I am a huge proponent of taking your knitting everywhere. I can’t imagine traveling without the comfort of a new project; the soft feel of my favorite rosewood needles against my fingers, the faint shush of wood against wood, and the wonder of a wool strand creating fabric. I travel with knitting even when we are just doing the errands. I count myself lucky that my husband likes to drive- everywhere- and I get to knit while we pay some bills, visit the library and pick up whatever stuff we dropped off last week. My husband never complains and the truth is that the older we get the more the knitting helps keep my mind off the traffic and his driving.

It almost goes without saying that I take my knitting on the plane. We have all faced the hours of travel time with a certain joy, knowing that our time will be well spent with needles and yarn. Those long, dull flights turn into precious, uninterrupted moments of pure knitting pleasure. We can be forgiven if we exude a certain smugness as we disembark the plane; we have something to show for our air time and many others do not. This is knitting time that we take seriously and woe to the one that interferes with this time; unless that person is a representative of a government or an airline. Here comes the needle nightmare story. For the last few years domestic air travel has been relatively knitting needle friendly. So we knitters have continued to take our knitting with us on vacations and business flights. Traveling overseas, however has presented another whole set of issues, mostly occurring when one is trying to reenter the country. I have been told stories of the removal of needles from knitting when the knitter was trying to board a flight in Mexico, I had stitch holders removed from my knitting kit in Frankfurt; but nothing hurts like the story I heard on Thursday.

One of the students in the Thursday night class was returning from a two week vacation in Ireland with a knitting friend. The two couples had a wonderful time touring Ireland and seeing all the sights, but were ready to come home. The friendly knitter had her knitting in her carry on and was looking forward to finishing the sock that she had on two addi circular needles. However, the Irish authorities were concerned about their sharpness and were ready to confiscate them. She begged them not to take the stitches off the needles and then watched in horror as they calmly cut the tips off both sets! Oh the pain! Oh the waste! Oh the cost!!! Let’s share a moment of silence.

So the lesson is to use some caution and bamboo needles when you travel, even if you have been told that it is alright to bring knitting on the plane. We don’t need to lose any more addi’s in such a horrible way.

See you in the Shop-

Linda

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 8:46 am and is filed under Noho Wools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.