Ravellenic Games 2012!

This is the year of the London summer Olympics!! How exciting!  I honestly LOVE the Games and have watched them every since I can remember.  I think my favorite are gymnastics followed by swimming!  The online knitting and crochet community that I belong to, Ravelry, has been celebrating the Olympic Games with a knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving, etc. competition.  This competition is used as a means to challenge yourself in the craft of your choosing.  Prior to the beginning of the Games, you select the "events" that you will enter--possibly knitting an entire sweater during the games, or finishing a bunch of projects that you have yet to finish--something that you find challenging to your self.  Formerly this was known as the "Ravelympics," however the USOC recently informed Ravelry that the use of this word was copyright infringement and that it must be changed.  The USOC also said that: 

"We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work."

I personally was very upset by the statement that we were disrespecting the Olympic Games and the athletes by knitting and crocheting along with the Games.  I, as well as the multitude of Ravelers that commented in our community on this situation, are very respectful of all of the hard work that the athletes put into training for the games.  This is more a means of celebrating and enjoying the achievement of the athletes and most definitely NOT a means of disrespecting anyone.  You can read more about this here.  In the end the USOC apologized for what they said.  Ravelry also changed the name of the event to the "Ravellenic Games" which still encompasses the original meaning plus more.  When I discussed all of this with Matt he made a great comment about how the USOC holds the copyright to the word "Olympics" and all of the related sounding words.  He was quite curious if Hercules signed off on the agreement allowing the USOC to hold the copyright ;).  Gosh Matt, you're the best!

Anyway, I digressed a bit on this post.  This will be the first Ravellenic Games that I will participate in and I am a member of Team Designers Challenge (which is one of the groups that I'm a member of within Ravelry)! There are a whole bunch of different events, but I think the ones that I will enter have to do with frogging a few projects that I am no longer interested in (aka taking them apart), knitting a sweater that has cables in it, and dyeing some yarn that I've been meaning to dye.  I hope that I'll be able to accomplish all of this during the Games!

The sweater that I am planning to make is the Owls sweater by Kate Davies.  I fell in love with this sweater a few years ago when I first saw it and have been planning on making it for a while. This seems like the perfect time!  I already have the yarn for it too :).  I plan on using Brava Bulky in Solstice Heather from Knit Picks.

I also plan on frogging one or two projects.  I started knitting myself a cowl maybe a year and a half a go in an alpaca yarn, but I just did not like the way the colors were pooling.  This yarn was pricey and I think it would be suited for something better.

The other project I'm thinking about frogging is a baby blanket that I started back in 2008 or the beginning of 2009.  It took FOREVER to crochet, it feels sort of heavy, and I'm just not in love with it anymore.  I'm sure that I could use the yarn for something better.

And finally I want to try dyeing some more yarn again.  Last time I dyed yarn I used Kool Aid that I mixed into water and then put the yarn into this mixture.  However I've seen tutorials about how to sprinkle the dry Kool Aid onto the wet yarn and dye it like that.  This is what I'm hoping to try!  As part of my Ravellenic Games training I'll need to locate this online tutorial!  I have some worsted weight wool and some fingering weight wool as well.  I'm not sure which I'm going to dye, but I'm sort of leaning towards the fingering weight.

Oh one last thing!  In preparation for the games, I've made my new Ravatar to represent my team association and my participation in the challenge!  It might still be a work in progress, but at the moment I'm happy with it :).  (Oh, and that animal on the side is a chizzard, our group's mascot!).