For those rare people out there who are reading my blog and don't know, they are a personal challenge to start a project during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games and finish it before or during the closing ceremonies.For the sake of posterity, I'll point out this even was formerly known as the Ravelympics. However the US Olympic Committee finally noticed it and sent a cease and desist letter stating the name was violating their trademark.
Now, as you know if you followed the story, most knitters and crocheters understand and respect trademarks, copyrights, and intellectual property (although like any group of people there are some that either just don't know or know and don't care, but that is another conversation). Anyway, as has been reported far and wide, things would have been fine if it had stopped there, but the letter was a little derogatory to our crafts causing hurt feelings and a massive uproar.
The end result was the USOC apologized for the poor choice of language and the Ravelympics were renamed the Ravellenic Games.
Everyone, supposedly, is happy now.
I, of course, was not blogging regularly at that time (as opposed to now when I'm also not blogging regularly, but I have a really good excuse---my laptop crashed and put my work behind schedule, but that is also another conversation) so did not jump into the fray.
However, during the heat of the kerfuffle (do kerfuffles have heat? Maybe height?)...when the frenzy was at its height I had an Olympic athlete in my house. He is a coach for the skeleton team (which I think is like the luge or the bobsled? Now that I know one of them I'll have to pay more attention!). He might have been an athlete at some point, which reminds me that I wanted to Google him. And the skeleton.
Anyway, the point is that I resisted pouncing on him and asking him whether he felt that knitting denigrated his athletic endeavors. My supreme self-restraint stemmed from the fact that hubby had only recently become friends with him, hubby has to work with him in a professional capacity, and it was only the second time I'd personally seen him.
(However, I was not so restrained the third time I saw him when he was sitting on my porch drinking wine with hubby and I received the notice that my Trellis Mitts were accepted for the new 101 Lace One Skein Wonders book. I actually ran out on the porch and did a Snoopy dance right there in front of the guest.)
Still, it is important to know for the future that I have access to an Olympic athlete type person if for some reason we should find we need it. I understand he can be distracted by good wine, which probably also means he can be distracted by good food. We should factor that into any plans we have.
Anyway, since the point of the Ravellenic games is to knit or crochet I will now actually talk about my knitting.
Lace Long Jump
For Games past I've usually done the WIPs Wrestling style category. Whichever one was for taking a languishing work in progress and finishing it up. And, boy howdy, don't we all those those?
This year I decided to mix things up by doing a fresh project instead.
In a moment of insanity I settled on the Three Lace Cardigan from the Juniper Moon Farm Findley book. I've seen it in person and it's adorable. I even started it at one point, but didn't get very far.
I'm not expecting to finish it by the closing ceremonies, although I might be pleasantly surprised, but I'm hoping this is a kick start to get it going and well on its way.
Yes, I did say I had started one once, but I've abandoned that one for a different color yarn. Therefore the first one counts as a swatch and was part of my training. Actually, that one helped me realize that the yarn doesn't play well with my Addi Turbos. I had even purchased new needles for it.
Cowl Jump
Despite the ambitiousness of that cardigan, I didn't not actually cast on for it during the opening ceremonies last night.
Instead I quickly changed direction and worked on a cowl instead.My new local yarn store, Adirondack Yarns, had a kick off party last night. I keep attending their open knit-nights on Wednesdays with yarn from my stash, no one has said anything about it, but I feel a little bad. But I've bought stuff from them before and they know I'm new in town.
Anyway, for the party I thought I should use yarn I'd actually purchased from them. At Thanksgiving I'd bought two hanks of a locally grown and spun 100% angora yarn. This seemed the perfect opportunity to use it.
As though the cardigan wasn't enough of a challenge I've now set myself up with two projects!
Things aren't as bad as they sound since I flew through the cowl. I just need to get the dang thing cast off properly and I can move on.
Ok, I think I've rambled on enough for now (this tendency to go on and on is probably one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much lately--I know that once I get started it will be a black hole of time). The Ravellenic Games last for 16 days, there's plenty of time to tell you more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment