The tale of an Olympian

Hello? Remember me? I trust that the boy kept you all adequately entertained in my time of unforseen and unavoidable absence from most things fun. I think I may now cautiously predict my return, at least for a little while.

I first discovered blogging and the wonderful world of the knitting internets about four years or so ago, about the time of the First Knitting Olympics. I loved the idea but lacked the courage or the confidence in my own ability to choose a suitable project and see it through to the bitter end. I feared choosing something so easy that I felt I hadn't competed properly, or something so hard that it would be met only by amused chuckles at the naivity of this rapidly accelerating knitter.

Truth be told, when I say how much fun everyone had, I rather regretted not jumping in with both feet and thinking about it later and I promised myself that next time I would be there at the start, needles poised in mittened hands (fingerless of course), yarn flying away behind me, woolly hat crammed down over my ears, feet toasty warm from the power of my hand knit socks.

I had this great plan, and I had the project; Fiona Ellis' Bonnie sweater from the very first Twist Collective. But as all really good plans are want to do, this one went a little astray.

As the time drew near for the flame to hit that cauldron, I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to knit that sweater; just to knit each day would be quite enough of a challenge, without adding cables to the mixture, and with the length I wanted to add, I no longer had sufficient yarn for the entire project.

So I had a little rethink and decided that socks I could do. More particularly, having seen the boy's hijack and being very well aware that there is no stash of socks waiting for him somewhere (well there is, it's called his sock drawer but he's seen them all before), I felt that a pair of boy socks would be appropriate.

I handed him Cookie A's Sock Innovation and asked him to pick a pattern, and he perused 'his' sock yarn stash and choose a wonderful Malabrigo sock in Stonechat.

17 days; one pair of socks. I can do better than that can't I? So I asked H to choose a pattern for me and a skein from the stash and set out. 4 socks, 17 days. I really should be able to do that.

Things didn't get off to the greatest of starts when I didn't actually see the Olympic flame lit until Sunday afternoon because of lack of time to watch the video (and I'm a stickler for not cheating at these things), and after one thing and another, I found that yesterday morning I woke up to one finished sock and about an inch and a half of its pair.

You'll have to trust me when I say that I finished H's socks after great stints of knitting yesterday because just after I kitchenered the toe to the Canadian National Anthem following their wonderful victory in the ice-hockey final they were hoiked out of my hands and onto his feet. Where they remain. At art class. Away from my camera. I take it he likes them.

And that second pair .... well the yarn is wound!

The thing is, I've started work on another project; one that will consume more of my love and time than the Olympics or even knitting ever will, and one that I very much hope that I will be working on for the rest of my life.


Baby Bear, expected at the beginning of September, and wrigglish and camera shy just like its parents. If you know what you're looking for you can see the heartbeat (white dot in the middle), the head on the right, a little hand waving from behind and those two UFOs on the left are feet we think! If you don't - it's going to snow tomorrow but clear up nicely towards the end of the week.