You, too, can join the Team Angstylvania knitting athletes.

Torn between a strong tradition of apathy and their ingrained bureaucracy, the Angstylvanian Parliament would like to announce that Angstylvanian knitting athletes may now choose to register with the government. Olympic medal winners will be entered into a drawing for a prize package of two free stickers and all the Lion Brand Wool-Ease we can possibly unload upon you. Follow the four steps below.

Step 1: Read more about the 2006 Knitting Olympics and register with the Yarn Harlot if you want to be included in her list.

Step 2: Register with the Angstylvanian government by emailing renee@theanticraft.com or posting a comment to the blog with the following information:

• Name
• Email address
• Blog/Website (optional)
• Knitting Olympics Project
• Fifty words or less (preferably in poetry form) on how your love for your homeland of Angstylvania brings you so much sorrow and yet so much pride

Step 3: Display Angstylvanian pride!

Download a button:

Download an iron-on graphic (pdf format):

10" W x 7.5" H for white tshirt (full page)
7.5" W x 5" H for white tshirt (half page)

10" W x 7.5" H for black tshirt (full page)
7.5" W x 5" H for black tshirt (half page)
(Avery Dark T-Shirt Transfers is our recommenced iron-on transfer paper for black tshirts.)

Step 4: Prove your worth by sending a link to a photo of your finished project to renee@theanticraft.com or post a comment to the blog. Medalists (finishers) will be entered into a drawing for the prize package. The drawing will be held whenever Renée can get around to it and the winner will be notified when she damn well feels like it.

Where's Angstylvania, you ask?

Let the travel experts at Lonely Planet answer that for us:

Angstylvania was founded in 1042 by sisters Agatka and Elizaveta Bezvkusnova. The girls were out searching for religious freedom, but luckily became bored with the idea and decided the best course of action was to take a nap. Being lazy girls, this was a very long nap, and by the time they woke up an entire city had grown up around them. This city, Morosovia, was the capital of the Angstylvanians, who made Agatka and Elizaveta their co-regents. For the first few days, the sisters toiled tirelessly, commissioning roads, sewers, and libraries to be built. But, as usual, they lost interest. Agatka turned inward, searching her soul for a purpose in life, which seemed to necessitate reams and reams of paper for documenting said search. Elizaveta decided to die from ennui, and locked herself in a tower, never to be heard from again.

The Angstilvanians weren't happy with their way of life, but they were satisfied with the rut the country was in. It was, if nothing else, predictable, and since their standard of living had improved slightly after the first flurry of activity from their monarchs, it would be too much trouble to have them replaced. Apathy now! was their rallying cry, or it would have been if they bothered to have one.

Travelers to Angstylvania should know the country has a primarily agricultural economy, relying on the cultivation of earwax, watercress, and sheep. It has been said that Angstylanians are avid knitters due to the high availability of wool, but this claim cannot be fully substantiated as no finished objects have ever been found, and unfinished woolen goods are so caked with earwax that it's difficult to say if they are knitted or not. The exact population of Angstylvania is not known either, since the government claims census-taking to be too exhausting, but there is a small, steady stream of immigrants as the occasional individual will wander in and not take the time to find his or her way back out. Most accounts place Angstylvania in Eastern Europe, though a strong faction believes it to be somewhere near Ohio.

"We'd have to care to finish."
- Svetlana Vyalostova, Team Angstylvania coach