Saturday, February 20, 2010

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.

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