YO-lympic Knitting

Today has been a day for doing laundry, for cuddling the cat (who does not feel that the combination of the heat* and his furriness should stand in the way of making up for last weekend), for watching the Olympics (and it's nice to see some of it live: I got to see Serena Williams win singles gold this morning and do a happy dance), and for knitting.
*Even with air conditioning, doing the laundry raises a sweat, and fur sticks to my face.

If you were reading here two years ago, you may recall my Olympic knitting project from 2010, a vest that I finished a day before the end of the Games, and that actually fit me! (And if you weren't, or want a refresher on the whole concept of knitting Olympics, start here.) (Also, if you click on the "Knitting Olympics" label at the bottom of this post, you can see all the posts that I've tagged with that.)

For this year, I wanted a challenge that wasn't too big a challenge, since I consider "starting a new job" to be my overall summer challenge, and I need my knitting to be supportive, and not a source of added stress, these days. I thought about different things, but in the end I went back to the mystery yarn that my mother brought me at Christmas-time. Remember, it turned out to be Manos del Uruguay? I mentioned that I might make a Wingspan with it, and in fact I started one but felt no love for the marriage of yarn and pattern, so rrrriiiiiiippppp, the yarn was still available. I looked on Ravelry, and picked a pattern to try again, the Colonnade Shawl by Stephen West. Last Friday, during the opening ceremonies, I took time out from packing and all to cast on.

I worked on it more while at Grandma's last weekend, and found it well-suited for hanging out, catching up with Mum, listening to Grandma, having an on-and-off-headache knitting.

 It shows off the colors in the yarn well, doesn't it?

Soon, though, I discovered that this simple pattern is a little deceptive in its simplicity.

First, there's an error, in that it is not possible to finish the first section on a right-side row and start the next section on a right-side row. It just does not compute! After checking Ravelry and finding others with the same problem, I accepted that at least it wasn't me, and did another wrong-side row from the first section before going on.

A bit more seriously, I found that the lace section was very easy to lose track of. All you're doing is a combination of knit-two-togethers and double-yarnovers, but in some of the four sections across you start with one and in some with the other, and it's super-easy to lose track of whether you're supposed to YO2 at the end of a section or not. Especially early in the pattern, when you're still figuring it out! And while yarnovers are easy to fix in the next row, fixing them from the row after is pretty much impossible (for me, anyway). On Sunday, when I tried to fix one and botched it, I knew I was going to have to rip that part out and try again. Tinking the rows, when you're talking about 200 or more stitches, loses its appeal very quickly.

So what I did was to make a little chart of how many stitches I should have in each section after each increase row, so I can check. Mildly annoying, but much the best solution, and I have had no (unfixable) problems with it since.

I took pictures this morning, when I had done 5 of the 8 repeats in the lace section. It's on a long enough needle that I can kind of spread it out, though not completely.

I'm happy with it!

This yarn is very much thick-and-thin: some segments are like bulky and other like lace. Pretty wild.

That's going to add an interesting dimension to the shawl, I think.

This has been your 2012 Knitting Olympics update, brought to you live on location.