Not goal-less

Just in case you were thinking that choosing to be a spectator for the knitting olympics meant that I didn't have olympic-related knitting goals, I am here to show you what could possibly be the most slowly-progressing knitting project of my blogging life: Fiver's Leo.
Yes, 'Leo' has been sitting over there in the 'currently knitting' sidebar for quite some time now. There are reasons for that, but thankfully the reason is not that I've totally given it up. As I mentioned previously, the yarn I chose required some rewriting of the pattern because of the drastically different gauge I was getting. I knitted one sleeve up to the cap shaping, only to discover that I had miscalculated, and the sleeve was much too large. It will be frogged, but hasn't been just yet. When I decide to cut loose on the frogging I'll be sure to photographically document that in painful detail for you.
Instead, I set that half sleeve aside and worked on other things... for several months.
Now I'm back with a goal, a deadline, and a silly one at that. Fiver's birthday is March 11th. Can I finish his jumper in time?!?! To test how quickly I could work this project up, I set a little time trial for myself: knit the revised sleeve in a week. I whipped up a little Excel spreadsheet to generate new stitch counts and increases and decreases

and away I went. In the end, I crossed the finish line in 9 days. Considering that I moved house during those 9 days, I figured I was pretty much on track.
The body of the jumper calls for 16.5 inches length to the arm shaping. Hmmmm, 16.5 inches...16 days of Olympics... sounds like a perfect little personal olympic challenge. I decided ultimately not to get mixed up in the organised events because I was not going to cast on during the opening ceremony, nor was I going to complete anything by the closing ceremony. So this is just between me, the Addi's, and you. Don't tell Fiver! He knows I'm working on it but doesn't know about the goal. If I do eventually get close to achieving the goal, I'll have to work out how to finish knitting and sewing up in secrecy, but that's a bridge I'll cross on March 10th.
So, in fact, I did cast on during the opening ceremony. And I achieved my first inch, worked on 2.5mms. When switching to the 3mms, just as the athletes' oath was being taken, I realised that I initially (1 inch ago) twisted the stitches when joining up to work in the round. (Thud...sound of knitting needles + weight of world hitting the floor when knitting dropped in total horror). So I re-cast-on on Day 1 of the olympics. As of Day 3 of the Olympics, I was back on track: 4 inches completed.

By my reckoning, however, we are on Day 5 of the Olympics, and I should have 6 inches, but alas, I am about 20 rows (and 2 inches) short. Fingers crossed I will make up some lenth over the weekend. This is all beginning to look a lot to me like the high jump in extreme slow motion.