We are flying to Spokane tomorrow to see our son, Geoff, and I am a little nervous.  Not about the flight itself or flying in
general – I am a bit frantic about what knitting to take.

I have been a bit spoiled by car travel:  just fill up the baskets with yarn, drop in
as many pointy needles and sharp scissors and odd-looking accessories as
desired, apologize as sweetly as possible to whoever loses foot space to that
box of merino that just arrived (how fortunate!) by post, and off you go.

With air travel, it is a matter of how little knitting stuff I can get away with taking as well as how much knitting stuff I can get away with
taking.

I don’t think I should arrive at the flight gate laden with
baskets like a market woman.  And I do
not want to imagine what might happen if they see an x-ray of my collapsible
aluminum swift in my luggage.  Further,
in spite of passenger information online that says knitting needles are okay, I
do not intend to subject my Lantern Moon beauties to seizure should some
security crack-down occur. 

So, there are dozens of questions buzzing through my brain:

What am I going to knit in the car to the airport/at the
airport/in the plane/in the rental car from the airport?  And do I have cheap, short, innocent-looking
needles to knit it on?  And will it be
something I can slip the needles out of (should I have to surrender them to
someone official) without saying something that will get me in trouble?

If I bring only simple knitting, will I have to bring a lot
of extra yarn as it might go quickly?  Will
I get bored with it should I have time to sit quietly and knit in the
hotel? 

If I bring only complicated knitting, will I have to bring
charts, cable needles, reference books, etc.?  And will I find it too much to deal with while
traveling and doing mom-and-dad/college-kid-visit-stuff – and then not be able
to knit at all?!

So far, I seem to need innocuous airplane-safe knitting,
simple knitting (without too much yarn), and complicated knitting (without too
much support stuff).   Do I have any
projects going that fit any of those categories?  Am I going to have to cast on 3 new projects
for a weekend trip?   And can this be done without an emergency trip
to the yarn shop?