Sweater Project

Citius, Alitius Fortius
Latin for “Sweet Mother of Mohair, I cannot feel my hands”.

The Knitting Olympics have concluded. As the lights dimmed and the music played, there were 4,071 knitters standing solemnly in their virtual stadium holding untold yards of yarn. Some were holding finished objects. Some were still holding mostly skeins. Many needed a shower. But in each of their minds, the same thought lingered like an indelible truth.

“Why the fuck did I sign up for this again?”

Okay, maybe I’m the only one who was thinking that at 3:00 on Sunday morning as I watched the Extended Special Edition of The Lord of the Rings to try and keep myself awake in an attempt to finish the pair of kilt hose. Yarn Gnomes had started to dance on my needles, taunting me with my lack of progress. I did several rows “just resting” my eyes. There was a scary equipment malfunction when one of the lovely rosewood needles splintered at the tip and started turning my yarn into puffy wisps. But I kept at it.

I will not be one of those who sports the gold medal on his blog. I didn’t finish by the time the counter hit zero. But I kept working on it and at 11:11 last night, I wove in the last tail of yarn and put a pair of slightly saggy hose on.

Here’s a shot from my mobile of the efforts on Saturday.

I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who experienced a wee bit of wrist pain during this process. Heavy-duty supports help.

(So do chips and beer.)

There are drawbacks to knitting until the wee hours of the morning. Like waking up the next day and realizing that you’ve dropped a stitch way too far back to pick it up again. If this was anything other than a sock, there might have been enough slack in the intervening rows to do it. But I had to settle for taking a scrap of yarn and sewing it in to catch this bad boy. Seriously, I almost had a heart attack when I found this.

And at the end, here we are. I can now proudly proclaim that I’m the knitter who brings da hose.

Thanks, Stephanie, for putting out the call.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 10:32 am and is filed under Personal, Socks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.