Tales from the Road

Here's where I am at this very moment, my hotel room in Fairborn, OH, a suburb of Dayton. It doesn't look very exciting, and it's not, but it is a very nice room compared to hotels I might normally stay in for work. That's not to imply that we would normally stay in squalor or anything, but the woman in my office who arranged for rooms for all the travelers did a very nice job of getting us highly upgraded.

Today was a travel day. I woke up at 5:00 AM, and left the house at 6:00 in a bit of a blizzard. Fortunately, I live half-way up a mountainside, and by the time I was at the bottom, the blizzard had devolved into rain. I made it to the airport in plenty of time for my 8:25 AM flight, and after several hours and one plane transfer, I found myself in Dayton.

Luckily for me, plane time meant knitting time. Check out this fine knitting technique:



That's right, that's a venti (as in LARGE) nonfat no-whip mocha valencia (I can hear the choruses of "Die, yuppie scum!" in my head as I type out those words...), held firmly between my knees, because I'm not yet allowed to use my tray table. On my lap rest the three baggies containing all of the working yarn for my current Stashbuster Spiral sock, along with my kacha kacha counter. And let me tell you, plane knitting is made complete by the introduction of the iPod shuffle into the mix. Today's flight brought me the 5th edition of KnitCast, followed by several editions of the radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You can never go wrong with the HHGTTG on any trip.

KnitCast involved an interview with Lily Chin this time. I'll spare you a lot of commentary on it, mainly because there is little worthy of comment, in my opinion. Suffice to say that she sings, and she should likely be prevented from singing ever again, particularly if it's a bastardization of "My Girl" turned into an anthem to crochet. However, the hostess of KnitCast did comment that there were technical difficulties with the recording, so perhaps the horrifying singing can be charitably attributed to that. I was interested to learn that Ms. Chin had designed a knit Wonder Woman suit - now that's the kind of knitting that I can get behind. I guess in the end analysis, I'll say that Lily Chin is obviously a talented woman -- many of her designs are quite nice, she certainly works with the high fashion world more often than most knitwear designers, and she is indisputably one helluva fast crocheter. However. Being talented in these arenas does not make her a talented writer, nor does it qualify her as humorous, though she obviously tries. The writing in her Urban Knitter book, for example, was very substandard -- I was left wondering why her editor didn't do a better job.

Hm, I'd had no intention of going off on a Lily Chin diatribe. I did find the interview interesting, and I always like to keep up with everything I can in the world of knitting, whether I think it's good or bad. (This also explains my penchant for purchasing Knit n Style even when the majority of the designs featured there make me a bit queasy.) I guess I'm just a researcher at heart.

Oh, for the record, if you ever want to feel very foolish, feel free to take a picture of your own lap on a flight. I felt like it was such odd behavior that I was quite surprised to see I'd stirred little or no attention when I glanced around sheepishly after the fact.

I just remembered an amusing travel-knitting anecdote from last week's business trip, but as I really should be sleeping in preparation for Big Meetings tomorrow, it will have to wait until tomorrow night.