Tour de France Knit-a-Long Wrap-Up

This is my Final Sprint for the Tour de France KAL. I had planned to get this up earlier today to be sure I met the deadline, but a large part of my day was spent puppy-sitting for a ball of fur with a tummyache. (Yes, it was Sidney and she’s fine now)

Good evening, all, and welcome to today’s show. In this post, we shall recap DPUTiger’s three weeks in the peloton.

There were several bumps along the road. Riding for Team Silence-Lotto, we started le Tour intending to knit Green Gable with this

Bonnie’s Bamboo from Farmhouse Yarns.

But, early in the Tour we hit a snag. Gauge for Green Gable was not going to happen in this yarn in anything approaching a fabric our rider would be happy with. Fortunately, I have since found a great pattern for it in this book, so the yarn is not doomed to a black hole of the stash.

Time for a new bike. At least it wasn’t as dramatic a change as John Lee Augustyn’s slide over a hill in the mountains … he slid a little, and his bike just kept going and going and going!

Mmmm … Classy!

A trip to my favorite LYS resulted in a “bike change.” Thankfully, I didn’t try to sit down on Jens Voigt’s saddle-free seat post! Bloomin’ Yarns is having a knit-a-long for Sprout, and I got sucked in to a sweater’s worth of Dream in Color Classy. YUM!

I successfully negotiated the traffic furniture created by things like short rows and choosing an increase. I started out doing M1 increases but had to think about those every time they came along, so I switched to the lifted increases I’ve been using in my Cat Bordhi/New Pathways socks. No thinking is a good thing!

I thought about ripping back to make all the increases the same, but that could create something scary like my nomination for Most Spectacular Tour Crash, when Sven Kraus of Gerolsteiner caught a piece of traffic furniture and went flying, with his bike going skyward in two pieces. ::shudder::

Sprout!

Sprout has been zipping right along between work on the Black Socks of Doom. They are recently completed, but I haven’t managed to hijack the Hubster’s feet for a photo shoot yes. And I don’t have blockers big enough to do the job. Seriously.

But the sweater is going nicely. I’m nearly halfway through the yarn purchased for this project and it’s going great. I’m through the side shaping and now just have a little more of the torso to finish and sleeves to Magic Loop.

I’m a little disappointed in myself for not participating fully in the TDF KAL. I should have participated in more of the intermediate sprints, but I’ve truly enjoyed being part of the peloton!

Oh, and I have one new addition to the household:


Isn’t my new bike awesome? I’m hoping to take it out for the maiden voyage in the next day or two. Purchased it here. Highly recommend that shop if you're in the Pittsburgh area. They were awesome! Whee! :-)