The agony of defeat....

I'm afraid I've already taken a number of tumbles. Started out during the Opening Ceremonies and got through ten rows -- and knew that my arithmetic was a little off -- despite the fact that there are actually 17 days of the Olympics I still wasn't going to make my daily quota. The yarn was too thin and the pattern was too complicated. I needed something that was a lot of straight-ahead knitting -- more like downhill skiing or speed skating instead of skating the long program.

Not being into guilt, I told myself to just persevere with the stole and whatever was done by the end of the Olympics would be good enough. I resumed with row 11 on Saturday (day 2). I followed the pattern carefully but end up with one too few stitches at the end of the row. I gave up.

On Sunday, feeling back in the flow, I started to pick apart row 11 -- well, you know lace -- I dropped a yarnover somewhere and that was it! I was tumbling down the mountain. I frogged the damn thing.

Not to be discouraged, I pulled out a simple cabled headband and did a repeat -- I was back in the groove. I measured and it seemed to be done -- so I settled down the pull the provisional cast-on stitches out so I could execute a three-needle bind-off (difficulty = 5). The cast-on stitches (which were crocheted) would not, under any circumstances, unravel. I couldn't figure it out. I decided to start carefully cutting -- big mistake. It's like when you try to cut your own bangs -- I cut some off one side, I cut some off the other side. I tried carefully to get back to a full row of stitches so I could just bind off from there -- absolutely no luck. I chucked the mess in the trash and watched Cold Case.

Is my Olympic career over? Can I make the transition to another "sport"? Dum, dum, da, dum, dum, dum......