I made it. Olympic gold medal! Looks like Gushue and the boys aren't the only Newfoundlanders to get the gold at the Olympics this year (did you see that great curling game, or what?). But I have to tell you... this almost didn't happen. I had a blunder that is about equivalent to falling down during an alpine racing event. On Friday night (pretty late, I might add) I was here:

This photo was taken after I took the sweater off onto waste yarn to try it on, and just before I started unravelling the whole body. Yes, that's right. I unravelled about a weeks progress (well, Dave unravelled, and I balled). I tried it on and it was WAY too big. I took feverishly detailed calculations to fix the mistake... blew my mind with math and then realized, while picking up the body stitches again, that I had just read the pattern wrong. haha. Pretty lame. Because the back is divided into two sections I cast on the back amount twice - once for each section. The result was way too large. So I picked up the correct amount and started fresh on Saturday morning.

The good news is that the rounds went much faster this time. Of course, to be true to myself, I was finishing this during the closing ceremonies - such a deadline pusher. I bound off the edges once, near the beginning of the show, and realized I'd like it too be just a little bit longer (I didn't make it the 18" that the pattern called for - that seemed way too long for me). So I took back the bound off edge, and knit until I started to get freaked out that that the flame was going out soon, and re-finished it. haha. I think it is just long enough in the body now.

Here is the first completed photo (on the left) and then the second, and final version (on the right).

I will post a photo of the modelled sweater tommorrow, when I can get some natural light (forgive the terrible flash photos above... not the best lighting situations) and when I don't look so strung out. I'm looking forward to the receiving my medal. This was truly challenging, especially in terms of finding time amidst other priorities, but I really feel like I can take on other larger, more challenging, projects now, so I guess that makes this a sucessful challenge.

Congratulations to all the participants of the Knitting Olympics!