Ravellenic Games 2012

Hello,

I write to you on this beautiful sunny day (at last!!) about the ‘Ravellenic games’. This is an event organised by Ravelry knitting community in honour of the old Pan-Hellenic Games. (It used to be an event in honour of a modern sporting event, but that certain event took it as ‘copyright infrigement’ instead.) During the course of roughly three weeks, the knitters of Ravelry join teams and do knitterly challenges.

Wether it’s the Colourwork Crosscountry (knit your best colourwork!), the Sweater Triathlon (knit your best sweater!) or WIP Wrestling (finish your unfinished Works In Progress!), any knitter can join the events. Amongst the succesfull competitors of an event (or: a Ravathlete) the community gives away certain prizes, such as yarn, patterns or tickets to events.

Then there are the teams: Fans of specific designers, fellow gamers, or other groups join together to compete under a single flag: the teams are not national-based, but created by groups of people who just know how to knit along.

Yarn still kept safe in the box, waiting for the Ravellenic Games to begin.

 
It will be my first time joining the Ravellenics and I couldn’t be more excited! Though you can’t really know, but I’m from a huge sport fanatic family. The way I’m enthusiastic about making clothes, vintage and music, my family is about sports. In fact, half of them are in London at the moment to watch some of the games.So I thought it would be nice to get myself involved with a project that centers around this big event too.

I’m going to be joining Team Icelandic Knitters: this is not about knitters from Iceland, but rather for those knitters who like knitting Icelandic style knits, with Icelandic yarns. More specifically, it’s a team that will be knitting Helene Magnusson patterns, who publishes under the brand name The Icelandic Knitter. It wasn’t easy to choose for which team I wanted to knit as there are so many nice groups out there (A h00t for Team Owlie!!), but eventually the thought of knitting on needle size 5, do colourwork and knitting with warm wool ( it was still fall weather when I ordered this yarn a week ago!!) were decisive. Honestly I couldn’t for the life of me convince myself I would be able to start and finish a vintage jumper in 17 days!

I will be knitting Brynja, casting on during the opening ceremony and try to finish it by August 12th. It will be a challenge, as I will be away for a few days, going to a festival. Still, I’m going to try my best to finish this project in the given time. You can find my project following this link.

Lets all cheer for my awesome temporary new ravatar!!!

*insert Rocky Balboa climbing steps to the tune of Eye of the Tiger*