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I stopped knitting a while ago when my hands and shoulders couldn’t take it anymore. It’s been part of my life since I was a little girl, second nature really. I miss it still, but have found other ways of creating and amusing myself. That is, until Stephanie’s latest brainwave. Sometime last week, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I thought of joining the Knitting Olympics, but then I realized I’d screw up my shoulders even more.
Steph: You could do a bookmark. Cast on 16 stitches, do one stitch a day.
Me: Hey! I could do that!
Silence
Steph: ONE stitch! Not two!
Me: How’d you know I was thinking that?
Steph: and not one row, either
Me: Shut up.

So, yes. I’ve joined the Knitting Olympics. And at some point before the flame is lit, I hope to figure out how to add the funky button to my sidebar.

In a comment here, rams talks about how this may be “gateway knitting” for me. And… well… have I mentioned my small – tiny, really – problem with resisting temptation? As in, I can resist everything but? And then there’s the way I quickly become… er… very interested in things (‘obsessive’ is such a negative word) and… um… very determined (‘compulsive’ sounds so judgemental) about the things I’m interested in.

I’ve already had fevered fantasies of knitting one stitch three times a day. Perhaps adding a flirty little cable. Or maybe a bright bit of intarsia in the middle. I could do that, right? It’d hardly count as knitting if it’s only done in bookmark size and chunky wool, right? Maybe I could even do more than one stitch at a time. Two stitches a couple of times a day? That might turn into a bootee for… well, there are two Tinks, so really, they need two bootees each. They still have really small feet, so if I just took it easy and… Hey! I could continue after the Olympics are over. A couple of stitches a couple of times a day could lead to a washcloth in hardly any time (two-three months, max) and if it’s in garter stitch, so much easier for me that I could finish it in less time and what about baby hats? That’s a small project, right?

OK, FINE! Rams is right. This is going to be hard.

I believe that the universe throws the lesson at you until you get it and once you do, keeps giving you more at higher and higher levels of difficulty, allowing you to master it. My current lesson seems to be about mental discipline. And now I’ve signed up for ignoring the siren call of wool and needles, every day, all day, for SIXTEEN DAYS! I’m clearly off my rocker.

It turns out that my Olympian feat will have almost nothing at all to do with knitting.