Jon's Knit Blog

Olympic Orange

I promised you a photo of the Olympic Knitting going on over here chez Jon. And while it seems, on some level, anticlimactic to photograph a rectangle of orange stockinette (with some ribbing, granted), here it is:

The Knitting Olympics are an interesting endeavour. My challenge to myself is twofold: 1) to see if I can actually knit enough stockinette stitch in the alloted time to create a sweater and 2) to see if I can put said stockinette stitches in the proper places to have the sweater actually become a sweater rather than an amorphous blob of knits and purls.

So it struck me as odd when I came across, somewhere in blogland, a woman who finished her Olympic Knitting project less than 24 hours after the Olympics began. Said knitter was accused by some people of not knitting to the "spirit of the Olympics" and she defended herself by saying that she had challenged herself. I find that odd on some level - I mean, even the Harlot herself has expressed doubt as to whether she will be able to finish her Olympic Knitting. I guess have a hard time understanding the idea that someone one can finish in less than 24 hours is comparable to something that will be a challenge for me to finish in two weeks. I mean, you can see that there's a lot more sweater for me to make.

Anyhow, I don't really mean to harp on this woman too much; the project she did make was quite lovely, and if she felt challenged by it, well, fine.

What I do want to mention briefly is actually something very sad. I have to admit that I do not always check each blog on my blogroll every day, and the other day, I realized that I had not checked one particular blog in a long time. And it turned out that he had stopped his blog, created a new blog and, most sadly, died of cancer. I sat here and stared at that computer screen for a long time, and I just felt sad for someone who I've never met, but whose words I have read on a computer screen. I was really moved and very saddened; I hope you'll take a moment to look at those sites and just feel lucky to have everything you have in your life, from yarn to loved ones to favorite blogs. Because sometimes the true Olympic Challenge is simply getting up out of bed and living. I, for one, am thrilled to meet that challenge every day.