Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 - Days 13-17 / Let's Be Frozen - finished!

Hello again!

Long post alert!

So here we are at the end of the Winter Olympics. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the sporting action, even though I have no real interest in any of them. But somehow the Olympics is different and I've been drawn in to snowboarding, skiing, skating and sliding events for a couple of weeks.

On the stitching front, here was my starting point for the final five days, with just the snowflake left:

Day 13 - 16th February

Speed skating and skiing were once again on the menu today. Gotta love the giant slalom and the 40-50mph speed these guys create. That's quite insane when you think they're weaving around on snow at ridiculous angles. No wonder crashes look spectacular!

Best moment - the women's ski cross semi-finals and final. Like the snowboarding equivalent, this was just an adrenaline rush from beginning to end with positions regularly changing and the danger of collision over every bump and at every turn. You usualy don't know who the winner will be until they actually cross the finish line. Loved it!

Day 14 - 17th February

My main viewing today was the evening summary programme and a few selected catch-up sections, so figure skating, skiing cross and slalom were my must watch events. Kudos to skier Mikaela Schiffrin who has had an absolutely c**p games but held her head high and admitted things just weren't in her favour - no self pity, just positivity to move on to another day.

Best moment - Kaori Sakamoto winning the bronze medal in the women's figure skating. In my layman's opinion, the gold and silver medals were won by the skaters ramping up their points by cramming in as many difficult jumps and other technical elements as they could and joining them together with a 'bit of skating'. In contrast, Sakamoto may not have had such difficult technical elements but she seamlessly joined them with the skating elements, and she actually interpreted the music rather than just skating to it. Her overall performance was more fluid, and her jumps glided through the air rather than being almost static. She was simply sublime to watch.

Day 15 - 18th February

Very little else watched than the round-up show at the end of the day but they still squeezed in pairs figure skating, bobsleigh, women's ski half pipe and, of course, lots and lots of curling because the Brits were still in it!!

Best moment - Sui Weijing and Han Chong winning the pairs figure skating. Not only did they do this in front of their home crowd, but they did it by only 0.63points! Out of all of the top competitors, I found their skating the most pleasing to watch.

Day 16 - 19th February

So much action on the penultimate day, including bobsleigh, curling, and mass starts in both skiing and speed skating.

Best moment - the speed skating mass start event. This has been described as 'Nascar on ice' and was certainly fun to watch! So many skaters skating within inches of each other at 60kph, and after 6000m of racing the medals were decided by fractions of a second. Brilliant, but also quite scary!

Day 17 - 20th February

And so to the final day of action which included more cross country skiing and the terrifying men's ice hockey final. I'm sure the amount of padding gets bigger every year!

Best moment - the women's curling final. The British women fully deserved their win, but it is the reaction of the Japanese 'losers' which will stay with me - they were obviously disappointed, but they smiled, hugged their opponents, offered heartfelt congratulations and genuinely seemed ecstatic with having won a silver medal. Compare this to when the British men lost their final the previous day - it was embarrassing to watch how they acted like bad losers, only fist-bumping their opponents and then scowling in disappointment. Obviously it hurts losing a final, but even in their post-match interview they were saying how it will take time to come to terms with the fact they 'only' had a silver, "We'll be proud, but right now it sucks."

And then there was the closing ceremony of course, always a sad part of the Olympics. Considering covid and the lack of spectators, Beijing has put on a fabulous games. It's hard to imagine how much different it might have been with full capacity crowds, but the fact there were at least some is positive.

OUSTANDING MOMENT FROM THE WHOLE OLYMPICS

So many outstanding moments to choose from, but the winner is easy!

All athletes train hard, most athletes want to win, few athletes (I assume) have time for fellow competitors, so my stand out moment goes to Iivo Niskanen from Finland who, after winning the 15km cross-country skiing in 38 minutes, waited at the finish line for a further 20 minutes watching everyone else cross the line before hugging the final, and 94th, finisher, Columbia's Carlos Quintana. Niskanen said at his press conference "All athletes must respect each other, everyone has done lots of work to be here." Genuinely humble athletes are rare.

And here's my stitching which I have been working on a every day during the 17 days of action. It stitched up a bit quicker each day than I thought it would, so was easily finished on schedule:

Let's Be Frozen by Ursula Michael

Stitched on 16ct Cloud Winter Sky over-dyed aida

Stitch count 112 high by 127 wide

Started - 28th November 2020

Finished - 20th February 2022

Total stitching time - 24 hours 40 minutes

I made a couple of changes, those being that the whole piece is stitched in Etoile, and that the medium blue (found on the base and around the outsides of the snow globe and snowflake) was replaced with white. The white looks a little grey, but then so does snow when the sky is completely overcast. And because the white doesn't show up much I like how the large snowflake, from a distance, looks as if it is floating.

This is what it would have looked like had I followed the chart. The snowflake is the most obvious difference:

Hmmm, maybe the original does look better... well, too late now!!!

This is the first of Ursula Michael's four seasonal snow globes I started for Naughty November 2020. No idea when I'll get around to the other three.

And that's it for the Winter Olympics... sort of!

Coming up in March, the Beijing Winter Paralympics 2022 and more blogging and stitching 'fun' with, hopefully, 10 finishes during the 10 days.

The Winter Paralympics overlaps with Mischievous March with a new start over each of the four weekends. I'll be doing a linky-widget thingy if anybody fancies joining me and Tiff for Mischievous March.

March is definitely going to be a busy busy busy month!

Take care,

Rachel x