My eyes! My eyes!

My new favorite web site (and source for online friends), Ravelry, is holding the Ravelympics. To put it as simply as possible, you join a team(s), choose an item(s) to knit or crochet, enter that item(s) in the appropriate event(s), cast on during the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics (or sometime thereafter), knit or crochet like a fiend, then finish the item(s) before the end of the Closing Ceremonies. Whew. Just explaining it is tiring.

I decided to play and joined Team Motherhood Later than Sooner. I adore this group, which is made up of women who had children at 35 or older. We like to think of ourselves as “moms with more life experience than baby experience!” I entered the Scarf Stroke and chose a pattern called the Party Lace scarf. It is knit with Rowan Kidsilk Night, which is a lace weight mohair/silk blend shot through with a metallic thread. The scarf begins and ends with little Swarovski crystals knitted into the edge.

The pattern is very simple but knitting with this yarn is not! It's as though I went through the house collecting cobwebs (not that there are any in MY house) and knit with them. After only a few rows, my eyes start to burn and blur, and I risk dropping stitches. I have learned to knit in short, four row sessions and to run a lifeline after each set of four, so if I have to frog to fix a problem, I lose four rows at the most.

Whether or not I finish by Sunday is definitely in question, but that is okay...I will be done soon enough, and I will have a lovely little scarf to set aside to give to my hair stylist for Christmas. I adore the look of the scarf, but it will be a long time before I work with a yarn like that again. Besides, I need to get going on the scarves for the Special Olympics World Games!

A very worthy cause

I learned about a wonderful project last week - the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games Scarf Project. The goal is to give a scarf to each athlete participating in the winter games, which will be held in Boise, Idaho in February 2009, so they need at least 5,000 scarves. I heard about the project on Ravelry, the fabulous online knitting/crochet community to which I belong, and it is being enthusiastically discussed on many of the special interest boards.

The requirements are very basic: knit or crochet a scarf using two specific colors of a specific yarn. The yarn is an inexpensive acrylic brand and while I would not normally use that type of yarn, I understand why it is being specified: they want an economical and easy care scarf. Any pattern can be used, so I imagine this wonderful array of blue and white scarves in a multitude of configurations!

I was a volunteer at the 1999 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Chapel Hill, NC. It was an awesome experience that I treasure, so I am very excited about making another small contribution to this wonderful event.

One of my most cherished memories of those games was riding one of the buses around the UNC-CH campus after working my venue. The bus was filled with athletes and coaches, in addition to a few fellow volunteers. One of the coaches suddenly said something like “Athletes and coaches, there are volunteers on this bus and they make everything possible. Let’s show them our appreciation.” They started clapping and cheering, patting us on the back and hugging us…I still get verklempt thinking about it!

My goal is to contribute at least two scarves to this very worthy cause. So as soon as I finish the lacy scarf that I am making as part of Ravelympics, I will cast on a Special Olympics scarf.