it's an honor just to compete...

... but even more satisfying to stand on the podium! Hooray, and here's my medal to prove I successfully frogged my first project.

When you think about it, it's kind of perverse that the first knitting finish line I've crossed is in the competition that involves destroying something.

gold medalist.

My yarn and I have crossed the finish line! Hard to believe these were once a sad, unfinished tank top, languishing in the bottom of my knitting bag.

Now they are reclaimed. Three balls of soft, cottony goodness. They're full of promise. Full of potential. Ready to take their rightful place on my knitting needles ... as soon as I can figure out what the heck I want to make with them.

repentance and reformation

My former tank has taken the next steps toward becoming a useful member of society again. While watching the Olympics, I spent two hours (!!!) untangling the ramen noodles and turning them into matzo balls.

Then it was time to move on to the swift. Interesting fact: in the 18th and 19th centuries, yarn swifts were often made of whale ivory. Mine is simple but renewable bamboo.

Not only is wrapping yarn around a swift a vast improvement over making a beloved family member sit with their hands held stiffly in front of them for hours, but it's also a wonderful way to help the kids pass a snowy day.

After the yarn was wrapped around the swift, I tied it off and moved it into a cool, soothing bath, then hung it from the shower head to stretch and dry. I wound up placing some jars in the bottoms of the loops to weight them down, but I didn't get pictures of that.

My yarn is now dry, and ready to be rewound into center-pull balls. Its rehabilitation is almost complete. Our marathon event is almost over.

the trouble with tribbles

My poor, unfinished tank is no longer. Here it sits, in its new, temporarily unusable, form:

Some people refer to this as "ramen noodles." My husband saw it and said, "What's with the tribble?" (Any original Star Trek fans out there?) As for me, all I can say is I've finally found something that's curlier and harder to manage than my hair.

Believe it or not, this is 2-1/2 balls of yarn. If I'd been smart, I would have rolled it into nice, neat balls as I unraveled it, but it was too much fun to watch it fall into this crazy pile of cotton worms. Of course, now I have to untangle it all so I can stretch out all those kinks and create functional yarn again. I guess it's time to pay the piper. (My mother used to say that a lot. What's it supposed to mean, exactly?)

ribbit, ribbit

I overcame one of my fears and entered the 2010 Ravelympics on Ravelry. The point of the games is to take on a yarn-work challenge and complete it from start to finish within the time contraints of the Winter Olympics.

My event is the Aerial Unwind. The competition consists of frogging a UFO (for those of you who don't speak "knit", that means ripping back an unfinished object) to reclaim the yarn. This has always been a challenge for me as a knitter. When I've given up on a project in the past, I've either donated it to my mother-in-law's craft group or (gasp!) just thrown it away. Not this time. This time I'm a contender.

This was my first post on the Ravelry thread:

"You poor, sweet tank. Such a lovely neckline, such beautiful, yet simple lacework. Enough to make a project interesting but not too complicated. And yet, somehow, we never even made it to the armhole level before I cheated on you. I apologize for stealing your yarn for projects that promised more immediate gratification. Without those extra skeins, there’s just no way to complete what we started. And so I say, with just a hint of a tear in my eye, I need to stop denying it’s over. I need to get rid of all traces of something that started out with such promise. Only then can I free up those size 6 circulars and get on with my life."