Gold Achieved

There she is in the completed hat. The i-cord is on and the ends are tucked and cut. I had to knit one side of the i-cord twice. I ended up going to close to the opening ceremony.

Above that is me knitting at my friend Peggy's house. It was a birthday dinner for her son Seth. I am working on the i-cord edging during the Canada vs USA Hockey Game. I had made the tassels earlier and attached them at the appropriate places.

I must have knitted the wrong way or something because I had to do some fancy stitching to get the i-cord to work out.

But I have been wearing the had since the opening ceremonies started. It needs to be washed and blocked. 

 But I have achieved the gold and it feels really great.

One More Day to go!

I stayed up until 12:30 on Friday night knitting. There was one row that I think I took out 3 times. But I persisted.

This morning I let my self sleep in, 10:30. I made some coffee and started knitting.

Just have to keep making those decreases to make the crown of the hat. Eventually had to put it on double points.

The crown completed ended with a 4" i-cord. There will be a tassel added to the i-cord.

Here is Jamie modeling the hat. You can see the i-cord end on the top. I still have to weave in all the ends. Knit a applied i-cord to the bottom edge that runs from ear flap to ear flap

I tried to post this last night, but had internet problems.

Coming into the Home stretch

I feel pretty good about being able to complete this hat. I only have the top and the finishing touches to complete. Securing in all the yarn ends will take some time. I have 2 days to get the remaing parts knittted. I think that I would like to get it completed on Saturday and take a picture of me wearing in during the closing ceremonies on Sunday. We shall see...

I have enough yarn to make a couple more hats. But I will take a breather from the pressure and knit the next one in a more relaxed environment.

Gold is in Sight

I didn't get to knit as much last night as I wanted. Just about 4 rows. So I took the hat to work to knit at lunch. I was explaining what I was doing to some co-workers and found out from Therese, who is a olympics junkie, that the closing ceromonies are not until Sunday. Man I have a lot of time to knit. I thought they were Friday and was in panic mode.

As you can see I have made progress. The llamas are completed and I am on the first of two small sections like in the beginning. I should be able to get one done during work tomorrow and a lot tomorrow night. The big Llamas are cute.

Working Hard - Day 12

Progress is being made on the hat. Last night I knit the body of the big llama's. They were pretty easy. But I got to get moving. I am not able to knit tonight. Hopefull tomorrow. I only have 4 more days to go. I am only knitting in the evenings. Thursday I have to go to a dinner. So Wed and Fri are it. I think I can do it. Sat can be used to put in all the ends.

Back in the Game - Going for Gold

I really thought that I was out of the picture with the Knitting olympics. I talked with my coach and he said that you are spending so much time unknitting, I didn't tell him that it's Frogging, that you should just start over. Well, I thought about it and he was right. So this is what the project looked like this morning.

Back to the ear flaps. I had to redo the caston for the hat and pick up the ear flaps again. And here is the project currently. I am back on board, boys! The knitting went very well tonight. I was watching the olympics. So maybe that had something to do with the progress and success.

I have the little diamonds and the little alpacs. Aren't they cute. Now I am working on some big alpacs for the main section.

Forgot what day it is

I tried to catch up with the knitting project. Still have some more stitches to remove and Then get the pattern working again. Pretty much still looks like this.

I have changed my sport for the past couple of days. I have been sewing. Making quilt tops. Just simple 5 inch squares sewn together. This one is finished. I just need to find the backing fabric. I have the binding, a nice stripe that matches the coloring in the quilt.

Day four - back a square

I discussed the set back of the mistake in knitting with my coach, Jamie, my son. He said that if it showed a lot then I should take it out. Well, the mistake was in the repeat of the pattern over about a 4 inch part of the hat. I spent the evening frogging and trying to get the stitches back on the needles. I managed to get all 160 on the needles, but I need to back up another row make sure the pattern is ok. I will continue tomorrow.

Day Three

Knitting is going well. Knitting in the round is working very well. I have 160 stitches. I cast on 16, knitted the 32 from one of the ears flaps, cast on 64 stitches and knit the 32 stitches from the other ear flap, then cast on another 16 stitches for a total of 160. Each row has only 2 colors, traditional fairisle I guess. So I am holding the more common color in the row in my left hand and knitting continental and the other yarn in my right hand and throwing the stitch American style. It is working very well. I got 14 rows completed. In reviewing the pattern I see that I made a mistake at about the 8th row, so half way today. I am not ripping it out. It will be my flaw in an other wise perfect hat! Well, I will sleep on it and make my decision tomorrow.

Second day of competition

Ok. I got the other ear flap completed. Watching the olympic games the knitting went faster then yesterday. I guess getting a load of laundry completed and makeing some apple bread and frosting and cutting up the protein bars that I did during the knitting so Casey would have food to take to the wrestling match today. may have made the knitting take a little longer.

Now, I will cast on for the hat and add the flaps and work in the round. Yea - no purling.

Apollo Ohino just won the silver medal. JR Selsky won the bronze. Wow! What a Race.

Casting On ceremony

Well the cast-on of the project went well. Four Stitches didn't take long.

I watchted the entire ceremonies and was able to complete the left ear flap for the hat. I only made one mistake and had to frog just one row.

So, If I work on it every day, the prospects of meeting the goal of a Gold seems feasible.

Knitting Olympic Participant

I have decided to join the knitting olympics. Check out the Yarn Harlot here for more information. I plan on knitting this Andean Chullo Hat. It is a knit that I bought last year from Knit Picks. They don't have the kit anymore. It will be a challenge for me for many reasons.

• I have to use size 3 needles
• There are 9 colors
• It is Fair Isle knitting
• I have to really pay attention to the pattern
• I have only 17 days to complete the hat

The idea of the knitting olympics is to cast on during the opening ceremony. Knit for 17 days. And Either cast off during the closing ceremony or have it completed by then. So, the opening Ceremony is tonight, the kids are at sleepovers and I should be able to get a good start.

Another fun day with my girl Friends

We had another fun day together. And very productive. We met at my house and started with Show and Tell. Pam had several purses and some of the box bags we were going to make today. She had perfected the pattern and eliminated the center seam. So we are going to follow that today. She also had made another apron. See picture below.

Sandy had a wonderful show n Tell from the Black sheep Weavers Guild meeting that she went to. It was crayon batik fabric. So cool. We are going to have a day where we get to have Sandy teach us how to make the cool fabric. Sandy brought Shannon's apron that she finished from our past gathering. Here are Sandy and Pam modeling the new aprons. Pam's apron has chef's on it, Bon Appetite. Soo cute. Shannon's has these cute buttons that are centered on the front. The back has this cute heart fabric.

I showed all the knitting I have been doing. Posted on the blog already. We proceeded to get sewing. Pam did a quick test of the new version of the pattern and then we all got cutting and Sewing, with Pam giving us the step by step process. We all finished one of the box bags, link for the original pattern found on provious posting. We added a handle and a praire point on the ends of the bag to allow for gripping the bag to pull the zipper open and closed. In the photo below, Pam's bags are on the left, Sandy's on the right in the back and mine is on the right in the front. They are so simple and quick and Cute!

Pam brought some prepared fabric and supplies for making the snappy bags. So Sandy and I picked out fabric from Pam's collection. We chose the same fabrics for the main body but different for the accent. Pam again gave us the blow by blow steps to complete the bags.

I love this button fabric. I chose the green accent and Sandy chose the red.

I just love this fabric. Sandy chose the dark pink on the right and I chose the lighter pink on the left.

We had lunch. I made a quiche, Sandy brought a salda and I made a rustic peach pie thing. It was very good. Here are the left overs.

I had the leftovers for dinner. Yum!

We then went to the laundry room and dyed wool. I had some sock yarn that I needed to make black. Sandy brought some of her socks, yarn and roving. So We dyed and Dyed and Dyed. Here are the socks. They were grey and now they are cool colors. She gave me and Pam a pair. Ohh Yea!

We over dyed some grey yarn. She had several weights. Fingering, Two ply and Three ply. They overdyed pretty cool.

Then it was on to the roving. The colors turned out really nice. I wish I had some of each of the color ways that were dyed.

More

And finally

Such wonderful color.

We had a great time and got a lot of great thing completed.
After they left I went down stairs and made one more of each bag from the same fabric.

I am sure that I will be making more soon.