Ravelympics Update

This is, by necessity, a very short entry simply because I'm spending all my "extra" time with flying fingers and clicking needles--Ravelympics 2008 is under way! Around the world, 5,651 fiber artists and needlepeople committed to finishing 16,210 projects during the 17 days of the Beijing Games. It's amazing how you can entice people into knitting, crocheting, spinning, or felting, simply by suggesting a timeline.

I cast on the first pair of mittens just after 6:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, and was well underway by the time I saw the fireworks shooting off from "the Birds' Nest," Beijing's very modernistic national stadium (which Stephen describes as "the Toilet Seat"). No, NBC's Olympic coverage wasn't on early--the fireworks were going off in the background as KNBC's representative was finishing his report. I started with both mittens on the same needles, but switched to singles after finishing the cuffs--it's simply too difficult to keep things straight when knitting mittens two-up.

In spite of some long "interruptions," including a trip to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to see Air Force One and and a Nancy Reagan's gowns, I was able to knit pretty steadily throughout the day, and finished off the first pair just as the Opening Ceremonies telecast began. The first pair, red-brown-blue-purple variegated with brown cuffs and thumbs, came out well and I cast on the second pair, knitted in solid brown wool. They were finished early in the morning on August 10th, and I proceeded on to my main Baby Dressage entry, Tracy's Baby's Hoodie, a garter-stitch hoodie knitted from pastel-variegated acrylic baby yarn. I've focused on that through the train trip back to the Bay Area, and most of yesterday, finishing the bottom and now working my way up the right front. The hoodie will make a good project to take with me tomorrow when I go to a series of meetings to start off the school year, and I'll keep cranking out mittens as fast as I can.