15:18:36

Are you wondering what that means? It means that I am at a point in the Citron Shawl that it takes me 15:18:36 minutes/seconds/milliseconds? to knit across a row. However I have hope that I will make the deadline of the torch going out and it will be bound off, blocked, and packaged by that time, especially if the rumor I heard is true and that they are not intending to ever extinguish the torch at Olympic Park. In that case, I will be triumphant in the goal set before me. If not, well, it won't be the first time I said to myself, 'you dumb a#$ what the hell were you thinking?' Definitely won't be the last!

However, here is the progress thus far. I believe I am in the 300's as far as current stitch count, that's for the ruching and will inevitably be cut in half in the next couple rows, then the staggered decreases, which for whatever reason is when people decide to talk to me. I'm thinking of having a necklace made that can be flipped around to say 'Speak' and the other side will say 'counting'. The trouble will come in trying to remember to flip it, or answering more question about what the heck my necklace means and blah blah blah.........I still like the idea of it so Nicola, keep that in mind. Nicola makes jewelry, knitting notions, dog tags etc. They are all wonderful, I've ordered a few things from her and never been disappointed. So again, here's the shawl, I took this outside yesterday because the weather here has been amazing. Really, my cherry trees that normally don't bloom till March are all budded out and a few pink flowers are showing. It was 63 degrees as I drove home today so I'm pretty sure if this holds through the weekend my back yard is going to be awash in pink flowers.

This year for Christmas the dogs bought me the page a day calendar 'Never not knitting' by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, today's quote was this....

"In her book Folk Mittens Marcia Lewandowski reports that in 18th century Finland, knitting became such a phenomenon that the town of Nadendad actually went so far as to forbid public knitting, claiming it was shameful and shouldn't be done in public." Well I figure I'd be jailed for sure in 18th Century Finland......my friends however also commented on the quote going so far as to imply not only would I be in jail, I'd be on death row. :) Oh well, maybe I could knit a red carpet to walk down. I'm pretty sure that death row in a knitting prison is room full of moths shredding fresh roving, hand dye's, wool blends and the such and my head exploding trying to save it all. I imagine it would be like the time I brought home a box of tennis balls for Gabby, you know the one who loves L-O-V-E-S her balls, and dumped them all over the floor. Pretty sure if I hadn't picked them all up my poor girl would have stroked. Well I'm off to work on my Knitting Olympic project that is so focus driven that I can't even watch the Olympics while I'm doing it and as I take another drink from my delicious glass of Heff I will send out a toast to the Canadians for even making a rumor of a never ending torch possible and it will for the next 8 days be my dream come true!