Ravelympics: Day One

So I've been scheming, fondling yarn, reading and re-reading instructions to identify possibly tricky bits, swatching, and mostly coming down with Olympic fever for the past few weeks. And yesterday, I finally got to cast on for my Olympic knitting project, the Natalie Coat from Big Girl Knits.


If you haven't heard of the knitting olympics (really?), you can read up all about the original event here and this year's Ravelympics event here. Basically, the idea is to knit something personally challenging during the olympics, starting when the flame is lit and ending 17 days later before the flame is extinguished. My personal challenge: a grown-up knee-length sweater coat for my sis.


I generally don't have the knitting stamina and commitment required to knit the gazillion stitches in an adult garment (which is why they are a rarity on this here blog). Put another way: the last sweater I knit for my man took me over a year to complete! So a coat in 17 days: totally challenging ;0)

Though day one has been very sucessful! I knit for 12 hours and managed to knit 16 inches of the back section and work through 3 (of the required 18) balls of the glorious Filatura Di Crosa Andina in a camel colourway.

You might have noticed my snazzy Olympic timer in the sidebar. A gift from my geeky hubby. If you would like one for your blog, just go into your template and add the following code where you would like the timer to appear:

<div id="knitolympics">Olympic Countdown Timer</div>
<script language="javascript" src="http://jujubeandlolo.com/olympics/timer.js"></script>

That's it! The timer is set to GMT so should be accurate regardless of your time zone.

Happy knitting!