Meet the Team

Consider carefully. Done right,
this will suck up 16 days of your life and be an epic work.
-Stepahnie Pearl-McPhee, Yarn Harlot

This all came about the way nature intended. We were discussing the Olympics (the one in Torino). We wanted to watch the fun events. My roommates have TiVo. And so, I casually mentioned The Knitting Olympics.

Meet the Team (action shot):Leah (left), Katja (right), and I (behind the camera) met during freshman orientation of our undergraduate days, which means that this is the 8th consecutive year we've been going to school together. We cannot stress enough how important the Trust that we have been able to build the years will be to our Olympic success. From biochemistry to surgery, board exams to a recent obsession with Gray's Anatomy, we've seen it all and it has made us the fierce and ready competitors we are today.

The Knitting Credentials:

Leah has been knitting since she was 8 years old, crocheted an afghan in sociology classes, and picked up knitting again seriously in college. She was sceptical at first, but once she saw how well-suited sock knitting was to long days of lectures on congenital immunodeficiencies, she quickly became the second knitter in our med school lectures. An almost Pediatrician, Leah is a firm believer that a good start (in life and knitting) is essential to future succcess. For bonus points, she wore - and talked about - handknit socks on all of her residency interviews.

Katja is a German national, which means that not only was she born knowing how to knit, but she knits in the German, or continental style. She asked me for a refresher last fall, and made a pair of socks with sockyarn on US size 1 needles within a week. Since then, she's made socks for all of her relatives (also German, and therefore born with a deep understanding and appreciation for handknit socks), and interpreted bobbles for her mom. She began her first non-sock project - a cabled baby sweater - on Sunday, and I expect she's probably done by now. A future Emergency Medicine physician, Katja works well under pressure.

I have been knitting . . ., um, just read the blog. I am going into Internal Medicine and in knitting, unlike my real life, no one dies. My Intensive Care Unit experience makes me qualified to perform all sorts of agressive interventions on knitting projects threatening to go south. The Knitting Olympics are all about heroic measures.

Leah and Katja are both declaring for the Lace Knitting Event and knitting Ene's Scarf as their first lace projects. I am declaring for the Cable and Sweater Events, and wondering if there is a category for "Just Plain Crazy." Training continues tomorrow with a yarn buying expedition to find the yarn and needles for the lace knitters. I am almost done the ribbing on the Am Kamin hat/swatch. Progress tomorrow.

The Knitting Olympics in Review:

Bloggers will want to skip this section, but for the friends and relatives following along who have been calling me (hi flitgirl!) to ask what the Knitting Olympics are all about, I refer you to this website. Seriously, follow the link. The idea is to pick a challenging project and then complete it in the 16 days between the lighting of the flame in Torino and the closing ceremonies. It is "organized" into national teams (USA, Canada, Wales, etc.), genre teams (i.e. USA Lace Knitting Team), and, um, "methodological" teams (Team Caffeine, Team Chocolate). You may join as many teams as you like, so there's plenty of potential for overlap. There are over 2130 competitors so far, and we are still in the queue waiting to be added to the list. See, I'm not the only crazy one!