Winter for many of us lucky stiffs in the upper reaches of North America is going on and on and on! But fortune has smiled on us with the excitement of the Olympic games in Vancouver which for thousands and thousands of knitters has been a lightening rod of activity which we are all dancing around, barely feeling the cold…
I have to confess that my viewing has been really emotional this year — don’t really know why — but watching several events and seeing the yes, thrill of victory, and, oh, the agony of defeat has actually made me weep, with full heart and whistling and applause (ask my upstairs neighbor).
What’s been making me all achy breaky? All of the contenders who’ve come back from before, who’ve been trying for YEARS to get a leg up on the podium.
Seeing Bode Miller, who in Turin ’06 was all over the moguls and late night stops (now there’s an interesting Sidebar: Olympic Party Culture), all mature and focused and bronzed was FAB! Seeing Shen and Zhao (and Pang and Tong) set my heart a-thumpin’ especially when they almost took a dive. Watching figure skating is almost impossible for me — it is too exciting at points. I know that the effort you see on the ice represents years and years of sacrifice and it is almost too much to bear. The story of Yao Bin, their coach, who was inspired and motivated by his own huge public failure, stood on the sidelines, his eyes just brimming with the kind of success that revealed the bittersweet steps that took place to that point.
Sharing Alexandre Bilodeau’s gold medal was sharing it with his family, his beloved brother with MS who’s been his co-pilot forever, and with Canada! I love you guys!
With all of this sentimentality, I had to wonder what I was doing the last time around. Funny thing, something called tag CLOUDS were a little popular right then — where your site is crawled and the resulting word densities end up in a graphic. This was from my site during the Winter Olympics of 2006:
But what was more fun was to visit some pix we made 
& some posts we wrote from that time — here’s some pix (click for post):
But boy, oh boy, once we mopped our eyes yet once again, are we getting some knitting done (I was especially fast during the Snow Boarding — jump high! go wild! :)
In addition to my Top Secret Olympic design quest (waving to all knitters out there!), there was a flurry of rowage on this cardigan. Something about the ability to just go full-blast through the Stockinette Body is just perfect for competitive knitting.
And there’s the promise of Springtime in there: the yarn is a cotton/acrylic and is knitting up into a nice crispy fabric that should make a cool Shorty Jacket quite quick now…
Proud Canadian here Bonne Marie, who was fortunate enough to snag tickets to the Opening Ceremonies, which was just awesome! Going to Figure Skating Ice Dance Final next week. Vancouver is really exciting during these games, there is a link to some pics on my blog if you’re interested.
Really looking forward to see what design you come up with during these Olympics!
YAY Brenda!!
I saw you on Twitter and was just going to go have look :)
I am better at watching the figure skating, but in the past it was sometimes just too much. Made me so nervous I had to turn away. Yes, all those years of training and sacrifice coming down to just one moment–so much more stressful than anything I will ever do!
I think my heart stopped watching Pang and Tong — I thought at any minute, there would be a fall or something to mar their beautiful performance, but it kept getting better and better…
I really feel for those whose Olympic experience comes down to just a few seconds–ski jumpers, moguls. Can you imagine all of that training culminating in a performance that lasts less than a minute? I think the American who medaled in freestyle moguls in Torino put it best, I just can’t remember the exact words. However, I have heard a few commentators express that the accomplishment of just being there to compete is perhaps more important than any medal count. That’s what I love about the Olympics. Did you see at the bottom of the men’s downhill the camaraderie amongst the medalists and the disbelief that the Swiss, Didier Cuche, didn’t actually beat them all?
Can’t wait to see your Olympic project….give us some clues.