Knitting Olympics!

So, I signed up for the Knitting Olympics on Stephanie's blog. I couldn't remember if I did them the last time around, and after a quick check, I saw that I did not.

On Friday I decided to cast on Miss Dashwood during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I didn't wait for the torch to be lit, just for the ceremonies to start, and I'm glad I did it that way. I cast on Miss Dashwood, which I've been try to knit for 2 1/2 years. The picot cast on totally toasted and befuddled my post-partum brain back then, and I've gotten a block about it, which is why a baby hat is challenging enough for the Knitting Olympics. My free time in the last few months has dwindled to about half an hour a day, which is an added challenge.

I totally enjoyed the opening ceremonies, and have pretty much decided that if I could move to Vancouver tomorrow, I would.  I tweeted quite a bit (username kissaroo), so I won't recap it again, but my favorite bits were the fiddling & dancing, and the aboriginal Canadians being such a big part of the ceremonies.  Can you imagine if the Atlanta games had invited the Cherokee to be a main part of the games and ceremonies?  I certainly can't.

The picot cast-on went totally smoothly this time, the only challenge being keeping count of my stitches.  I used my old trick of placing a stitch marker after every X stitches (25 in this case) so that I only had to count and re-count from the last stitch marker during the long cast-on process.  Picot cast-on uses a knitted cast-on, where you cast on 5 stitches, bind off two, so it's hard to keep track.  Once I was all cast on, I kept trucking from there.

Here it is, 4 days later, and I've gotten just past the ruffle row and I'm currently embroiled in the bobble row.  Hopefully I'll complete that tonight and put pictures up soon.  My first bobbles, except in swatches for fun, and I'm a little nervous.  I hope I can get them to POP.

Next up - food post.  Superbowl Southwest brisket to spicy brisket pizza!