All This Talk of Le Tour de Fleece

and the nice man on the radio pointed out that the opening ceremonies for the Olympics are a month today...

I realize that I need to get myself organized for the Knitting Olympics.

I have my pattern chosen -- Eunny Jang's steeked argyle vest. There's two reasons for this choice (other than that it's a terrific design, and exactly the sort of thing I would wear) -- it's colourwork, and it's steeked. (Click the link for a very clear and helpful definition courtesy of Wikipedia.)

The steeking choice is simple: I've never done it before. (Insert obligatory "Kipling" joke here.) It's one of the few strange and wonderful knitting techniques I've never actually tried. And since I talk about it in my sock classes (in the context of "hey, really, I promise you'll get the hang of knitting in the round... and in fact, some people have such a strong preference for knitting in the round over knitting flat that they'll knit cardigans in the round and cut them") , I figured I really should give it a go.

And the colourwork.. .well, it's a side effect... because after all, steeking is used predominantly in the context of Fair Isle. (Not always, but most often.)

But if truth be told, I tend to actively avoid most colourwork. When I was first knitting, I did a fair bit of both Fair Isle and Intarsia -- designed a few baby sweaters with stripes and dots and various geometric shapes.

And there's the infamous penguin sweater. More on that later.

But I gave it up in favour of socks and cables and lace and other interesting textural work.

Other than some wild stripes, the most recent colourwork project was a houndstooth felted bag which took me a good couple of years to finish. And that was nearly three years ago.

So it's time to pick up some colourwork again, to refresh my skills -- and to try steeking!