Still catching my breath from Madrona – but gamely stepping
up to the Olympic knitting challenge!

According to my initial calculations, I would have to churn
out about 3 inches of sock a day (okay, Sarah, you can stop the hysterical
laughter) to complete my project — socks for my mini-cowboy boots – the Sleepy
Hollow pattern which is a lace leaf design. 
Subsequent fashion discussions with my daughters have lessened the
length of the socks and, therefore, the amount of knitting required per
day.   But I am not looking like a
front-runner medal-contender at this point.

This photo was taken early Monday evening.

Yeah, well, I was further along, but had to rip out the
first 4 rows of lace pattern (pulling 4 sock needles out of 74 stitches,
ripping back and then catching up all those little ribbing stitches at midnight  was not for the faint of heart!).   I felt like the skater who falls on the first
set of spins and then gets up and skates on. 

I made some changes on the chart to make it more compatible
with my brain — something we always encourage our knitting students to do and,
man, it is good advice, because once the chart made more sense to me I chugged
along at a respectable rate.  But the
problem with knitting while watching the Olympics is that I tend to actually watch the Olympics!  So, after each pair-skating routine, I had to
settle back in, find my place on the chart, double-check my place on the chart,
and start up the chugging once more. 

And I confess that I did a quickie project last night, too –
this lovely bulky yarn with puffy flowers attached that I bought at
Madrona!  My justification being that
Sarah and I had agreed that we would take Monday “off” after all the work we
had done preparing for Madrona and (all the other official Pelagia Fiber Arts
stuff we have been driving ourselves to get done in a timely fashion over the
winter weeks) and we could knit whatever
we wanted to knit!   So, I made a
stole, of sorts, out of the bulky flowery stuff last night. 

Shown over my pink q'mitl.  Pretty cool!

At present, I have about 3 inches of sock (total).  But I am warmed up now and hitting my stride!