The knitting what-now?

Eeeeeeeeeegads. Once again, the simple concept of time hath escaped me – I just realized yesterday that the Winter Olympics are starting this Friday.

I had a lot of fun with the Knitting Olympics last time. And I’d love to compete again. But talk about being the Jamaican bobsled team…dudes…not only have I not been exactly training lately, but I have by and large been what might be called a non-knitter.

I mean, I did finish a pair of socks during the Superbowl…but there really hasn’t been a whole lot of knitting going on around here lately. And even less finishing, which is sad and lame and all like that-there.

ANYWAY. I have precisely zero idea what I’d pick out as my insane feat of Olympics-worthy knitting.

Seriously.

I got nothin’.

Or perhaps more precisely, I’ve got an awful lot + an awful lot which yet somehow = nothing.

I have loads of yarn, and loads of patterns, but whenever I find a pattern that I want to do, somehow I don’t have the right yarn for it. Or I’ve got the right yarn, but not enough of it…or the color is wrong…OR I’ve got exactly the right yarn in four of the six colors I need, and the yarn is now discontinued, and it’s a funky sort of weight or something where it’s tricky to just substitute something else for the other two colors…gah!

Then I try to back into it, you know, piling my stash on my bed and picking through it, assembling yarn where I have enough for “something” in the right weights and colors, and then I try to pick through the books and find something to do with it.

Aaaaaaaaaand, somehow, I can’t seem to find anything that sings to me for that particular pile. Curses!

Even Ravelry has been failing me. I think I could grow old and die clicking through all the suggested patterns it has for me and my stash, and still not find The Thing that makes me go, “A-HA! That would be a perfect Olympic-type project!”

Now of course, I could go with something simpler. You know, like maybe “I shall attempt to finish all 10,672 unfinished objects currently languishing around the house.”

Except that they’re mostly unfinished because they require heroic feats of finishing work - things like crochet hooks (stop laughing, it’s not my fault I’m crochet-challenged! I was born that way!!), or sewing machines, or particularly fiddly matching-up-reverse-stockinette kind of stuff.

Stuff that’s kind of hard to do on a moving train, which is, let’s face it, where I’m going to get the majority of my knitting time. (Although it could be fun trying to use a sewing machine on BART, don’t you think?)

Or, I could go for the production knitting gold. Try to get four pairs of socks cranked out, or five baby sweaters, or ten baby hats, or something like that.

But I’m not a production kind of knitter, really. I have extremely well-documented attention span issues. Every good athlete must be aware of his or her own weaknesses. I mean, you wouldn’t expect to see Sean White going for the gold in marathon, right? Or Lance Armstrong strapping on a pair of skis, right?

When it comes to same-same knitting? Not my forte.

So. Right now (two days before opening ceremonies, ahem) I’m toying with a couple ideas.

One: A Fair Isle beret. Because I’ve never made one, and the idea of stretching a hat over one of my dinner plates to block amuses me. Because I am easily amused that way. I have tons of KnitPicks Palette in about every color they make thanks to a couple kits I’ve gotten over the years – plenty to make a beret.

Two: A baby layette for a newly arrived great nephew. That’s right. I’m a great aunt. Actually, I’ve been a great aunt for a while now, but for some dumb reason it didn’t really dawn on me until this most recent arrival that OHMYGAHHHHHHHD, I’m, like, a great aunt. Possibly because the parents of the previous great nieces/nephews are older than this particular niece, which allowed me to go blithely on la la la, I’m an auntie, I’m an auntie, la la la.

But then this child (who is so not a child anymore but you know how it is, you freeze ‘em when you met ‘em so she’ll always be twelve to me, even when she’s eighty) has her baby and I’m all, GAH! I’m a GREAT aunt!!

And alas, that’s ‘great aunt’ as in ‘old’ rather than ‘coolest ever.’ Le sigh…

Never mind! That’s Idea #2. The old sweater/blankie/hat thing. (Sweater and hat = no problem, it’s the blankie that makes that a crazy-talk proposition for a 17-day knitting window…) (Still, it also has that ‘actual immediate need’ thing going for it…although I’d have to go buy yarn [in spite of already being up to my eyebrows in the stuff] because what do I not have? Baby blankie acrylic.) (And no, this is not a mother who could deal with a hand wash / lay flat to dry kind of blankie. I wouldn’t do that to her. It would get felted, and she’d feel bad, and then I’d feel bad for making her feel bad, and where would that leave us? So. I’d have to trot out and pick up some nice, soft machine wash / dry baby acrylic, pronto.)

Third, I’m contemplating attempting the Viking Turid from Arans & Celtics. (Here’s a Ravelry link.) A bunch of Rowan Cashsoft in ‘lichen’ surfaced from the depths of the old stash that would suit it nicely, I think; and I like the pattern.

And fourth, I’m thinking about having myself committed to a nice, safe sanitarium because what is the MATTER with me? I can’t even get dinner on the table four nights out of seven, and I think I can set myself some crazy-fast knitting deadline and have any prayer of anything but tears and lamentations to follow?

(Personally, I think I may be looking for an excuse to turn in short days and knit on the train instead of doing that pesky working-thing. But we shall pretend it is for the Noble and Worthy Goal of Olympic Gold, because that sounds better.)

And now…I’m going to try to find the camera. The husband absconded with it when he took Danger Mouse to a mission last weekend, and it has not been seen since. Which is no surprise, because whenever it leaves the desk drawer it seems to vanish for, like, three weeks.

But I’d like to find it so I can take a picture of the socks I finished. You know, to document that I have been doing something around here other than working, moping about work, and counting paychecks I haven’t gotten yet…