Like a Willie Nelson Song

I’m almost packed, I just have to add my knitting to the suitcase and then I’m off to the airport.   I’ll get to Minneapolis just in time for the opening of Yarnover, and I’m really looking forward to it.  I really like the work I do, teaching and being with knitters, but these larger events have a little icing on the cake – a chance to see (however briefly) other teachers I only run into once or twice a year. This many years in the field and the other teachers start to be your friends, and events start to be tiny reunions.  There’s not much time to see each other when you’re working, but still.  I’m so looking forward to it. My one wish for things like this is that each teaching day came with four evenings so that I could see everyone I want to, and sit with them, and hear what they’re working on… all those knitter minds.

bagsonthec 2014-04-25

Lined up on the chesterfield is the knitting.  I think I’m finally learning not to take way, way too much.  (Because someone will ask, the first bag is from YoYoGo, The second’s my Splityarn bike bag, and the third is a Tom Bihn yarn stuff sack. The cat hair is courtesy of Millie. It was a gift.) After years of practice, I think I’ve finally got it down to a silly amount of knitting rather than a laughable quantity.  If I were going to be home, any one of these projects would do me, but once I’m on the road? Away from the stash? Any less than this and I start getting insecure. (What if I have a layover? What if my plane is cancelled? What if I suddenly knit faster than I ever have before and I run out?)  I like to have an assortment.

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I’m taking the Sweet Dreams adaptation I’m working on, but it’s beaded, and despite Denise at Lost City Knits sending me this video that really would make beading on a plane a little more possible, I’m just not feeling it.  (By the way, I went out and bought the crazy dental floss thingies she’s using there – I didn’t even know they existed, and the minute I’d bought it I found my crochet hook down the side of the couch. Amazing.)  This will be my “alone in my hotel room and not moving” knitting.

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I’m also taking the Color Affection that I have been working on ignoring for more than a year. I picked this up again a few weeks ago – and I swear it’s going down. I can’t handle it kicking around for any longer at all. It seems stupid to finish it just in time for summer, but whatever. If I put it down again I know I’m never picking it up. This knitting’s no good for when I have limited space – like on an airplane. There’s three balls of yarn and they’re forever needing to be unsorted, and that’s the kind of yarn game that ends with me annoying the passenger next to me. I try to be a better missionary for knitting than that.

To fill in the gaps, I’ve got a new sock on the go, although there’s no guarantee it’s going to make the cut.

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It’s Skeined Alive 80/merino 10/cashmere, 10/nylon – in a fabulous colour called Vermiculture. I feel great about the yarn, but the pattern I picked is Anne Hanson’s Sign of Four, and I think the stitch pattern might be totally lost. I’m not feeling it at the moment, but it could start coming together in another repeat or two. We’ll have to see how it feels.

That’s it. That’s all I’m taking, although the pangs keep coming.  The urge to tuck a little skein of sock yarn into a pocket, perhaps just a little ball of laceweight as backup… Never mind of course that I’m going to a knitting convention and to a great yarn store… and that if I need more yarn I shall be awash with it in about four hours… No no.  What if, what if…

Maybe I’ll just put in one more thing.  It can’t hurt.

(PS. I’ll be at StevenBe on Sunday afternoon,  if you wanted to stop by and say Hi.  I’m teaching until 1, and then I’ll be around for a few hours until the next class.  Give them a call and reserve a book if you need one, and I’ll see you there.)