Olympic Knitting breaks

We are two hours ahead of Beijing, so I was able to watch the entire 4 hours of the opening ceremony live last night, courtesy of Eurosport TV -- in Russian.

So today I didn't feel that I needed to watch the whole thing over again in English, but I am glad I took a few minutes to listen to some English commentary. I found out the little boy that came into the "Bird's Nest" stadium with the Chinese flag bearer was a survivor of the recent earthquake in China -- somehow I missed that in translation.

And Eurosport TV continues to have coverage, with the air rifle event shown first in the morning.

But I can't knit all day -- those mitten dpns are murder on my shoulder.
But I have progressed a tiny bit. I can't sit at the lap top all day either, so I bounce between the two, and find it is a good time to catch up with favorite blogs.

Franklin in the Panopticon mentions the Knitting Out Loud version of The History of Hand Knitting. I think I'll have to eventually end up getting the CDs. It is taking me forever to get through the book as I only pick it up for 5-10 minutes at a time -- it is very dense. A simple discussion of "art versus craft" on page 25 of the book really popped out though -- if you have the book, take a look.

Otherwise, there is a whole chapter on Shetland Lace shawls to study. The Russian square Orenburg shawls are put together exactly the same way. Considering, according to the book, that the Shetland island were part of Norway a LONG time ago, perhaps the Shetland shawl format eventually made its way to Russia?