Travel Day

Today snuck up on me. I knew I had to travel to O'Hare to pick someone up. After much internal debate, I decided to take the Coach bus up and back. You know what that means, right? No driving and all knitting.

Well, since my holiday projects were finished (on time--yay!), that didn't leave me with any small projects going. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. (much earlier than normal, in case that's not obvious and 1.5 hours earlier than I needed to) and the question in my mind: What am I going to bring to knit today?

Big dilemma.

I debated many smaller projects I could start, but knitting in public is best done on a project that you have a good handle on. So I decided to drag along a big project, the Summit shawl. I know the pattern well enough and since I'm knitting the short rows in reverse, I don't have to flip the project around after each row. Much less disturbing to anyone sitting beside me.

On the flip side, it's quite big already and bulky. I wanted to limit myself to one bag (versus my usual three). I grabbed a big one, but the shawl still took up most of the room:

Does it look like you can put anything else in that bag

once the shawl's in there?

And then, I didn't actually make much progress. On the way up, I discovered someone I knew on the bus and we talked all the way up. It was a little crowded and I didn't want to pull out the knitting.

I arrived just in time to meet the flight, so no knitting while waiting.

But then I "lucked out" and we had to wait about two hours for the bus home. I made some progress there.

On the ride home, Isaac and I had a little more room so I pulled out the knitting...only to take a little nap.

By the time I set to it again, it was getting dark. (And the driver somehow did not divine that I needed lights because the overheads remained off.) I, however, am married to a flashlight fanatic and had a new one in my never-too-full-for-one-more-thing bag:

It's a very clever little light designed around a 9-volt battery. And very bright despite its tiny size.

I put it in my mouth which lit my work perfectly, but that is not a sustainable position. (Sore jaw and drool becomes a problem.) Then I tucked it under my chin, which also lit my work well, and also is not a sustainable position. (Sore neck.)

Then I tucked it into the cuff of my left sleeve which worked surprisingly well, which is noticeably not "perfectly well." But I can make do. And I did.

I almost got 1.5 pattern repeats done. I really pushed it at the end, trying to finish the last one, but when the bus gets to your stop, you have to stop knitting and get off.

It's been a while since I've written about this project but I have been working on it in between other stuff.

Somehow it seems to be simultaneously very long and not long enough. I guess I will keep going until it seems long enough, whenever that is. Because guess what! I answer to no one as far as my knitting is concerned. I can knit on this thing until I think it's long enough. Whether I want to or not.

Wait. Something about that logic isn't right.

I'll have to think about that.