Dead woman knitting

Not long ago, I posted about the upcoming knitting competition, Hat Attack.  Just to refresh your memory, the concept is that everyone who signs up has a target to knit a hat for, and an assassin who is knitting a hat for you, and everyone is using the same pattern, which is released on the first day of the war. So A knits for B, B knits for C, C knits for D, D knits for E, and so on and so on, in one huge circle.  Death occurs when you receive a hat from your assassin, (not when they finish it, when you actually receive it, this is important) and if you are not done with your hat, you then mail the Work in Progress along with your target info to your assassin so they can finish off the hat and assassinate your target for you.  (Because, of course, you are dead now.)

I signed up feeling very enthused and decided in advance not to engage in any of the "smack talk" that was so popular in the Ravelry group.  I planned on a silent, but deadly strategy, and figured that my current unemployed status, flexible schedule and living alone would work in my favor. The day before the war started, I planned to increase the amount of studying I usually do in one day, to get a little ahead, and then for the next two days to use studying just to occupy me when I needed to take a break from knitting because my hands were cramping! Then on day three, the hat would go out  in the mail - mission accomplished.

But as of last night, my strategy has changed drastically.  Last night the Assassin and Target lists were released.  (So we have a couple days to scope each other out, seeing who our assassins and targets are, and apparently engage in more smack talk.)  I discovered that my assassin lives in Vermont, which is fine.  My target? Lives in freakin' New Zealand!  Are we kidding here?  Remember how I said you have to actually receive the hat to be considered dead?  This means that even if I knit like the wind and get the hat in the mail, it has to travel all the way to New Zealand to get to my target to officially "kill" them.  While my assassin only has to get the hat mailed from Vermont to me in California.  Are you getting the picture now? I don't have even a snowball's chance in hell.  Now, I never intended to win this thing, and I expected to go down in the first round or two - I just thought I'd at least have a decent shot at taking someone else out.  But to not even have a sporting chance really sucked all the fun out of it for me.

I get that this is supposed to be a war, not a nice friendly swap, or a knitalong.  So I've no intention of posting my dissatisfaction on the Rav group, and possibly being labeled as whiner or some other such nonsense.  But I can easily think of a couple ways this could have been done differently, that would have prevented me, and probably others, from being so ridiculously handicapped.  Limiting it to just participants in the United States would have been one way.  And since no one would really like that idea, another would be to form two separate Assassin/Target circles, one for the U.S. and one for other countries, for at least the first few rounds, and then merge them later.  And the last possible remedy would be to simply assign a few players both an assassin in another country AND  a target in another country - keeping a level playing field.

All those are just my thoughts and not really of much importance now, as the pattern will be released around 9:30am Eastern Time tomorrow, and the battle will be on.  As I mentioned before, I signed up as an enthusiastic participant.  And so as a good player, I selected a skein of a good, non-gender specific dark green Lamb's Pride, swatched it and got gauge with size 8 needles, which I have in a 16" circ and dpns for the decreases.  I was ready to go.  Now on the evening before the battle commences, I'm revising my plans a bit.  And suddenly, I'm feelin' kinda...sorta...Fuschia.