Can a person knit to death?

I realized today that I have signed up for two knitting contests that start this week. Hahahahahaha. One is Sock Madness that I've been going on about for ages. The other is yarnmonkey's knitoff. Both are elimination tournaments. Both of which I'll probably get knocked out of in the first round.

I've also signed up for another month of Korean class, even though it may kill me. We covered one hundred pages in a month!!! I thought I was off the hook because it looked like there wouldn't be enough students to open the class (about half of my class is going to be overseas for the month of March). Today, the last day of class, I found out the minimum had been reached. At least that's like two knitting hours a day on the subway. Of course, if I didn't have class, I would have the two hours of class plus the two hours of homework time to knit...

At least my Korean is improving. And I'm learning useful phrases, like, "What would you like to fix on your face?" since the Korean verb for getting plastic surgery is "fixing". Of course, it's pretty disheartening that my Korean had devolved to the point where I can see improvement in only a month.

I found out that I will be knitting against Miss Violet herself in Sock Madness. I'm such an uber-dork, I know.

As if all that weren't enough, I'm joining a podcast, Seoul Survivors, this weekend. Hopefully, since it's an expat/ teacher podcast and not a knitting one, I won't be hit by the knitting podcaster's curse. Has anyone else noticed the regularity with which knitting podcasters have been struck with serious illness? First was Marie Irshad the knitting podmother, then someone whose name I've forgotten (from Texas, maybe, I don't know, it was one I only listened to a few times), then Miss Violet, and now the venerable Brenda Dayne.

As a completely unrelated aside, since I seem to be rambling more pointlessly than usual, the new Magknits is up with three sock patterns.

Since this is an otherwise photofree post, I'll put in my random sighting of the week, even though I saw it a few weeks ago. This is the art installation in front of some random business in Seoul. All the Dwarves are there, just some are hiding or around the corner.