Good news from swatching

My swatch for my Knitting Olympics project is so obnoxious (in the best possible way). I'll have to post a picture; the main color in the yarn is a shiny blue, with a variegated non-shiny thread that's every other color. There's yellow and orange and green and bright pink... and somehow, the seed stitch still shows up. I'm a little surprised (pleasantly so). I figured that the yarn was so loud that it might make a stitch pattern less noticeable. Another piece of good news is that my gauge is exactly twice what the pattern calls for, so I should be able to just double most of the numbers and have it work out... no extreme mathematical manuevers. Per the rules, I'm not allowed to cast on until Friday, but I want to cast on NOW. I won't, of course, because that would be cheating... but I hate having to wait.

We had a Girl Scout troop or some similar group of little girls come in for a tour of the branch where I was on Monday. After their tour, a couple of them came over to check out some books. I was checking out the stuff for them, and they were JUST tall enough to be able to see the top of the counter. If you're 7 years old, there's a lot of very neat-looking stuff on top of the counter (scanners, desensitizers, printers...). These two girls were pointing to everything, asking, "Wow, what does THAT do?", so I was explaining what everything was for and showing them what I was doing. They were absolutely fascinated... it was so adorable. :)

Updated: I have a swatch picture...

I never do a full 4" x 4" swatch. I usually go with a 4" x 2" (which is what this one is). This is normal for me... I'm not just being lazy with this one.