The Gold Is In Jeopardy

I don't think I'm going to medal in the Knitting Winter Olympics. I don't think I can get the blanket done by tomorrow night.

I have mixed feelings. Part of me says, just go for it - if I knit obsessively over the next two days, I could probably finish ... and that's part of the point of all of this, striving to do more, push yourself, find a new personal best, just like the Olympians.

But on the other hand, well, I do have a life. I have other things I both have to do, and want to do, this weekend. And if I do them, it's doubtful I'll finish the blanket in time.

I got behind because of the stupid day job this week. This was a quintessential week from hell, and I came home every night completely brain dead and exhausted. I was incredibly disappointed because I didn't get to watch either of the ladies figure skating competitions, the main thing I look forward to in Olympics. They only showed one or two skaters during 'prime time,' then saved the most likely medal contenders for late, after 11:00 - and both nights I was so incredibly exhausted I couldn't stay up to watch it.

That's also why I haven't gotten in as much knitting time as I'd hoped - too tired, and going to bed early.

However, finishing is not out of the realm of possibility. I'm close, very close. So I guess it'll come down to the wire - I'll keep working on it when I can this weekend, and see where I get by tomorrow night.

Sunday: Good Morning, GET TO WORK!

But first, Knitting Olympics Update.

Here's a picture of the progress (with skein of yarn for sizing).



Not too shabby for a week, considering it took me more than a month to get this far on the first one. I tried a new pattern on this one, and I'm not sure I'm liking it very well, but I'll have to wait till more of it's done, as I can't really judge yet (poor visualization skills).

As for this morning ... so we'd ordered some firewood, was supposed to be about half a cord. The guy was going to deliver it today, but he was supposed to call first. So we figured he'd call sometime in the early afternoon, and we'd go out and clear a spot for the wood then.

About 9:30 a.m. (barely woken up, still having coffee) we hear a knock at the door, and guess who's here? The guy, with a large dump truck load of firewood. It looked to us like at least a cord, quite possibly more.

So, barely awake, not even through our first pot of coffee, we're outside slinging a metric assload of firewood. We'd decided to put it in the garage till spring, because (a) we're not using the garage for my truck right now anyway, and (b) there's too much snow to get around to the side of the garage where we usually stack the firewood. Not expecting this much wood, we cleared out what we thought was a reasonably-sized space.

Ummm, no. It filled up half the garage. Here's one not-very-good picture (really doesn't do the size of the stacks of wood justice) ...



... and this is the stack that's behind the other one, that you can't see from the other side.



Well. I certainly can't complain (though my arms are, at the moment). Judging by the size of the stack of firewood we had last summer, and how long it lasted, I would reasonably estimate that this load of firewood really ought to last us at least a year, and very possibly two. I'm not kidding - unless we turn into fire bugs (or Rhys comes over). This is at least twice as much as we had (and I think more than twice as much, really), and that batch lasted us about 8 months, I think.

And all that for $160 (plus delivery). Oh, and the best part - it's mostly hickory, apple and cherry - completely seasoned, totally dry, exceptionally beautiful! I am totally happy with that expenditure of funds.

By the way, Rhys, I wish you would come over. We miss you! (and we have plenty of firewood! ... )

Knitting Olympics Progress; Johnny Weir Was Robbed

I didn't know much about Johnny Weir before this Olympics. I'd heard of him, I might have seen him skate in the last Olympics (though I didn't used to watch much men's figure skating), and I didn't have much of an opinion one way or another. If I'd been forced to, I'd have probably said his flamboyancy put me off a little.

This year I watched a lot more of the Olympics than in previous years, and I watched the men's short program the other night. And completely changed my opinion of Johnny Weir.

I was really impressed with his skating. It was thoughtful, elegant, and powerful - not what I'd expected from the little I'd seen of him before that. So I watched the long program Thursday night. And it is now my opinion that he was robbed.

No, I'm not going to say he should have had the gold or silver, maybe, over Lysacek and Plushenko - but I definitely think he should have had the bronze. In fact, his technical scores were higher than those of the guy who got the bronze. It was in that subjective 'component' score or whatever it's called, that he lost out.

A shame. There's something about his skating that, to me, seemed to add up to more than the sum of its parts. And then, as I'm a curious sort, I went and read up about him a bit online. I kind of like him - his outspokenness is a good trait, in my way of thinking, not something to be bashed about.

As for the other two, bah - I think that was a ripoff too. Totally backwards.

Oh well. Moving on to my own challenges, the baby blanket is coming along. I'd say I'm about half-way done, which isn't bad considering that it's only the beginning of the middle weekend, so I'm pretty much on track, and I have all day tomorrow to make up some time and pull ahead, hopefully giving myself a cushion to finish up by next weekend without going crazy during the weeknights.

Next week, two evenings are women's figure skating, which I always watch. I've found it is, in fact, hard to knit while watching skating because you don't want to look away even for a second. So I don't get as much done while watching skating as I might while watching other things.

But I think I'll make it.

I have a little bonus challenge for myself, though I don't know if I can pull it off. I stopped working on the first baby blanket, to complete the second one in its entirety during the Olympics. But something I'd like to go for, if possible, is finishing the second one completely, then going back and also finishing the first one, before the end of the Olympics.

But we'll see. It'll all depend on whether I can get the first one done early.

A wonderful clock tale

My dad had a clock, which he was given by his employer in 1978 for twenty-five years of service. It was a ... I don't know the technical term, but you had to wind it up, and it chimed every quarter hour. That kind of clock. Well, here - this is the clock.


This clock hung in my mom and dad's living room from the time I was about 12 years old, and for 29 years after that, and was a very deeply ingrained item in my life. I was so used to hearing those chimes every 15 minutes whenever I was at their house. The only thing I knew about it's care and feeding was that it had to be wound every so often, with a large key that was kept in that little compartment at the bottom.


When my dad passed away, the clock was neglected. When the clock stopped, I just never did wind it up. When we eventually cleaned out the house, I took the clock, and transported it as gently as I could, and stashed it away at my house. I'm not sure why I never put it up, but I didn't.

When we bought the new house, moving the clock was a big deal - it was one of the fragile items I would only allow to be transported by me, swathed in blankets, set gently in my truck like a passenger. Then it went into the living room, where it leaned up against the living room wall for a year. Again, I wanted to put it up, but never did figure out just the right place for it, and so kept procrastinating.

This week I decided it was time to put the clock up, and it was going in the Imaginarium. I made a place for it, and brought it upstairs. I assumed it would need wound, but I wasn't sure it would still work - despite trying to treat it gently for the last 3 years, I was concerned it might have suffered some damage and just not work anymore.

(In retrospect, I think that was why I'd procrastinated putting it up for so long ... I think that, even though I was afraid it might not work, I was more afraid of hanging it up and having the fact confirmed, as I was concerned I might feel pretty heartbroken about it.)

But, I brought it upstairs, and I hung it up, and attempted to wind it. It has three places it has to be wound, and I seemed to remember my dad telling me one was for the chimes, and the other two were for the hands, for keeping the time. One of them (the one for the chimes) wound up fine, but the other two wouldn't budge - they felt incredibly tight, as if they were already wound up. Except they couldn't have been, as it had stopped running in April of 2007 and had not, to my knowledge, ever been wound up since. (though, apparently I was wrong ...).

So the chimes would work if you moved the hands around manually, but the clock itself wasn't working, the hands wouldn't move on their own. I was bummed (though not quite as heartbroken as I had feared, because I determined immediately that I would get it fixed).

But first I decided I was going to take it down and take a look at it. Now, I know nothing about clocks, so it was probably a silly idea, but I figured as long as I was careful I couldn't hurt it any worse, and I just kind of wanted to see if maybe, against all odds, it would be something simple I could easily see once I took the face off.

I propped it up in a convenient work space, and tied the glass face cover up to keep it out of my way.


Then I removed the hands, and the clock face. Wow.


I was impressed. I was enthralled.


I was in steampunk heaven! I never considered myself a very 'mechanical' minded person, and I am definitely not usually a very patient person, especially when tinkering with something I don't understand that doesn't work. But I spent probably a good half hour just looking all around the inside of this thing, gently, experimentally moving little bits here or there ... I discovered which mechanism makes it chime the hour (I was delighted when I gently lifted a metal bar with a tiny screwdriver I was using, and some type of flywheel inside the clockworks box began to click and whir, and then I could watch the little hammers strike the metal rods down the right-hand side that make the chime!).

That rather wedge-shaped piece in the upper part of the picture, with teeth along it's upper/left side - that's what makes it chime the hours - when the mechanism is engaging at the third tooth, it chimes 3 times for 3:00 ... and so on and so forth. I discovered that if I gently move that piece to the left of it (which is what starts the hour-chiming sequence), then hold it there instead of letting it go back to engage against the hour-chime piece, it will chime as many times as I let it. It might be set to chime 3:00, but if I hold the piece, it will chime 5 times, or 10 ... it's as if ... I control time! (just kidding!)

Anyway, that was all incredibly fascinating (I've never been so interested, for so long, in something I totally didn't understand and which didn't work), but it didn't help me fix it, so finally I decided to put it back together, hang it back up, and see about finding a clock repair person.

Meanwhile, Greg had come up to see what all the chiming was about, and he was taking a look at it. He asked me about the pendulum.

Well, it's a funny thing - I would have sworn on anything that the pendulum never had moved - I even seemed to remember our family commenting on it, why would you have a pendulum and a little window to see it through, if it served no purpose, but (I seemed to recall) we all decided it must just be decorative. So I told Greg the pendulum did nothing.

But (like I had also done) he had to tweak with it, and while he was moving it back and forth, I was able to see, from the side, that in fact some gear-work was moving inside the clockwork box. It was doing something!

But we still couldn't wind it up, so I still assumed it was broke. I put it back together, and hung it back up.

Then, on a whim, I reached inside and started the pendulum moving.

And it kept moving. And it was ticking.

And I looked up, and the minute hand was moving, every so very, very slowly, a tick, a tock, a slight tremor, a miniscule jerk to a new position ... and it kept ticking, and the pendulum kept swinging. A minute. Five minutes. No sign of slowing down.

I moved the clock hands to 3:00, and it chimed the hour!

It works!!

I was astounded. I have no idea what happened there.

Okay, I have a couple of vague ideas.

Apparently the pendulum did work all those years, and for some strange reason I just didn't remember it.

And it's possible that someone did wind the clock, sometime in the past several years, but with it not being hung up, the pendulum couldn't swing, and so the clock never ran ... and so never ran down. Which would explain why two of the gears were so tight I couldn't turn them - they were already fully wound up - I'm lucky I didn't break something! (though I was very careful, and never tried to force it).

As for why the chime gear could take winding, maybe it just hadn't been wound up quite as far - because though I was able to turn it, it was very tight, and could only be wound maybe a quarter of a turn, no more.

So ... it appears that the clock is, in fact, working beautifully! (after I made a slight adjustment to the hands, as I got them back on a little crooked, and initially it was chiming the hour at 3 minutes after - but that's now fixed). It's been running for an hour, ticking away, pendulum swinging, chiming the quarter hours ... it just chimed 4:00, with it's 4 bells after the four quarter-hour chimes.

I couldn't be happier. It's a very warm fuzzy feeling to hear the old clock click, and whir, and chime the quarter hours again.

And I'm beyond obsessed with clockwork now. Must. Know. More!

Later Addendum, Sunday ...

I now know that I was delusional in thinking the pendulum didn't work in this clock, because (a) well, since that's what runs the clock, it had to have worked, but (2) a memory resurfaced just as I was falling asleep last night. We used to have a lot of company, and the clock's 15-minute chime schedule really bothered some people, making it hard for them to fall asleep. When that would happen, my mom used to stop the clock by simply stopping the pendulum during their visit, then reset and restart it when they left.

So - obviously it was working. I have no idea why I had such a strong memory that the pendulum didn't work. Oh well.

Game On!

I waited patiently ... so patiently ... through the opening ceremonies, for the lighting of the Olympic Flame, to cast on Baby Blanket The Second.


It's too bad I couldn't have gotten a better picture, but we'll live with this ... this is my preparatory cast-on loop, needle in hand, while they carried the Olympic flag into BC Center (or whatever it was called).

I officially started as they lit the flame ... although it was too funny, I mirrored the minor (and in no way marring) dysfunction of the flame ceremony by temporarily completely forgetting how to cast on!

I had this problem when I started Baby Blanket The First, since it had been so long since I had started a new project, but it came back to me very quickly. This time I just had a total brain fart, and it took me probably close to an entire minute to remember how! Okay, a minute doesn't sound long, unless you're a knitter and you picture twisting yarn in random ways about your hand for an entire 60 seconds while trying to remember the precise configuration to make a long-tail cast on possible.

But I got it, and cast on, and got several rows into the project before deciding to sideline it to write about the auspicious moment.

Seventeen days. Yup. It's gonna be a challenge, garter stitch baby blanket or not.

By the way, this is actually an excellent project for the olympics, because it's all knit stitch, all the time, and sometime in the last few years I finally developed the ability to work for a small stretch without looking at my knitting, as long as it's all knit stitch. It's not, like, minutes, but it's long enough to not miss the good stuff.

When I first heard that some people had such a skill, I thought they must be fiber savants, and that there was no way I could ever do that. But it is a learnable skill, with practice.

That's particularly handy for the olympics, where looking away for even a moment could cause you to miss a Big Moment (as opposed to a movie, where there's a far larger cushion of time you can ignore stuff). Now, instead of watching my knitting and only getting to glance at the TV from time to time, I can watch the events I want to watch, while only having to glance at my knitting from time to time.

And, I thought the opening ceremonies were fantastic!!! They (the commentators) kept making comparisons to Beijing, which apparently was pretty spectacular (I believe I watched part of them, but don't remember the details).

I don't think any "comparison" is necessary. This was a beautiful, creative, culturally interesting ceremony ... I really enjoyed it. The 'special effects' were astounding. It was great.

Okay (whip crack) ... back to knitting. Seventeen days? What was I thinking?

It's That Time Again

Yes, the 2010 Knitting Olympics have arrived.

I debated on not participating this year. The Yarn Harlot's introduction to the Knitting Olympics talks about the fact that the point is to challenge yourself, the way the athletes challenge themselves in their chosen sports - honoring the spirit of the Olympics by doing what we do, knitting. So of course you can do any project you want, and there are no "Knitting Olympic Police" who say "Nope, you're project's not challenging enough, you're out" or anything like that - but still, it's a kind of ideal I liked, to do something actually challenging instead of just some run-of-the-mill project.

For the 2006 Knitting Olympics, I knitted and felted a bag. That was a challenge for me because I was actually doing several new things - knitting a bag, using a new technique (slip stitch for color bands), and felting it.

But this year I didn't have any challenging projects in the works, wasn't prepared to order yarn to start a new project, and most importantly, had something more pressing I needed to do. I am knitting two log cabin baby blankets for Greg's siblings' new babies (one already born, one due soon). The first blanket is about 90% done, but it took me two months. I wanted to get the other one done as soon as possible, and didn't want to commit to a different project for 17 days without the blankets being done.

I didn't think a log cabin baby blanket was really challenging enough for the Knitting Olympics (yeah, again, no one judges this, but I was trying to honor the ideal), but in the end, I really wanted to participate, so I decided to go for it after all, and signed up this morning.

Actually, since it took me two months to complete the first blanket, completing a second one in 17 days will be a real challenge, just of the time-challenge sort, not of the technical sort. I figured I would practice improving my knitting speed (so it doesn't take me forever plus a weekend to get anything done), and I could hone my "finding sneaky ways to slip in knitting time" skills too.

Opening ceremonies are tonight, and I have to cast on when or after the flame is lit. The project should be completed before the flame goes out at the end of the Olympics. The other blanket isn't quite done - just needs two more patches, the border, and the ends sewn in - but I'm going to cast on for the new blanket tonight anyway, and then decide whether I want to try to finish the first one and get it sent off before going on with the second one; or save finishing the first one till the second one is done, and send them off together.

Oh, if only that was the most difficult decision I'd have to make today.

Yep. That's a Snowstorm.

I've left the Haiti post up for awhile, in part because I just really didn't have anything else to say for quite awhile after that.

But this major snowstorm seems worthy of a new blog post.

We were on the far northwest fringe of this system, and were only supposed to get 4" to 6" of snow.

Ha. I stepped out my front door this morning, and for starters, when I thought I was on the bottom step, I wasn't ... there was a whole 'nother step, then the ground. I plunged into snow up to my knees. No kidding.

There was no way I could subject Tyler to that, so I resorted to backing my truck up, to find a relatively clear spot for him to stand, and then carrying him out to it. The snow was higher than his back - he'd have been engulfed in it. This is like a snowy Tyler playpen - he wanted out, but every time he came up against the surrounding wall o' snow higher than his head, he just wouldn't go through it. Smart dog.



Lotta snow.




(That's the lawn goose, in case you couldn't tell).

That's at least 12" to 14" of snow. Yep, I'm declaring a snow day, and doing nothing all day.

Later update ...

We ended up having to shovel some snow, and I was able to get Tyler out.







He was not amused.