Wednesday, February 17, 2010

In which I hit a gate and am disqualified from the Knitting Olympics...

As everyone probably knows, the Winter Olympics started last weekend. As everyone who is involved with knitting and the internet probably knows, so did the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics.

I love everything about the Olympics, both Winter and Summer, but the Winter Games are my favorite. I love, love, love the opening ceremony, the parade of nations*, the figure skating, all those events that involve athletes speeding down and around icy tracks and mountains. It is exciting to watch, and the snowy scenery in the "beauty shots" is always gorgeous, since there aren't a lot of ski-runs on flat, boring terrain.

I felt that this year, I am finally a strong enough knitter to find the Knitting Olympics to be fun. I bought yarn, needles, and a Dale of Norway book with lofty plans to make a beautiful nordic sweater for myself. I was visualizing myself wearing a fabulous colorwork sweater and people asking me "where did you get that fabulous sweater of perfection? You look 40 pounds thinner in that sweater! I've never seen anything as beautiful as that sweater!" Those statements will be made, but unfortunately not about this sweater, and probably not while I'm wearing it. I have had gauge problems. I have ladders and wonky stitches. My eyes hurt from trying to count increases on dark-purple wool. I also have simply too much non-knitting life going on right now to enjoy muddling through a labor-intensive project that appears to be leading to a mediocre result.

So, right about the same time this morning that I was watching NBC's Matt Lauer discuss Lindsey Jacobellis's unfortunate disqualification from the Snowboard Cross (or is it Snow Boardcross?) competition, I decided that my knitting and I have "hit a gate" and become "disqualified from the finals." I am looking forward to whipping up some nice, easy, stress-free worsted weight wool socks for my husband during this olympics. They can be my consolation prize. During the next Olympics, when I have a child who will be driving herself to activities, I will be done with graduate school, and maybe my husband's ship will have come in and I won't have to be working so hard to bring in my own ship, then possibly I can whip out a complicated sweater in 17 days. Maybe next I should knit up some warm mittens for Lindsey Jacobellis...

*Did you guys notice all the fabulous knitwear those teams were wearing?! Team USA had awesome caps and cabled sweaters, the Swedish Team had fabulous slouchy crocheted hats, you could publish an entire book of 2010 Winter Olympic Knitwear!

1 comment:

TLC said...

Awww...sorry you didn't make it. I didn't even try though, so you have that in your corner! You have time now to plan for the next one! :)