Olympic emotions

Saturday night I watched Phelps win his eighth gold medal. It was memorable. It was history.

But I really enjoyed watching the women’s marathon. No, I will never race at their level (the winner went about a 5:30 or so pace, that’s almost twice as fast as I ever hope to go), but in a lot of ways, I’ve been where they’ve been.

One of the runners was interviewed before hand and said that the body is not meant to go that far, so you have to train it to trick it into doing that. Looking at the sprinters though, I have to believe the body is not supposed to move 30mph either and that requires a bit of trickery as well.

Watching the marathon winner finish was inspiring, but I think even more was watching those who weren’t going to get a medal continue pushing and struggling till the finish. With something like that, it’s the finishing, and for a few, even just the starting, that is important. Almost brought a tear to my eye.

I’ve enjoyed seeing just how international the US team is alone. There are athletes and coaches who grew up in other countries and probably could still be competing for that country. But they have adopted the United States and want to represent the United States. Without these immigrants, the US team wouldn’t be doing nearly as well. Thank goodness for diversity. I love how much of it is staying in the family for so many of them as well.

Another thing I really like seeing is how many of the athletes have added gold somewhere on them. The gold headband. The gold nail polish. The gold shoes. The power of positive thought, and more power to them.

The quilting. I’ve put the spool quilt on hold till I finish up the baby quilt. I got the quilt top finished and basted Saturday afternoon. Saturday night I got quite a bit of quilting done on it. But Sunday my free motion quilting foot broke. I’ve actually sewn enough to break a foot. That’s a bit of a piece of pride for me.

So I brought the feed dogs back up and did the straight quilting for the border and then put the binding on. Monday I got most of the binding stitched to the back. I finished it today. That’s my least favorite part of quilting. If it’s going to look nice it has to be done by hand. And since I don’t do it but very rarely, it hurts my fingers. I don’t need callouses for quilting, but for binding I do, and I just don’t do it enough. The last few inches just really hurt.

But the binding is done. And I bought a new free motion foot yesterday, so it’s back to quilting now. Depending on how distracting the Olympics are tonight, I might finish it up completely tonight.

Sunday Brett looked at what I had finished and did the ooooo and aaaah I asked for, and even threw in a free ooooh. Then he told me the baby was going to be finished before the quilt was. I agreed that was a possibility. So yesterday I mailed off a box of receiving blankets for my nephew. I sent it priority, so it should get there tomorrow, which should be before he gets here. At least from talking to my sister today that box will get there before he does.42D

Update: I have finished all the free motion quilting on the baby quilt while watching the Olympics tonight. Who thought that green thread on green fabric was a good idea? I could barely see my stitches in a few places. Now I just need to straight stitch 16 stars and it’s done. I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon. I need to get up early to get a free t-shirt tomorrow.