I Am A Cyclist is the mantra in a commercial for a very high end workout bike, and I've seen that commercial way too many times as I've watched Le Tour de France for the past 3 weeks. For me the mantra is "I am a Cyclist and I am a Knitter", and yes, the two activities are for the most part mutually exclusive, but bike racing seems to be a happy medium.
Some sports watching really lends itself to knitting - bike racing and baseball come to mind, I've also been told that cricket is also good for knitting, but since I don't know what a crumpet is, I don't know anything about cricket (anyone else remember Rafael's line in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie?). My main bike race is of course the Tour de France, it's the one grand tour with consistent tv coverage and the French countryside is lovely. For the past four or so years I've been taking part in a TdF KnitALong and this year was no exception. Our Ravelry group has some great discussions on the riders and teams and for me to hear the European and Australian opinions is fascinating, we might not Agee on winners, but we all agree that knitting while watching skinny, muscular men in spandex ride bicycles around France is a fun thing. This year instead of trying to start and complete an epic project during the Tour I decided to complete a work in progress, my vacation knit the Vicissitude Tank and Cowel. The Tour finishes today (actually it has already finished,but I haven't watched my recording so in my books it's not over), and although I don't think I will finish my project this evening, it will be close.
Here is my Vicissitude Tank
This picture doesn't do it justice, it needs to be stretched to see the stitches, but it's a lovely lace that's knit in the round. The pattern is fairly easy, mostly SSK and K2Tog, until you come to the split for the armholes which are knit flat and then you are dealing with purl 2 together through the back loop and even worse, purl 3 together thru the back loop, but I survived. Purling thru the back loop is just a cruel thing to put in a pattern but I finally figured out that I needed to keep the previous row loose and I could handle it. I did have to frog back three pattern repeats after I found a dropped stitch from where I missed a stitch when purling three together, but once again I survived.
So that's my current project, what is everyone else working on?