Ravellenics

About 6 weeks ago I heard about this controversy surrounding the "Ravelympics."  For those non-knitters out there, Ravelry is an on-line community where you can share your patterns, talk to other knitters, and shop for yarns and patterns.  It's awesome.  I love updating my pattern notes every few days with pictures and thoughts and have gotten lots of inspirational messages from other knitters.  I probably don't spend "enough" time going through other people's projects, but lately I've barely had time to knit, so I figure that's probably something that will have to come when things at work slow down a bit.

But the Ravellenics are a competition housed in Ravelry where people complete projects and compete in different areas.  It's silly and fun and wonderful and the controversy was spurred from a very denigrating letter from the US Olympic committee.  If you're curious, then go to this news article for more details.  It's a copyright infringement issue, which is completely legitimate, but the manner in which the US Olympic committee went about asking for a cease and desist was highly inappropriate.

But, I heard about this and thought it might be fun to "compete" (and I still don't know exactly what that means, but I'll knit along for fun) and since I LOVE the Olympics, this is a perfect opportunity to excuse myself from daily life, get a little stress relief and knit my fingers to the bone over the next 17 days.  It will be much needed considering how stressful work is going to be for the next 4 weeks (minimum, but I do predict things calming down at that point).

I have entered three projects into the Ravellenics.  The first is a WIP pair of socks that I loved working on and put aside for other projects back in February.  The second is a sweater that David bought me the yarn for for Mother's Day.  And the third is the shawl I cast on last night.  I'm going to work on them in the order of shawl, socks, sweater.  I have to throw another project in there for mom's birthday, but it's not competing.    It does, however, have a deadline...I would like once or twice to get people's birthday presents to them within the month of their birthday at least!

At any rate, I'll be noting my progress on my projects "almost" daily.  Today's picture is of how much I've accomplished with my Wavelength Shawl.  When this yarn arrived in the mail, I knew it was special.  It is part of a sock of the month club by Blue Moon Fibers.  They provide one sock pattern and one "non sock" pattern.  The pattern that went with this shawl is so perfect for the yarn that I couldn't do anything else.  I hope I can do justice to this yarn...mainly because I'm going with my philosophy about mistakes:  If it ain't structural, leave it.  I'm thinking that the idea behind the waves isn't that they are perfectly matched but that they draw the shawl up so that it evokes the ocean.  As a result, I'm not fretting about the wave pattern and am just free forming as much as I can.  hard to tell if it's lovely yet or not, but I'm happy and that's what matters because this shawl will definitely be gracing my shoulders!