Infrequent flier

Sorry for the long silence.  I was out of town, on a combined business/pleasure trip to New England.  The business part was a training class.  The "pleasure" part was more of a family-obligation/aging parent thing.  All I can say about that is, Old age is not for sissies.  It does not get any easier.  Then after I returned home, I got sick.  Diagnosis (so far) is UTI.  I think there may be something else going on, but I'm willing to give the antibiotics a try.

Anyway, knitting did occur while I was gone.  In an effort to travel light, I packed a minimum of yarn, knowing from past experience that I never get as much knitting and/or reading done as I expect to on trips.  I also took a book on CD, so I could "read" while I knit in the hotel(s).

But first, knitting occurred in airports.

I checked the TSA regulations beforehand, but did not see anything about knitting needles.  However, since I was traveling on smallish planes that were full up, I chose not to knit en route because, seriously, there was no elbow room.

Visiting my stepmother in the rehab unit (she is recovering from a broken leg AND hip) proved to be good knitting time, as did watching the Cubs on TV later that night.  (The Red Sox were playing on the west coast - way past our bedtime.)

After a couple of days with family, I changed towns to attend the training.  Per usual, we all had to introduce ourselves, including our hobbies.  That gave me the opportunity to ask if it was okay to knit in class.  The instructor agreed, but sometimes the training was just too intense for me to do so.

The traffic around Boston is just horrendous.  A trip to my brother's house took 30 minutes, but the trip back to the hotel took almost two hours because someone thought it was a good time to do construction and reduced the interstate to ONE LANE.  FOR MILES, even though the construction area itself was short.

After that experience, I did not want to drive anywhere in the evenings, and instead settled in for a good listen to Broken by Karin Slaughter.  The story is so enthralling and the performance so engrossing that I did not realize what I was knitting until I held up the sweater and found I had knit the cuff on sleeve number two without having actually knit the sleeve.

DO OVER.

The next night, I decided I did not like how the sleeves bell, so I reknit the cuffs to include a round of decreases.

And then, in a panic over having something to knit on the way home, I started a pair of leggings.

Some yarn stores were visited as well.  One, the Yarn Basket in Fitchburg, I have visited before.  No surprises there, but I did snag a couple of skeins of pink camo.  Somewhere I have a pattern for a blanket using this yarn.

I also visited Edwina's Knitch in Burlington.  All I purchased was a couple of blanks from Happy Feet, with the intention of dyeing them, even though there was some lovely lavender sock yarn I was pining for.  I had to limit my yarn buying because there was only so much room in my carry-on for anything besides a week's worth of clothes.

For the record, I flew Delta/Northwest through Detroit and experienced no problems or delays.  I stayed at Hampton Inns, which offer free breakfast and high speed Internet and are always clean and comfortable.  Everywhere I went, people were friendly except for one b*tchy lady at the service counter in the Manchester NH airport.  All in all, a successful trip, but I am glad to be home.