Meanwhile, back at Olympic Knitting Headquarters…

We are off to a strong start here on Team Viking Turid:



May I make a confession? I am stunned outside of all reason that I am already blocking the back of this sweater. This is unprecedented progress for me. As I know I’ve said before, I’m not one of those fast knitters. I envy people who are told things like “oh my gosh, you knit so fast it looks like you’re just moving stitches from one needle to the other!”

I don’t get that much.

Actually, I never get that.

Actually, I’m afraid what I usually get is “that looks hard.”

Which, you know, ahem. Shaun White makes it look easy. Jennifer Heil? She makes it look so easy I go, “Wow, I wonder if I could do that?” (And then I go, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! RIGHT! And then? I’m totally going to take up shark wrestling! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” – because I’m pretty sure I would not only look like a complete dork trying, but would probably end up in a body cast for the rest of my life if I even tried just the moguls part of what she does.) (Hmm…but the possibilities for Denizen Embarrassment are endless there…hmmmmmmmmm…)

I have to imagine they get really tired of people walking up and saying, “Dude, you make that look so easy!” – but at the same time, it is a testament to their mad skilz that they can take something that is so not easy and make it look approachable by, say, a wildly out-of-shape 40-something who has yet to take even one successful run on a pair of skis down the baby slope, which is a step down from the bunny slope favored by preschoolers everywhere.

Then people watch me knit and they’re all, “Wow. That looks hard.”

You do the math.

ANYWAY. Yeah. I’m really surprised at how fast I got from hem to shoulder on the back of this. Although it wasn’t really fast – it was a matter of having a lot more time than usual, thanks to strategic ignoring of household and parenting duties. Woooooooo, let’s hear it for shirking one’s responsibilities! BOO-YEAH!

But then, this is the easy part of the course. A three day weekend, not a lot going on in the garden right now, most of the household chores under control (more or less) (OK, OK, mostly less), the cat mad at me because I got her nails trimmed Saturday morning (which means she does not want to be on my lap right now interfering with my knitting ability…she just wants to sulk around shooting me dirty looks and acting like I’m a cat murderer whenever I walk into the room…OHMYGAH, IT’S THE NAIL CLIPPING MONSTER FROM THE SWAMP LAGOON! RUUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!), the Denizens miraculously interested in Other Things (I don’t expect that to last, but am enjoying a little break from the constant cycling of little people informing me that they are bored, boooooored, SO bored, BORED! BORED! BORED!, but of course they don’t want to do anything I might suggest as a remedy for their boooooooorrrrreeeeeeeed little selves)…I got some business taken care of this weekend!

But I’ll be entering the long, hard slog part tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m back to work. Back to the normal days where time is not my friend. Knitting in moving vehicles. Balancing what I need to get done for work with my knitting dreams.

Fatigue is already setting in on the right elbow. And my left pinkie, which I jammed so hard a couple weeks ago that for a split second I thought I broke it – I didn’t, but I surely did do a number on it. The swelling is mostly gone but it still smarts, and it doesn’t like holding the needles too much.

But, like any true athlete with devotion to their art (shut up), I soldier on through the pain, eyes on the prize and, uh, in it to win it and, erm, uh, well, yay, me!

…this is so crazy, I cannot believe the crazy things I get myself into sometimes…