Across the First Finish Line

I finally got some decent (not great) photos of my finished gloves and crossed my first Ravelympics finish lines!  The gloves qualified for several events, hence a medal for each one:

• Cable Cross-Country: All things cables
• Mitten Moguls: Mittens, gloves, anything that covers hands/wrists/arms
• Single Skein Speed Skate: Projects of just one skein/hank

Pattern: Knotty Gloves
Yarn: Dream in Color Starry - Black Pearl
Needles: US 1½ / 2.5 mm - Signature Needle Arts Stiletto DPNs
Completed: February 21, 2010

I'm really happy with how they came out and how well they fit me, but the black yarn did stain my fingers pretty regularly while I was knitting with it, so these are now waiting for a nice soak in some wool wash before they're put to actual use.

And while I enjoy experimenting with my camera settings and trying to improve my photography skills, I'm primarily a low-level novice with a nice camera, so getting good photos of black, sparkly yarn at night under a lamp is still a challenge.  But I'm working on it, and having checked the touched-up results on several different monitors I'm fairly confident that most people should at least be able to make out the fact that there are cables on the wrists.

Photography challenges aside, I didn't feel like it was in the spirit of the Ravelympics to finish these a week before the Olympics ended and call it quits.  So, shortly after I finished weaving in all of the ends and double-checking my work I jumped in and cast on a new project that qualified for entirely different events.  It's not at all certain that I'll be able to pull off the second project in time, but that's part of the challenge.  More on that later.