The Olympics are Underway but where's TY?

I have a confession to make - I didn't get TY finished before casting on Friday night during the Opening Ceremonies for my Olympic Sweater or, for that matter my non-Olympic knitting sweater.

The problem lies with an old flossing injury to an otherwise healthy molar. (I'm not kidding - floss, but floss carefully people!) I developed a sudden and wickedly painful abscess under that tooth last Monday that had me on stomach churning and sleep robbing antibiotics and mind numbing pain killers just as I was to work the buttonhole band on TY and graft the underarms. It was also a jam packed week where the evenings I usually dedicate to knitting were instead filled with a birthday dinner here for 14 on Wednesday and a Business function Thursday night that had us out until the wee hours.  I could have forced myself to do the button hole band but it probably would have looked sloppy, or more likely, I would have made errors so I left it until the "fog" had cleared but by that time the Olympics were upon me.

I have now figured out and marked placement of the buttons and which ones I would use and having taken the last antibiotic capsule last night I hope to fit in executing that button band forth with.

Truth be told my stomach was such a mess during the opening ceremonies I only managed to cast on my Olympic Sweater and knit half of the first row before I set it aside for the night.

I did better during the days over the weekend and last night worked the arm hole decreases for the back so its well on its way.

The aspect of this knit that is providing me my "Olympic" challenge isn't the knitting but the thinking.

I wanted something that wouldn't be so manually challenging I couldn't watch the televised action. 'Still wanting some difficulty I turned to my true knitting challenge...thinking things through before I set my hands in motion. So I've got a pretty simple sweater that I'm generally altering and significantly adapting the sleeves from voluminous to essentially straight. These changes affect the sleeve shaping for all pieces. I'm also using an utterly different yarn than is called for as I sub Alpaca for Wool. this is adding a stretch, droop, grow factor for this long knit that I have to anticipate and incorporate as I go.

I am hoping the Olympic distraction allows me to avoid overthinking and instead allows me to use whatever meagre intuition I have to make decisions more or less on the fly and based on how things seem as I go. (I did swatches that I washed and dried and streched before I started to give me an idea of what to expect but that is about it.)

Finally, may I say the Opening Ceremonies were extremely evocative of the country of my birth and life with two notable exceptions.

• The celebration of our First Nations was more and better than I have ever seen at an important public ceremony. It struck me, as the assembled Chiefs in the Royal Box with the Governor General clapped along and welcomed the Athletes to the stadium with their own ceremonial gestures that they felt genuine ownership and partnership over the Country as we welcomed the world to our shores. I hope this marks the beginning of how we do things from now on!
• The demeanor of the PM and his wife by contrast seemed flat and cold. His forced smile with its roots in political ambition. Her face, evocative of a deer in the headlights. Neither seemed proud or moved. They seemed utterly detached. Theirs was the only appearance that failed to make me feel as though - Yes! This all represents me and my country!

And the most moving aspect of the televised coverage for me...shots of our armed forces watching from Afghanistan...so far from home...trying to make things better...eyes glistening during our National Anthem - true Canadians!

Finally - here are a couple of links...

Knitting on Impulse, living in Whistler is posting daily peeks into the action in the village there - you might want to follow along

Tina in Germany posted her thoughts about the Opening Ceremonies and about her Olympic days that I also enjoyed reading because it gives the perspective of someone from so far away and yet, like so much of the world very engaged in the Olympics.

Thanks for dropping by!