Closing Ceremonies





All things must come to an end. Some events have grand closing ceremonies with music and fireworks. There is cheering in the stands as thousands watch in fasination. The cameras flash and there are smiling faces everywhere.



Other endings happen on cold mornings in February in a quiet kitchens. There are no marching bands. There are no flags waving. There is only the realization that what was once looked forward to with great anticipation has ended.

Farewell to "Whistler"

Olympic Knitting

The Challenge - To cast on a new project during the opening ceremonies and finish knitting before the end of the Olympics and the closing ceremonies.
My project was a pair of gloves. I cast on at the appropriate time. I had limited knitting time during the first weekend but I was well on my way to Olympic Knitting Gold.

Tuesday. Disaster. Tragedy. I found a mistake. I thought that I could live with it but like the super-G racer who missed a gate or the figure skater who broke a shoelace, I knew that I was out of the competition.



It was time to change events. I cast on a new project.

This stole was going so smoothly, that I knew I would be finished in time. I blinked. I lost my focus.

I cast on another project.

I can get them done. I will succeed.

I should not have spent three hours last night casting on yet another new project.

Today I am back on track.

Can someone please tell my family that we will have groceries in the house again....after next Sunday.

I am not Olympic Athlete....just in case you thought I might become one.

Olympic Athletes, in addition to having skills and talents to achieve great heights, also have the motivation to succeed at all costs. They will ignore pain and injury to focus on the final goal. They have the knowledge that whatever they give up in training, will ultimately result in a prize that makes all their hardships worthwhile.

I, on the other hand, focus on the short term goal. I am easily distracted and the next challenge will grab all of my attention as I casually toss aside the current project. A minor setback will cause me to fail or at least change direction and focus all of my efforts in a totally new direction.

"Whistler" is my evidence. Initially, I thought this would be easily knit before the start of the Vancouver games. I would cast on on January1 and have six weeks to knit the sweater. No problem. I had, after all, knit the Turin sweater in two weeks.

My pattern arrived on January 6.

I started. I ripped. I started again on January8. I still had lots of time.


I started other projects. I was sure that I could knit a cowl and still have time to finish.

I knit another cowl....and the fingerless gloves.

I ran off to Mexico for a week. A colourwork sweater is not a good airplane knitting project.

The socks were a Christmas present. It was important to finish those!

I finally had to admit it. The love for Whistler was gone. I didn't like the way the stitches were lying. I thought that part of the problem was caused by the superwash yarn that I was knitting with. To prove my theory, I had to start another project.

This hat matches the sweater that Dale of Norway designed for the Vancouver Olympics. It was necessary to finish this before the start of the games.

Whistler waits.

I'm back from vacation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video should be worth a million.

I'll be back with those pictures soon.