Work in Progress June 2016 (plus a little bit of drama)

We had a lovely holiday in Spain (although not without drama. More on that later). As predicted, I didn’t get anywhere near as much knitting done as I had planned. I took 15 balls of yarn with me to work on my husband’s jumper. I used one. That’s right, one. When I was packing I think I must have been living in some alternate universe where I was suddenly a really fast knitter.  I’m not. Combined with the fact I have two young children who take up a teensy bit of my time (“mummy, I want a snack”, “mummy can we go in the pool?” “mummy read me a story” – you get the picture), meant I only really did any knitting in the evening when I was a bit knackered. Plus, as you can see from the picture below there is A LOT of cables in the jumper.  And I am the sort of knitter who is a bit paranoid about making mistakes, so therefore check, check and check again what all the stitches mean.  Below is what I managed to achieve whilst I was away (the first one is where I had gotten to before I left, the second one is what I managed to do on holiday.  And yes, I am a big Game of Thrones fan. Did you see the last episode? It almost makes me want to OMG. Almost).

Before the holiday

After the holiday

What I did manage to do was read a book.  Not that much of an achievement you might think. But I honestly don’t think I have finished one in the last 2 and a bit years since my daughter was born. I’ve started plenty but have generally fallen asleep before I get beyond a line or two. So actually finishing one felt pretty monumental.  It was complete mindless trash, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, I promised you some drama. Well, it all happened on the last day. We left the house at 6 in the morning for our 11 o clock flight (the airport is just over a 2 hour drive away from where we were staying).  All was going well but then we had to stop as my son was screaming and needed some food. So this held us up a bit, but we still thought we would be ok.  But then everything that could go wrong, did.  We couldn’t find a parking space to drop the car off.  Then the lift to take us to departures was broken. And we had to trek over to another one, tantruming toddler in tow. The queue to put our bags in was enormous and it took us AN HOUR to drop our bags off – with the benefit of hindsight we should have tried to jump to the front but we didn’t (maybe we’re just too British). And then the queue to get through security was chaotic.  In fact, I don’t know if I would even call it a queue – it was more of a rabble. And the toddler was still tantruming.  And the exhausted baby had started screaming his head off again. Once we eventually got to the front (after blagging ourself on a ‘shorter queue’ – all Britishness cast aside) they needed to check his food.  At this point it was 15 minutes before our flight was due to take off.  We ran – well as fast as you can run with a (tantruming) toddler – through passport control and got to the gate about 5 minutes before the flight was due to leave. We thought for one second we were going to make it as one of the staff took our boarding passes and was going to let us on. Then his boss said “no, the flight is closed”. What a kick in the teeth.

So we had to trek all the way back out to the main terminal to see if we could get another flight.  The company we were originally flying with couldn’t get us on a flight for another 4 days. So we went with someone else who could get us on a flight the next day; a few squillion quid later we were all booked up and they found us a hotel for the night near the airport. Suffice to say, the next day we were at the check-in desk before the flight had even opened and were through in plenty of time.  As you can imagine, it was an expensive lesson in why you should leave an hour earlier than planned if you want to make your flight – especially if you have tantruming toddlers and screaming babies with you, and the world is generally conspiring against you. But, as my dad would say, all part of life’s rich tapestry.

The day before all the drama

The last couple of days have been spent doing washing and trying to get the kids back into their routine.  Whilst I was away, a CD I had ordered from the States (Maybe This Christmas Too) arrived so I have been spending the last day or two listening to Christmas music in my car. I know it’s only June but I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning (again) and I love Sixpence None the Richer’s version of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear that is in one of Season 2’s episodes – just beautiful. If you haven’t heard it then I highly recommend you track it down.

That’s all for now. I’m off to do a couple more rows (ok, one more row. Well, maybe half a row) whilst the baby naps.