Under Pressure

I decided to sign up for the Knitting Olympics, which, quite dorkie, I KNOW. But still. Short of fingernail painting becoming an Olympic sport, I really can't see my advance-maternal-age-assed self entering the real Olympics any time soon, or ever. So yah, the Knitting Olympics, my chance at a gold metal.

What this entails is picking a project that would be a challenge for you to complete in seventeen days. And then you know, COMPLETING IT. You start it once the Olympic flame is lit and have to finish before the flame is extinguished. Straight forward. Well, except for the whole picking a project that is challenging. I am by no means an expert knitter. I am, however, somewhat educated and have good reading comprehension skills (so sayeth the SAT's). So there are very few knitting things that I have come across that are too challenging once I read the pattern. Granted, I am lazy and so the whole READING THE PATTERN? That can the be the challenge (ergo why I hate knitting lace charts). All of this is my verbose way of rationalizing why I am picking a simple sweater as my Knitting Olympics event. I picked the Holla Hoodie, a stockinette sweater with a few cables here and there. A sweater that even Knitty.com labeled "tangy" which means so simple a blind, one-armed monkey could do it. But this sweater, despite its easy skill level, will be a challenge. Honestly.

If you are observant, you might notice that Holla is listed on my sidebar as one percent done. This is not because I am a cheater and jumped the gun. No, this highlights why I chose this as my Knitting Olympics project. Several months ago (pre-baby #2) I started this sweater. I cast on an insane amount of stitches, realized my gauge was fucked, and quit. I quit because I was too lazy and time-deprived to knit a proper gauge swatch and start again. Thus, what seems to be my biggest knitting challenge right now is time. It use to be I could knit at work. I could knit at home after work. I could pretty much knit whenever the mood struck. Now, I only knit for a few hours a week when I meet my lady friends at Starbucks. The rest of my free time is eaten up by dishes, laundry, and dishes. So I am committing that for seventeen days, I am going to use my free time to knit a sweater. I am also probably going to use some of my work time (uh Elmo, can you babysit?) to knit a sweater. Because whatever it takes, did I mention ELMO???, I am going to knit that sweater.

Now this all sounds great and I sound very GO SWEATER! But. But, more observation would note that there is another sweater, the Kangaroo Duo, sitting over there on my side bar. Minimal investigation shows that this sweater has been sitting in a pile, unworked on, since November 2007. Yes, that sweater has been on sleeve island for over two years. Apparently I have absolutely no follow-through when it comes to sweaters. So, in addition to the time challenge, there is also the finishing a sweater challenge. I am hoping that the pressure of signing up for something, of publicly putting it out there, that this is enough to make me Git R Done, and, at the end of the seventeen days I will have a sweater, and a gold metal.