Olympians and Winners

During the time of the Olympics I finished crocheting nine chemo hats that were donated, along with many more from members of my Crochet Club to our local hospital. Now today marks the ending for the 2006 Olympics of which my family and I enjoyed watching a good amount of it -- topped off with many, many crochet sightings, and a chance meeting of an actual Olympian! 

It was fantastic to watch the various Olympians in their events, but what was really cool is what Apolo Ohno said before he raced and won is Gold Metal metal last night.  He said he does the sport not because of the possibility of winning a metal, but because of his love, his passion for his sport.  I can certainly identify with that here.  I crochet not because of the possibility of winning ribbons, but for my love, for my passion of my chosen art form.  Well said, Apolo!  (and the race was exciting to watch!)

And getting to meeting that mysterious Olympian ... for those that have been long-time readers here, you may recall that this time last year my family and I went to Lake Placid.  We had a blast going on dog sled horse sled rides, to watching an ice show where the memory of the US 1980 Hockey team's coach was honored, to seeing a castle sculpted out of ice, to visiting a small yarn shop ... ah, memories. And souvenirs!

On Friday night my son opted to wear one of his souvenirs, a gold Olympic toy metal, to a Japanese restaurant we went to. There they sat us with another couple and soon my son noticed that the man had on an Olympic emblem shirt. They got to talking about the Olympics and turned out we were sitting with Andrew Seras, who competed in the 1988 US Olympics, and his lovely wife.

Today he coaches wrestling.  And he had some good advice too.  He said, "You got to believe you can win no matter how big your opponent is."  Isn't this true when we're learning a new technique, a new stitch, or trying a new fiber for the first time? I think so. Without the thought of "I can do this" I thinkwe're destined to fail at some time or another.  If you say you "can't" then you won't.   When we do fail in our various attempts at crochet it's called "frogging:" the art of rip, rip, ripping one's work out.  That's not necessarily a bad thing -- especially if you can learn from it.  This is why it's important to believe you CAN do it.  It may take a few tries, but eventually you "can win."

So that's my little nugget I'd like you to walk away with today; to believe in yourself, in your crochet abilities, in your passion for crochet. The rest will eventually fall into place.

So go ahead, venture out and try something new.  You never know, you just might like it, right Margaret?  {{big grins}}  Or even possibly winning a Birthday Guest Blogging Contest, right Elaine, Amy, Michele, Robbin, Sandy, Tina Marie, Karen, and Ellen?  Think about your blog entries and how many people will benefit from your fantastic entries that are filled with your love, your passion, for crochet!  {{bigger grins}}  Yes, that's right the winner was selected today and it was Michele's name that was randomly selected as the Winner.  I will be notifying Michele shortly that she is the winner of the $20 Gift Certificate to JoAnns.  Congratulations Michele, and thank you to all those who entered!  :)  (BTW: use shopping code FEBPER620 to get 20% off your entire order ... including sale prices! code good until 2/28/06)

(Snafu Note:  For those that receive alerts for my journal entries please note that the links to the individual bloggers got garbled & caused text to be omitted.  I have corrected the problem.  My apologies for any confusion. ~Dee.)