knitting and gymnastics

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ll know that my daughter, Rainbow Girl, loves gymnastics and has a goal to one day represent Australia in gymnastics. To that end, she does a lot of training, and loves every minute of it. As her mother, I want to support her in reaching for her dreams, as strange as it is for her to have such a fiercely held goal (at age 8), and as strange as it is for two parents who are not particularly sporty (or in the case of my husband, not sporty at all!).

Over this last week, the Australian National Gymnastics Championships have been on here in Sydney. Some time back we told her coach that she would not be attending training on Friday night, as she we were all going to watch the Australian senior international gymnasts competing against Japan, who had sent a team to the championships. As it turned out (and as we suspected it might) training was cancelled for the night so that the rest of the squad and the coach could also attend. As it was one of the Olympic trials, Australia’s top gymnasts were going to be on show, putting in their best performances in the hope of Olympic selection!

We had also won some free tickets to another general admission session (not a premium session as the Friday night one was) so Rainbow Girl and I went earlier in the afternoon and watched some of the other top level elite gymnastics.

I took my knitting with me, so that my fingers would have something to do while I watched. The afternoon session was not particularly well attended, so the choice of seats was very good. We settled ourselves in the second row from the front of the balcony, next to some stairs.

At one point, my knitting ball got away from me and rolled down the stairs. I had visions of it rolling off the edge of the balcony, disappearing down to the competition floor below. Thankfully it came to a stop just about two stairs away from the edge! I would have been so embarrassed!

We had a wonderful afternoon and evening. I have never been to a gymnastics meet before, and it was certainly different to watching it on TV or on the internet. You could really see the power of the gymnasts, and my goodness, those leotards sparkled under the lights! I also enjoyed the fact that you could see the personalities of the girls when they were not competing. Some were very nervous, some looked really disappointed with their performances, and some were incredibly thrilled to be there, doing what they love doing!

I made good progress on my jumper (sweater/pullover) during the afternoon session, bringing it to a point where too much concentration was going to be required to continue at a gymnastics meet, so I put it away. During the evening session, I knitted the tension swatch for The Reader’s shrug a couple of times, finally arriving at the right tension.

After a quiet weekend at home, all of it unwell, and some of it with a fever, I have nearly completed my jumper, and hopefully will before the day’s activities really get underway. That way I can wear it today!