Traveling with knitting is always a mixed bag — chances are I will be so involved with doing what I traveled to the destination to do that I will have little time for knitting. Which is probably as it should be! Our trip to Nevada to visit Sasha & Dave was pretty much that way. Most of the knitting I did was en route to and fro — on the plane, in the car.
But even limited knitting can become highly dramatic! I actually had 3 such episodes in the course of our 5-day trip.
The first was not technically a knitting episode — not a knitting episode at all, actually. It was the repair of a lovely lace top (Sasha’s — it had been a gift from Dave) which their sweet dog Griffin had chewed — ripping the lace from shoulder to arm below the armhole on one side. Could I mend the shredded lace? I said I would give it a go — it was worth a shot.
A long shot, really. I did not even take “Before Photos” because I was not at all sure there would be any “After Photos” — and, considering the ruinous state of the garment, it seemed really cocky to make any presumptions. But after 3 brow-furrowed hours and some hybrid use of crochet and sewing techniques, I had restored the lace top to a wearable condition — with the repair and reconstruction sufficiently inconspicuous. I confess that I amazed even myself — and could not, in the end, even take triumphant “After Photos” because it felt so much to be a case of Divine Intervention!
The second episode occurred in the car on the way to the Salt Lake City Airport. I was working on the sleeve of the Gyre Cardigan (in a dark and slippery Tencel yarn) on dpns when I discovered. That I had an extra stitch — the result of my having split the yarn (did I mention that the yarn is splitty too?) several rows down, making 1stitch into 2. So, while speeding along the Salt Flats at 80 mph (and without a crochet hook at hand), I dropped the 2 stitches down to the Stitch of Incident, tidied up the split yarn, and re-created the column of stitches. Fixed!
The final drama came a few hours later when we were on the plane and headed home. We were ascending nicely and I had snuck my knitting out of my bag once the flight attendants (who sometimes see knitting needles as a hazard during take-off!) were seated and buckled. This was my lace Color Blocks Puzzle Box. I had done only a few stitches when I discovered that the yarn in the row below had a manufacturer’s knot. Crap. The yarn was spliced and probably secure. Probably. Maybe. I knit over it and pulled out the stitches a couple of times while I tried to convince myself that it was secure. I pulled on the yarn and scraped at it a bit with my nail and finally showed it to George who, without any waffling at all, told me I would not be happy if I left it in my knitting — and then I had a horrific vision of the the splice giving way and the lacework springing loose…. And I sighed a deep and heavy sigh and began tinking back the row of lace. As I took out the some 300 stitches from the row I was on and the row below, I kept my eye on the Flight Tracker map on the video screen. We crossed state lines and mountain ranges — and suddenly I had a fierce determination to get back to where I had been — when I had discovered the problem — before we landed! So, in essence, I raced a commercial jet going hundreds of miles an hour through 5 western states! And there I was furiously (and surreptitiously) knitting the final stitches of the row as we descended into SeaTac Airport. Yes!
Looking back, I consider that travel added challenge and some tingles to what would have been rather prosaic problems at home in my own living room (except for the Miracle of the Lace Top!). Knitting away from home is adventurous. Best to know that in advance! But I maintain that when it comes to your knitting: Don’t leave home without it!