (US 6) clover bamboo circular, 6.5mm (US 10.5) for bind-off. dimensions-about 42 inches wide off the needles, more than 70 inches wide blocked. modifications-13 repeats of the main pattern instead of 12. my own version of the edging.

MG: finished at...

19:56 PST. ends woven and trimmed. swathed in kiri; happy as a clam. it's warm. it's beautiful. i'm terribly proud. final count: 35,887 stitches.

MG: pinned...

(right index finger hurts) and drying fast! it kinda looks like bat wings.

MG: off the needles!!!

my olympic kiri is soaking RIGHT NOW w/ a bit of apricot conditioner!!! the closing ceremony will be on in just a few hours (so i hear. don't have tv), so i'll make it by the hair on my chinny chin chin!!!

between frogging those 3799 stitches and last-minute decisions to stray from the pattern (adding thousands of stitches), i was extremely nervous. but knitting is done!!! i'll be a gold-medal knitter once things dry. ok, gotta go block. hope i don't have to get out a hairdryer to hurry things along or anything. yay! can't believe i did it!

MG: day 13

MG: disciplined?

olympic knitting still on track. 23,019 stitches knitted by the end of day 11--74.39% complete. there was chance for a stall yesterday. the thought of winding 440 yards of laceweight and joining a new ball inconspiciously is the sort of thing that could cause dread, languishing, and procastination. but i did it, and i love a newly hand-wound, center-pull ball. spherical and poofy.

i'm surprised at my own olympic progress. i guess i think of myself as apt to fail at such things--lotophagous procrastinator; indolent. but here i am meeting the task. on pace. 7926 stitches/25.61% of kiri remaining.


didn't realize i could be such a productive knitter, that i could be happy knitting so much. lots of knitting stimulates more knitting. almost ready to cast off on the front piece of my handspun project. there is enough left for a back piece i think!


heartbroken by: Fresh Air interview with Sonia Nazario on the children of central america who make the trek--alone--into the US to find their moms. 48,000 children a year make this trip in unimaginable conditions.

buoyed by: The World's micro finance report-connecting individual donations and loans to small projects and businesses in developing countries.

fascinated and disturbed by: All Things Considered story-extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may cause trees to drink less water leading to wetter soil climates.

MG: extra day?

i like the corrugated, egg-carton-y, waffle-y configuration that is pre-blocked lace. elastic little hills--where does it get the memory to do that? why does a bath make it forget?

olympic kiri still on track--19,203 stitches knitted at the end of day 9. that's 62.06 percent done and 636 stitches ahead of gold medal pace.

but i just opened my calendar to note the closing day of the olympics, counted, and... there are actually 17 days to the olympics... right? 10th to the 26th--endpoints inclusive--means there are 17 days to knit, right? am i counting wrong? an extra day! interesting! but what does it mean?!?!


shouldn't have the tape measurer so far back; not very good for scale then. closeup here. yarn FO specs:

Winegum
fiber: Blue Moon Spinnery, 100% Wensleydale, Guardian of Spirit (handpainted violets, plums and pinks). singles: spun over the fold thinly and smoothly, low-twist (sometimes too low, breakage during plying), large sections of various single colors. ply: 3-ply, navajo-plied to preserve sections of color, overzealously plied resulting in knotty, crinkly yarn. gauge: 12 WPI (worsted) to 28 WPI (crazy lace), most of it around 17-19 WPI (fine fingering).


wound winegum into an american-football-styled ball with a nostepinne, well... extremely large, wooden knitting needle used as a nostepinne that is. Rose, when i blogged about winding my drop spindle like a nostepinne a while back, you asked how it worked. i found more links for you (icanspin has a video and woolery has photos). it can be hard to envision; grab some yarn and a thick stick of any kind and try it. it's nifty.

i swatched from the yuckier, knottier end of the yarn, then i had to start something with a 1x1 rib. knitting with my own handspun is spoingy, squooshy, and hypnotic.

MG: back on track!

with cheering on from Terry and spurring on from Kitty Kitty (wait 'til you hear how many stitches she knitted yesterday), i'm back on gold medal pace for the olympics! MG olympic progress, day 6: 3628 stitches knitted (tallest pink bar yet); 12,615 total stitches complete (circle on the gold medal pace line again); 40.77% done.


and because they make me happy: three tiny satsumas mandarins (farmer's market. eating local.) in a rice bowl, then all gone.

MG: faltering

this knitting olympian was struck with flagging stamina yesterday. above is the graphical representation of my waning fortitude. diagonal line marks the gold medal pace (2063 stitches a day for fifteen days; the last day for blocking). circles are actual running totals--dipped to 1200 below pace on the fourth day. pink bars indicate number of stitches completed for that particular day.

you can see the pink bars getting shorter. was a big slacker yesterday; only knitted 712 stitches. total target was 8252, only had 7033. but that's 22.7% of my shawl completed. and my spreadsheet tells me i have to knit only 1992.67 stitches a day from now on in order to finish knitting on the 16th day. need second wind.

MG: olympic pace

Kitty Kitty has been in town. we made a beeline for Carolina Homespun to be enveloped by wheels, spindles, fiber tools, and nice fiber-people. Kitty Kitty bought a wheel! she bought a wheel! she'll tell you all about it, but guess which one. it's fancy!

friday night we watched the olympic opening ceremony and started our Kiris together. it's giggly fun to knit the same pattern while occupying the same room. which row are you on? which repeat? abbreviated answers understood. pastry break!


currently at a gold medal pace; hope i have the discipline to continue in this fashion. fingers and wrists are a little stiff; lots of stretching and wiggling and massaging.

a peek at my plied wensleydale. crinkly b/c i haven't yet a feel for amount of twist near the navajo-ply knots. i was heartbroken at first, but it's growing on me.


turin/torino/turino was confusing me so i googled. torino is the name of the city in italian; turin is the english exonym. from what i was able to surmise, piemontese (Ethnologue & wikipedia), the local language of the area, names the city with something more like Turin--the first vowel ([y]; umlaut u; french "u") being one that doesn't exist in english. the italian "o" is also different than the english "o." as is often true with tranlastions and borrowings, names are layers of connections and developments. not sure where turino comes from. links and discussion on this topic here.

MG: trained

ready for a knitting event palpable enough to be heard on NPR (link via Kat with a K). ready to click my needles knowing hundreds are clicking with me.

training swatch made. other than a too tight bind-off, it makes me smile. i love this pattern (Kiri shawl PDF on left sidebar at All Tangled Up). wanted this chance to knit something i would otherwise not knit, something beautiful, something impractical for me. wanted to follow a pattern. wanted to knit knit knit, without thinking, just for the feel of knitting.

30,945 stitches in 16 days for this languid little knitter. even if i knit not a stitch for the first 5 days, i can still finish with 2813.18 stitches a day. knitting Kiri? spreadsheet here: open office or excel.