8/12/12, 3:59:59pm PDT - I’m pretty sure the picture of McKayla Maroney and I says it all.

Actually, it was Michael Phelps I had more in common with for this event - like him, I didn’t come in having done as much preparation as I really should have. Since there was no specific designer event for this Ravellenic Games, I’d changed my plans; originally, I wanted to do the designing and the knitting during the Ravellenics, but when the events were announced I decided since I could only compete with the knitting, I’d get the pattern written before the Ravellenics and be ready to go once the torch was lit.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen - I got the yarn wound and the swatch knit (on a cross country flight; from now on, my family is not allowed to schedule weddings or other major life changes during the Olympics, especially if they live on the other side of the country!), but ended up putting this one aside to tackle some other Ravellenics projects. I completed the Swatching Coxswain event with Panathenaic Swatching, which I was quite happy with, as well as a couple personal projects.

So, at 12:30pm PDT on Aug 10, just over 48 hours before the Ravellenic Games torch was to be extinguished, I got ready for a last push on Laurels for Apollo. I’d started crunching the numbers in my grading spreadsheet - doing only the size I’d be knitting for my prototype for now to save time - so I had to finish them up, do a rough draft of the pattern, and cast on. The cast on alone took 3 tries using 11 different balls of yarn…but after that, the sailing was smooth.

But it was slow…a bit too slow to finish. By the time the torch was extinguished, I had the upper back finished and had just started the left upper front. Still, I am happy with what I have done. The grading spreadsheet is built, so I’ve got my proportions and just need to plug in the numbers. The pattern is almost completely written. And I’ve figured out several tweaks to make the pattern even better. Although this will now need to time share with other patterns I’m working on, I expect it will be done in the next few weeks.

After all, the torch may have been extinguished…but I still have about 12 hours of Olympics recorded on the DVR I haven’t watched yet…