ravelympics first hurdle

A few days before the start of the Ravelympics, I woke up with a bolt of inspiration and decided to take part.  I had it all figured out: I had my copy of Knitscene for the Geodesic Cardigan, and I realised that I already had two skeins of Malabrigo Lace in Olive in my stash.  Perfect!

I got all organised, knitted up a little swatch in preparation (and I never do that) but then during the week I received two skeins of Madelinetosh Prairie in the colour Tart.  Ohhhh, such a beautiful colour!  Deep! Rich! Red!  The poor Malabrigo was shoved back on the shelf.

I did yet another mini-swatch on Friday night.  Gave it a quick wash, had a nap for a couple of hours, and woke up in time for the Opening Ceremony at 2am Saturday morning.  I cast on with thousands of other knitters.  I was so impressed with myself!  Sadly, the yarn didn’t thrill me quite so much.

Even though the yarn is a single merino, it’s very very tightly spun.  It has absolutely no ‘give’, and none of the Malabrigo halo.  Even after washing, the stitches remained very crisp with barely a hint of fuzz.  The firmness of the yarn means that I’ve had to work at a tighter gauge than recommended so I’m working the next size up, with a challenging 230 st cast on.  The project is very slow going; partly because knitting with this yarn makes my hand cramp up, but also because I keep stopping at every row to decide whether or not to continue!

I’ve sought advice from fellow Ravellers who are also using this yarn, and I’ve finally decided to continue (Rav link).  Not sure of my chances of getting it finished by the closing ceremony, but there is no way in the world that I would embark on a laceweight cardigan if I didn’t have an external motivator.  This definitely qualifies as an Olympic-sized challenge.