The Newest Olympic Event

No, I'm not going to talk about the new speed skating event with 3 team members switching out draft positions like semi trucks on the Interstate, and people think Curling is boring....  Personally, I like the speed skating where there's a chance that people can wreck in a high speed crash, but that's just me.

No, I'm not going to discuss the Ski Cross or Snow Board Cross, which we REALLY enjoyed, that was entertaining. I'm going to talk about the Knitting Olympics as described in the posts of Acorn to Oak. I started reading about the event a week before the 2010 Olympics started and I thought, yeah.... I could compete in that.  But I don't find knitting scarves all that entertaining.  And if I'm going to knit with size 11 needles a scarf would only take me one night of competition.

Let me back up a bit and tell you the rules.  What I understood was that there were two ways to compete, you would either finish a project that you had previously started while you were watching the nightly showing of the Olympics.  Ok... I could have done that, I was still working on my brother's socks, yes... the ones from Christmas. Yeah... Christmas past.

Or you could start a new project. Either way, it would need to be finished by the end of the Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics not the next ones, where ever they are being held.  A lot of the posts I read about the Knitting Olympics here's another one they were making scarves not her.  I hate to say this but scarves and baby blankets bore me to death.  It's all I can do to get someone started knitting a scarf when they are first learning to knit.  So in order to compete in the Knitting Olympics I decided to do a shawl.  A stash buster shawl.  In other words I was going to use scraps and leftovers from other projects or yarn that was just laying around.  I went through the yarn closet and found a multi-colored ball of yarn that had all my favorite colors in it and then matched other solid color yarns too it.

I started the shawl the first night of the Olympics during the Opening Ceremony, but unfortunately I had about 5 false starts.  Some of the yarns and colors I had first picked out just didn't look so good once they were knitted into the shawl.  So I frogged it and started over and over and over and over.  The official start time for me was Wednesday night not last Wednesday the one before around 7:30.  

See the multi colored strip in the center? That's the colorway where it all started.  It's got greens, and blues and purples and sort of a mauve color in it.  Problem was... I only had one ball of this yarn.  I couldn't even make a scarf even if I'd wanted to?  Then there's that periwinkle blue to the left of it, really nice angora/wool blend that Aunt Shorty gave me. I made a sweater from it and this was the leftover. The other colors are some weird yarn that someone gave me because their Mom had it laying around and didn't know where it came from, but it came in handy.  I wonder if artist who paint beautiful pictures on canvas inherit old paint from people? "Hey, I painted the back bathroom with this color 2 years ago. Ya want it?" 

 

Here's another blue color I got from Aunt Shorty... I love this yarn.  There isn't enough to make a sweater so I used a little in this project and I'll make some socks out of what's left.  It's kind of a denim blue, really pretty and VERY soft. There is also some metallic eye lash yarn knitted in with some of the weird yarn to 'punch' it up a bit.  

 

Here it is in all it's finished glory, sorry for the bad lighting official end time for this event:  Sunday, 2/29/2010 2:30pm. With time to spare.  Now I'm finishing Mikey's socks.  I WILL be finished with them by the weekend. I put 4 inches on the cuff just since finishing the shawl.

As much as I like the Olympics, I'm glad they are over.  Jody is ecstatic!  I will only let him channel surf between NBC and CNBC when the Olympics are on. 

In the Family News....  I Skyped a little bit with Jolea this morning. The connection was bad there at the dock in St.Thomas. They had arrived last night and didn't clear customs until 11:30 this morning.  She was tired and had the makings for some dandy dread locks, but she looked good and was happy to be in St.T.  They will be leaving for the Dominican Republic tomorrow. 

Jeff will be headed to Mexico on Wednesday.  He's going to watch not compete in the World Rally Race.  That should be fun.

Have a great week.