They're Not Laughing Now!

It has been a point of amusement, awe, learning, etc for years around my workplace that I knit. As has been reported previously, one boss is still very proud of learning the word "skein" - and uses it whenever there's an opportunity! Another brought me a skein of mohair from South Africa when he came back from his vacation there! My teams have eagerly followed the design process as I knit and submitted the Cherry Tree Hill jacket. They look on in amusement on the occasions that I bring knitting to a meeting or conference call. Of course, they all dutifully ask whenever I wear a "new" sweater (Hey, this is FL, I don't get to wear them that often, so if I'm on a new team once a year, my old sweaters are always new!) if I made it - and the answer is typically yes as I have only 2 or 3 store bought sweaters in my closet.

So today, we had our team holiday potluck, and the Global team that we report up to was invited to join us. After we ate, they told us that they had been going around to each of the 5 regions (we were last) and doing a fun activity with everyone - making paper plate snowmen! They provided us with paper plates, colored construction paper, google eyes, pompoms, pipe cleaners, scissors, glue, crayons and pencils, and yarn for the construction of these snowmen.

Wait, did she say YARN?? Yep, she did. The idea was to punch a hole in the top plate and a hole in the bottom, pull yarn through them and tie the two plates together. Of course my mind started wandering as soon as I saw the yarn. The leader that was introducing the project knows me a bit, and said "Now Jody, you can't knit with the yarn, you only have a total of 35 min to complete these projects". Yeah, who's she kidding?? So, I glued on my eyes, cut out hands, feet, and a hat from the construction paper and glued those together. Started surveying the items at hand... knitting needles? Nope - didn't bring my purse to the meeting - needles were a mile away at my resort. Pipe cleaners? Hhmmm...probably on the flimsy side and might not provide a large enough needle size. Chop Sticks? Perhaps one of the secretaries might have some leftover from ordering chinese... Ah, but then there's the possibility that someone might cry foul. You see, of the 9 snowmen created in OUR meeting, we were to choose the 2 best to move on to the Global office where all 10 of the best would be judged by an impartial panel (people in their building who don't know us and wouldn't be biased)! The winner of that competition would secure a prize for their entire team! Looking around further, I found two lovely sharp pencils nearby! So, quickly cast on a 5 stitch garter scarf and spent the next 20 minutes or so zipping out a 10-14" garter scarf for Mr. Snowman! There was much amusement and conversation - and a lot of disbelief!

I did finish the scarf, though it was a tad shorter than I might have liked - threw some tassels on the ends, and tied it around his neck! The finished product? Have a look:

My team decided unanimously that he would definitely be one of the two to move on to the next phase of competition. So, he was transported along with Mr. T the snowman to the finals!

The good news about being the very last team to participate, is that they did the judging this afternoon, so we had to wait only a couple of hours to hear who won. And the final verdict? Three way tie with my Snowman with Hand-knit scarf being one of the three!! So, everyone's now wondering and conjecturing what the "prize" for winning will be. One thought was an ice cream social for our team - a likely possibility. Another thought might be a pair of movie tickets for each person... We won't find out until after the new year, but we're all happy that my little bit of knitting paid off!

As a side note, the judges did not know who submitted what, and none of them knew me well enough to know that I knit, but one of the other managers that works with the Global team walked by and looked over the finalists. She IMMEDIATELY said "I know who did THAT one!" - then proceeded to call me and tell me about it :) And it's true, no one on the overall team would have a hard time identifying that as mine.