Family Not Conducive to Olympic Success

Gnnnggg!

So I was doing great. Totally great. Right on target, everything going swimmingly.

As of late Thursday night, I had two finished sweater pieces:





So I was thinking to myself, "Gosh, if I really crank this out, I might be able to get the sleeves done and blocking before we go down to Chicago to visit my family!"

Which should have been my first clue.

Our two-day trip wound up getting extended into a three-day trip, complete with changing "home bases" between the first night and the second. I had gotten just an absurdly limited amount of sleep Thursday night, and then Friday night packing just did not go well for a variety of reasons, including marital miscommunication and plain ol' dumbassery on both my and Caz's parts. Collapsed to sleep Friday, overslept Saturday morning, final packing and getting things out to the car got side-tracked when Caz had an ill-timed OCD moment and decided to clean the living snot out of the kitchen, and so instead of leaving by 1 p.m. latest, we didn't pull out of the parking lot until 2:15. Which, all things considered, was pretty good, but still.

Then the kids didn't go to sleep on the way down even though they were by-God supposed to. Well, until the last half hour. THEN they decided to snooze out. So... yeah.

Anyway, lots of craziness later, and I finally cast on for the Green Prepster sleeves Sunday afternoon. Worked on them here and there along the way, but most of the times we were in the car I kept falling asleep, so exhausted by the crazy that is my family that I'd turned temporarily into a narcoleptic.

So as of this afternoon, this is all I had done:

This will not do.

I want to give myself two days for seaming, because heaven knows I've got no flippin' idea what I'm doing with all this, having only seamed like two hats in my entire knitting "career". Which means that I need to have these things blocking by Friday afternoon. Judging by how quickly the swatch dried (the swatch!! OMG! The answer to my What Do I Do If I Run Out Of Yarn prayers! I totally forgot until just this moment, I shit you not), I should have dry pieces by Saturday morning if I wash and set them up to block by Friday afternoon.

So I've got a lot of knitting to do by then. The two sleeves are roughly the same amount of knitting as the back, which took me four days to complete. I've got 2.5 days left to get this bad boy done. Eek.

Suddenly all those people who didn't choose endurance challenge-type events are looking mighty smart. Mighty smart indeed.

In somewhat less frantic news, I got to hang out with Meg Saturday night. Her partner is sock knitting, the Fiddlin' Fool, was unable to join us, but we managed to have fun all the same. She plied my frazzled self with Strongbow cider (mmmmmmmm!) and then we had fun with her ball winder, where I wound off several hanks of yarn - some which came hanked and some which I'd hanked myself after frogging various objects in order to soak out the kinks.


See how pretty?

The purple and periwinkle are Cascade 220 (one skein of the purple, three skeins of the periwinkle), and the two on the right are Sockotta in some gem/jewel-ish colorway (bottom), and striped Regia 6-ply (top) which will become another pair of Jaywalkers. Eventually. Actually I might cast those on Friday after I finish the sleeves (pleeeeaaaase let me finish the sleeves by Friday afternoon, O Marvelous Knit Goddesses!), just to give myself a break. This sweater is kinda startin' to kill me.

Had a lovely time with Meg chatting and comparing knitting things - I showed off my Jaywalkers, she showed off all her preparatory materials for Crossed In Translation - and walked the three blocks to a nice Greek restaurant near her. Normally, a three-block walk would be nothing. But see, it was something like 14 degrees Kelvin in Chicagoland Saturday night, and I'd stupidly left my hat and mittens in the car when Caz drove off to take the kids with him to my dad's. Luckily, I was in the home of knitters, so I had my choice of several hats, and some gloves were found for me as well. Thank goodness, because it was so cold on the walk back I thought my face was going to freeze off.

Meg also pointed out where the LYS near my dad's house (where we stayed the first night) is, so I stopped there Sunday afternoon for 20 minutes while Caz drove around the area with the kids. I wound up leaving with this:

I'm not sure of the specifics, but those will combine to make one pair of socks. I'm going to hold off on making any hard-and-fast decisions for now (look at me, delaying gratification! I think I'm growing as a person!), but I'm pretty excited about the colors.

And then Monday we finally decided it was time for us to visit that Temple of Organization, The Container Store, where we bought several nice things to help organize our apartment into something perhaps a bit more liveable. I also wheedled and looked pitiful enough that Caz allowed me to buy these for the keeping of the stash:

Aren't they gorgeous? As soon as I get this Olympics thing done, I'm going to do some serious stash organization and do my darnedest to avoid yarn temptation. Well, I'm going to try, at any rate. I figure that's got to count for something, you know?

So yeah. That was my weekend. Aren't you glad you got all the fun knitting content and none of the My Family Is Bugfuck Insane content?