Knit-Lympics Day 1

The Knitting Olympics has begun! Day One (today), I treated myself to a day off from work so I could be ready to go when they lit the flame. Which, I thought, was at the very beginning, when buddy smote the anvil and flames came out, at just after 2 p.m. Eastern time. WRONG! The actual flame-lighting was not until about 5:30 Eastern. D'oh! But, flame is flame and I started at 2, as per the venerable Harlot's very fair standardized starting time. Go Harlot. :)

So, here we see the product of Day One knitting. Slightly less than one whole ball of the divine Alpaca Peru, which equals a 5-knit-row border edge and 12 pattern repeats of the oh-so-pretty Feather and Fan. You can't see the detail very well here, but trust me - the pattern is working and the holes are not big gaping maws like the 8mm swatch was. 5mm is just right - keeping the pattern dainty and the overall fabric drape-y. Measured, this 1-ball section is about 16" wide x 7" long. 16" width is a tad narrow but I can live with it, and 7" x 10 balls = 70" overall length, which will be quite nice, I think.

The pattern is not as difficult as I thought, but I really have to be careful about keeping track of which row I'm on - I lost my place a couple of times (dang telephone!) and had to really analyze the fabric to see where I was. It seems to have worked. Oh, and I had one moment about halfway in where my 18-stitch pattern section mysteriously shrunk to 16 stitches, but I fudged it and now can't see the fudge so it's all good. I think what may have happened was that I had done an extra K2TOG on the previous pattern row and not noticed it on the knit and purl rows. But, like I say, I can't find the error or the fix now, so no worries. It may show up later after blocking... which reminds me, how does one go about blocking an Alpaca feather & fan shawl? Advice, points to links, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Tomorrow I hope to get another full ball done, but have many household-type chores and things to take care of also. Imagine wanting food and clean clothes! (me, not the family - they're old enough and ugly enough to fend for themselves). Yeah, I think I'll bake some bread first thing in the morning and then I'll have it for snacking later in the day. Good plan.

How's your Olympic knitting (if any) coming along?

Goodnight Bloglanders!