Getting There

It would be untrue on a massive scale to say I'm not glad to win my personal Knitting Olympics. It's just not what I expected. Not the winning part. I was pretty determined. The knitting part.


Let's go back to where we left off. When I was looking at 6 days to finish an afghan that had haunted me for 4 years. When I had decided I had had enough of regretting that I hadn't signed on for the first Olympics. When I decided that I wasn't going to make excuses and, even if I had serious doubts about the project, that I was going to commit.

Up to that point, I had been hedging my bets. Making alternate plans. Telling myself I didn't need to finish before the Olympic Torch went out. I know I was, because I didn't cut the yarn at the color changes. I was planning on giving up, ripping out, and salvaging the yarn. To prove my new-found determination to myself I used my scissors for something other than holding down the pattern.

That was before I got sick. In retrospect -- and more accurately -- that was before I realized I was sick. I just thought I was tired. Okay, tired and cranky. Fine, I was tired, cranky and achy and looking back the part about not being able to get warm was probably chills. I make this diagnosis because, when the possibly that all was not well in a not-normal sense finally flitted across my brain I dug out a thermometer and discovered I was had a temperature.

I found this hard to believe. I wasn't sick enough to run a fever. I didn't think I felt nearly awful enough. Except my knitting needles were way too heavy, and I don't think it was just because the pattern called for US 11/8mm. Except I slept through Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Except that night I let The Boys talk me into a DVD even though it was a school night. Except that over two days I knit a total of 8 rows, tops. Running in the Viral Dash lifted my Olympic challenge to a whole new level.

For the record, the difference between 101.2 and 99.7 is more than 1.5 degrees. 99.7 means you can knit more in two hours than you have knit the previous 3 days. 99.7 means you remember that the way to deal with that ache in your throwing arm (English-style knitter, here, remember?) is to stretch it out and rest it periodically. 99.7 meant that by Friday night, I had one 56 row repeat left to knit, instead of only one repeat done.

99.7 meant I was back in the running.