J and I took a very quick trip -- with my parents and brother -- to Evanston, Ill., for a surprise party for my cousin and his wife (happy 30th, A & S!). Right from the get-go, there were complications. First, I woke up Saturday morning and looked outside, only to see a serious dusting of snow. Which was not in the forecast, by the way. Then J calls me to say that he checked the flight on his BlackBerry, and it was cancelled. So I called my parents, and then called Southwest, and we were told that we might be able to get on the 2:15 flight, provided we get to the airport before our original flight was due to leave (12:15). We schlepped out to the airport, did get seats on the plane, and then found ourselves having to wait, oh, about three hours. The good news was that I did get in a fair amount of knitting while we sat and waited (I finished one front piece of Blanche-Neige during the flight).
Our flight was really quite good (and that's saying a lot, because I'm horribly afraid of flying and pretty much freak out if I don't have someone to hold my hand and calm me down). I give most of the credit to the highly entertaining flight attendants and their sharp sense of humor. It also helped that the flight was very smooth and we arrived about 10 minutes early. But the drama was not over. Oh no. We got our bags and made our way out to the rental car place located in the parking garage -- which I should mention was open, and the temperature was about, oh, 6 degrees. Fahrenheit. I kid you not. We were all bundled up, and I thought I'd be able to tough it out since they told us our white Impala would be right now. And don't you know, someone else drove off in our car? Grrr. Or rather, brrrr. Fortunately they found another car for us relatively quickly, but not before I transformed into a popsicle.
We drove through downtown Chicago and then had some time to rest in the hotel before heading over to the restaurant and awaiting to surprise A and S, who thought they were meeting my cousin L (A's younger sister) and her boyfriend for dinner because he was visiting from out of town. Boy, were they surprise. S actually started crying, while A looked liked he wanted to strangle someone (funny how different reactions to surprise can be). They both had a good time, though, once they got over the initial shock. The highlight of the night for me -- other than seeing my aunt, uncle, and cousins for the first time in about 2 1/2 years -- was seeing J get hypnotised. Yep, you read that right. My aunt and uncle brought in a hypnotist for the evening's entertainment, and my sweetie went into a trance and did all sorts of silly things he doesn't remember. We are now calling him Macho Man after watching him flexing his muscles as the most manly-man in the world. Poor guy still has a bit of a sore throat from overdoing his Godzilla remake movie audition. ;-)
Sunday was a beautiful day, and we had brunch at my aunt and uncle's before heading to the airport. Where our flight was delayed. Oy. The good news was that we apparently had such strong tailwinds that we were traveling at about 700 miles per hour (or so the pilot told us), and although we left about 45 minutes after we were scheduled to, we arrived back home on time.
So, I bet you're asking yourself, did she actually get any knitting done during all that insanity. Well, yes, a bit (a bit). Most of the stitching was done in the Pittsburgh International Airport before we even left. I did some on the plane both ways, and a little bit in the hotel room before dinner on Saturday. Here is the Left Front, blocking:
This took just about one ball of yarn; I needed a little of another to finish it, but I'd started with less than a full ball. Here's the progress on the Right Front:
I am planning on knitting furiously on this tonight and hope to finish it at my work knitting group tomorrow. I'm no longer feeling too confident about finishing this by the end of the weekend, but I'm sure as hell gonna try my darndest.
Woo! Looking good!
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