Knitting Olympics

My Knitting Olympics strategy unfolded like this. I am such a flutterby when it comes to projects, that I hated to try and determine a specific project the I would feel like knitting a few months later. After all if I really loved the project, wouldn't I want to knit it right now? So, I picked the shawl relay because I figured that I could accomplish it in the allotted time, and could reasonably guarantee that I would be willing to knit a large rectangle with some sort of pattern. I also signed up for WIP Wrestling because I knew the likelihood was that I would need a little something else to distract me, so I thought if I made it part of my schedule that would cut down on the guilt.
And then I realized that the Knitting Olympics would start a day before a knitting retreat my knit group was participating in, which meant I was already planning to make a shawl - the Woodland Shawl. Sort of serendipitous. (It also alleviated my half-hearted thought that I should knit something Chinese, or in some way referential.)
So, then there was yarn. We had originally talked about using something like Schaefer Heather yarn, but then I started to panic. What made me think doing a stole on sock weight yarn was reasonable. Even though this was smaller than the Parthenope, that took longer. The Lili-uo shawl took longer. Was I setting myself up for failure? I started wondering what larger weight yarns I might have on hand. And then, in San Francisco I found the gorgeous Ming yarn. (See? Ming! That's Chinese! And it has silk which China is known for.)
And I had the Prismatic Scarf which was turning out to be an excellent all-my-other-knitting- makes-me-think kind of project. (Also a silk blend, since I was using Manos silk blend, so woot!)
So, I was all set. I cast on and knit four rows during the opening ceremonies of the Woodland Shawl, before returning to the scarf.
I worked on the shawl much of the weekend and was making great progress. In fact I was starting to think it might be finished really soon. And hey, I might even have time to finish up a second WIP or something, since the scarf was going well too.

And then, Wednesday night, after the yarn traveled to knit night, tragedy struck. No more shawl. I - just - oh, it was terrible.
I continued working on the scarf and finished that up Friday.

And faced the inevitable, and recast on for the Woodland Shawl. This time, I used Brooks Farm Willow (a wool/bamboo blend,no silk, but hey, China is known for bamboo too!). And I used 10.5's. (I had done Knitty math to determine repeats and needle size and 10.5 was working well, but I was unable to find any other 10.5's, so made do with a 10. It still works, and this yarn has a higher wool content.)

And I finished. So, phew!