A Little Yarn On The Side

Random update time: *  Because of the bullies at the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Ravelympics have been changed to the Ravellenics.  I think I like the new name.  The behavior of USOC has tainted the Olympics forever for me, so I'm pleased that the games will now have nothing to do with them at all.  There are discussions about changing the dates in the future or having the yearly, so maybe it's a good move after all.  I will not be bothering to update any of the verbiage on the blog.  Even if USOC is so petty as to start stalking blogs, the games WERE called the Ravelympics until USOC decided they owned even partial BITS of the word "Olympics," so I'll just add the following disclaimer: Any mention of the word "Ravelympics" occurred before the jerks at the USOC decided to persecute anyone even using a fraction of the word "Olympics," so even in your wildest pettiness, I used the term before you decided to insult 2 million knitters. That s...

Bob:  We're here at the formerly-known-as-Ravelympics training camp, where the knitting world was stunned yesterday by an official Cease and Desist letter from the United States Olympic Committee, which asserted the term "Ravelympics" and knitting events such as scarf hockey "denigrates" the game's athletes.  Knitters worldwide surprisingly responded with something strongly resembling outrage. Ron:  They did indeed, Bob.  Rumor has it that the email inbox of the U.S. Olympic Committee was filled by evening.  I believe officials were slightly shocked by the fury of 2-million crafters wielding sharp, pointy objects whose passion had just been insulted.  I'm sure they believed that the grandmotherly-types who were clearly exploiting the Olympic fervor for their own nefarious means (fun) would assume "denigrate" was meant in its very nicest sense.  Bob:  In further developments today, the U.S. Olympic Committee has issued a statement :  ...

So, remember all the fun we knitters have with Ravelympics ?  Ravelry--a free social networking site for knitters--has been contacted by the Office of General Counsel for the United States Olympic committee.  Details on Ravelry here .  Among other pretty obnoxious things, the letter says: "We believe using the name 'Ravelympics' for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work." Well I, for one, think that such a sentence is CLEARLY disrespectful to anyone who has a hobby that he or she has tried to master.  Obviously, we do denigrate the true nature of the games as this person sees them--ours have been about fun and teamwork, and NOT about raking in the greatest number of sponsorships. Count this as one VERY angry knitter wh...