Over the Weekend

I did not get as much knitting done as anticipated despite the three-day weekend.

We went up to my in-laws' for Easter. This does not normally cramp my knitting style considering my mother-in-law is the one who taught me.

However, it was not meant to be.

Pinochle Sucks
The power went out Friday night shortly after dinner. (Power outages, story of my week.)

My FIL busted out a propane camping lantern and my MIL decided it was the perfect opportunity to corner me and teach me to play pinochle.

To say that I've been avoiding learning how to play pinochle for all nine years of my marriage would not be an exaggeration.

My MIL assures me they attempted to teach me back in 2000 when Hubby and I were dating, but I've managed to completely block out the memory. I did have a pretty bad cold at the time, so maybe it's cold medicine induced amnesia.

Anyway, it wasn't pretty. Or fun. Pinochle has way to many moving parts. As I repeatedly informed Hubby, rather shrilly, I am not cunning enough for card games. And having the 10 be worth more than the king is the silliest thing I've ever heard.

It didn't help the situation that my loving husband kept laughing at me when I made a mistake, which probably contributed to me being shrill. At least it also got him in trouble with his mom.

Needless to say, Hubby ultimately won the game.

Ratty Grey Mohair
The end result was I had bad dreams about pinochle that night.

I was in a yarn store. The only way to buy stuff was to win hands of pinochle. But the only things for sale were other people's works in progress and none of them were my style.

The only one I really remember was a caplet or shawl thing, perhaps, out of grey mohair. It was on a coat hanger for some reason, with the working yarn trailing off it.

It was all very traumatic.

Saturday Was Better
Hubby and his dad went to the dumps (i.e. the town landfill) and ran some other errands, leaving my MIL and I free to relax and knit.

She was knitting a Christening blanket in a lace pattern that I've seen before.

I had previously finished the left sleeve of the Schleppy Sweater. I moved on to open the bind off on the right sleeve and knit the handful of rows required to work the final increase and bring the whole thing up to 18 inches (measured from the correct marker!).

You might remember that the body shrunk about half an inch on me. I transferred the stitches from the lifeline back to the needles and then worked a few more rows to bring it up to 13 inches.

Then I joined the whole mess together and promptly began running a new lifeline, just to be safe.

More Pinochle?!
I didn't get very far when hubby dragged me kicking and screaming back to the table for another game of pinochle.

I decided it was best to approach the situation with the mindset of being cannon fodder. I thought it would make it easier to handle.

Didn't work out, of course.

The one time I got a hand that I thought was good causing me to bid aggressively and win the three cards in the kitty (which didn't help me at all), my loving husband proceeded to take more tricks. The end result being that I didn't score enough points causing me to loose the hand and go down the 230 points I'd bid.

You would think it would have occurred to him to throw the hand, allowing me to win, boosting my confidence, and perhaps getting me interested in the game. But he couldn't suppress his competitive streak.

After that I went into major princess Pollyanna mode throwing down cards as I waited petulantly for the game to be over.

As you might expect, Hubby won, again. My MIL tried to assure me that there was nothing we could have done against the great hands he was dealt, but I was impervious.

We discussed playing some other game, but decided it was too late to get into anything and I was finally able to slink off to the couches and pout.

Sunday for Socks
It's a four hour drive, so we hit the road after lunch.

I didn't like the way I'd joined the sleeves to the body of the sweater. Because of this I packed it in the back with the pups and left the socks I'm making for Hubby up front.

I was able to turn the heel, pick up along the heel flap (which wasn't easy in a moving car), and start the gusset decreases before we got home.

The sweater is a post for another day.