Winter Olympics!

Yesterday was a snow day (as is today) and we really did get snow out of it! We got about 8 inches here in fact. Caleb was thrilled to get a 5 day weekend (Monday is President's Day), but Finn really took advantage of the weather. He bounced around, ate snow, shoved his beak into the snow, ate some more, wagged a LOT and ate some more snow. I think he's trying to eat all the snow out of the backyard!

It's a perfect start to the Winter Olympics tonight, although I've heard Vancouver is looking for more snow up there. I've said it before and I'll say it again - our family loves the Olympics. I don't really watch sports, but if it's the Olympics I'll watch whatever they're showing. Major sports like skating and bob sledding, or obscure sports that no one's ever heard of - I'm there. As a knitter, I'll be participating in the Ravelympics*. I thought and thought about what I'd do for the Ravelympics, picked a cardigan, picked another cardigan, went back to the first cardigan, thought about designing a pattern for a small shawlette , and then decided that I'd do a Work In Progress. Last June I started knitting the Moderne Log Cabin blanket for Mickael. I was making it to match our media room which we call Frank - it was to be Mickael's Franket. (We can't really take credit for naming the room Frank. When Rick and Mindy bought their current house a couple of years ago, it had a media room. Mindy didn't want a room called a "media room" so Rick named it Frank. We recognize pure genius when we see it and asked if they minded if we named our own media room Frank. It's just a much better name.) The Franket was supposed to be part of Mickael's Christmas gift. Caleb helped me pick colors and for a couple of weeks I was off and running. Then it kind of ground to a halt. It's big enough that it's not really portable and I could only work on it when Mickael wasn't around.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that the Olympics would be perfect to finish up the Franket. It's easy to knit while watching TV and it will definitely be a challenge to get finished on time, but if I can finish it, then it will be done and Mickael can have it. I asked Caleb what he thought of my idea and he agreed that it was perfect, so I pulled it out, showed it to Mickael - he loves it - and tonight, when the Opening Ceremonies begin, I will start to finish Mickael's Franket.

*Just in case you aren't familiar with the concept of Ravelympics, the idea is to knit/crochet/weave/spin/design a project from the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics (6 PM PST tonight) to midnight PST, Feb 28 (after the Closing Ceremonies). The project should be a challenge because the athletes have trained their whole lives to get to the Olympics where they will challenge themselves to the best of their abilities and as knitters, we are supposed to challenge ourselves in honor of the athletes. Or something along those lines.

Just a note, over the next 16 days of blogging you will be seeing a lot of the Franket. Hang in there and maybe Finn and Ramius will pop in periodically to break up the monotony of a garter stitch blanket.