tilly has me on the ropes

It's official. My butt is being kicked by a cabled scarf.

To be fair, I can't say I didn't ask for it. I thought I was the master of all things cabled after I managed to knit the Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat as a Christmas gift for my SIL last year. This, of course, made me a prime target for the knitting gods, who are having a high time at my expense right now.

I should explain that this October is A Very Bad Month for us, schedule-wise. It includes:

1. two weddings (one with interstate travel);
2. two sheep shows (one with interstate travel);
3. two boy birthdays (interstate travel only if they run away due to neglect);
4. a marathon (interstate travel again, plus lots of running);
5. a critical business-related project (with intensive training and learning curve); and
6. miscellaneous soccer games, cross-country meets, and all the other detritus of having three kids.

To add to this crazy-making list, I am responsible for the Coopworth sheep breed display at Rhinebeck this year. I pulled it together last year with three weeks notice. This year had to be Bigger and Better because I had all year to plan it out, right? So I decided at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival that I would spin up some Coopworth roving and make it into something spectacular to be featured in the breed display booth.

I managed to spin up the yarn as part of the Tour de Fleece. (My spinning is still a little uneven, but it's getting better.)

The something spectacular is turning out to be a wee bit more challenging. I chose the scarf pattern Tilly from the book A Fine Fleece, and I love how it looks with this handspun -- except I have ripped out at least 100 rows at this point. Call it lack of attention, call it too much on my plate, call it so exhausted my eyeballs are ready to fall out of my head, but I cannot follow this pattern to save my life. It's not a particularly hard pattern. It's just that my brain is not in any state to process it correctly. Here's what I have so far; you can see it at Rhinebeck, if you visit me in the breed display barn, and see for yourself how much I manage to get done between now and 9 am on Saturday morning.

Let's see, I'm on row 42 (having just ripped back from row 47). Given my statistical average on this scarf, I am guessing I will be on row 34. Your prediction?