Knitting and the Olympics (or Two of My Favorite Things)

I first discovered the Olympic related events on Ravelry back in 2010.  I had no idea there was a whole competition (friendly) in which all these knitters chose projects and worked on them while watching the Olympics.  I was very excited.  Back in those days it was called the RavOlympics and I entered the WIP category.  I had started my first pair of socks in 2006 after a friend bought me a two at a time sock book.  Turns out I’m not a two at a time circular needle sock knitting kind of girl.  It made me want to tear my hair out so they sat and sat.  This was the perfect motivation to finish them.  It took me all the way through the OT in the US/Canada gold medal hockey game but I got them done.  And, I do love them!

 

When the 2012 summer games rolled around I was signed and up and ready to go.  And then the USOC caused all sorts of trouble for us knitters by issuing the famous cease and desist letter.  Apparently RavOlympics was tarnishing the Olympic brand….  We knitters don’t quit and the event was renamed the Ravellenic Games. My excitement was doubled when one of the knitters from my LYS invited us to join her Olympic knitting group.  She has judges and everything and it’s super fun!  I made this beautiful shawl with some random alpaca and I love it!

I even won a silver medal!  (It hangs proudly in my yarn room)

 

So, here we are in 2014 and who knew how much controversy there would be surrounding both the real Olympics and the beloved Ravellenic Games.  I had joined the group and picked out my project.  For my birthday last year my Mom bought me this awesome self patterning stars and stripes yarn from Artistic Yarn by Abi and I knew it was the perfect project to make a pair of USA socks!    And then one afternoon I’m reading Twitter only to find out there is something going on with Ravellenic Games group.  I quickly popped over to Ravelry only to find the group gone from my list of groups.  I quickly found the “new” group and joined it.  While it was hard to tell exactly what happened it appears that the tensions associated with the Games being held in Russia had spilled over.  I applaud the former moderators of the group for all their hard work in the past and their attempts to deal with the issues this year.  I am thankful that new moderators were found to continue the games.  I appreciate their focus was solely on knitting and not the greater issues at hand.  We all know there are greater issues involved but I do not think protesting through a knitting event is going to help resolve anything.  And, I love all the rainbow projects I’ve seen at the Finish Lines!!!

Now, as to my project – the USA socks.  I started late into the Opening Ceremonies due to an unavoidable schedule conflict.  And I’ve been knitting and knitting to finish them and finally finished last night!!  However, it was not without injury.  I had to play through the pain and persevere.  There are more medals at stake in my local Olympic knitting group!!  I had been experiencing some hip pain recently and it turns out I have a hip pointer caused by too much knitting (or at least that’s my story…).  It’s actually caused by sitting cross legged which is how I knit and with the all the recent knitting it had flared up.  I applied some heat and carried on.  So, here’s the finished project!!!

Go USA!!  We’ve got a couple of big days ahead and I’m happy to be cheering while sporting these socks!!