Going Going

I got up today (I’d say this morning if I believed for a second that 4:30am was morning) and staggered back to the airport, where I was seated in the chair that they’ve engraved my name in, I’m here so much. (That is totally not true but it’s got to be coming.) I was only been home for a few days this week, just long enough to talk to my family, snuggle a grandson, go to a Bike Rally meeting, nail a deadline and wash my clothes and put them back in my suitcase.  I like travelling, I really do, and for the most part I’m good at it. I sort of like hotels, and airplanes are good for knitting on, and I’ve always liked restaurants. (People bring you food and clean up afterwards. What’s not to like?) I don’t really get all that jet lagged, compared to some people I know, and there are usually interesting people and knitters and yarn when I get where I’m going. I know all this, and I can tell you that I am a professional and tidy traveller,  absolutely who you want to be behind in the security line, and I can make 9/10 border agents smile. I show up to the airport early so I can be the nicest person in the joint, and I amuse myself very well during delays.

Speaking of amusing, other than on instagram have I shown you what I’m knitting? It’s Autumn Lace – by Nancy Marchant, of course – and I’m charmed to no end while knitting it, I tell you that.  Two colours of mohair/silk, the green is my old friend Cracksilk Haze in Jelly, and the other is a Cracksilk Haze substitute, Debbie Bliss’ Angel in some brown colour that today I’m calling “ball label in suitcase”.

autumnlace 2017-11-09

I’m having a ton of fun knitting it, and the only thing that I don’t quite love is that every time I get off of a flight I’ve got so much greenish mohair stuck to me I look like I murdered a muppet.  In any case, It’s been me and this fluffy extravaganza on flight after flight after flight, and despite being really good at travel and mostly being cheerful about it, this morning I had another human just about spoil a 5 hour flight from Toronto to Vancouver (one more flight to go, and I’m almost at Port Ludlow) and I have absolutely no recourse but to tell you about it.

I got on my flight, and assembled my knitting, got out my headphones, selected a show, and established my craft zone.™  Everything was fine when buddy comes down the aisle, masquerading as a normal person, and plunks himself in the seat next to mine.  I nod politely, headphones in, and proceed to properly and studiously ignore him. Over the course of the next 5 hours, the following occurs.

  1. Before we take off, dude taps me ON THE LEG and asks me while I have my headphones in, if I have internet (I do) and if I will make a hotspot for him so he can text his sister. I am so stunned by this that I do so. I still can’t explain this.
  2. Dude interrupts me about a billion times (all while I have my headphones in which I thought we had all agreed was the international signal for not going to chat with you) to ask me separately, and always preceded by the tap on the leg –  the following. A) Where do I live?  B) Do I like that place? (This question comes 15 minutes after the first, as a separate interruption. C) Where did I get my glasses? (He has recently learned he needs glasses and is considering Walmart. This is not where mine are from.  D) Do I like the show I am watching? (You may all infer the internal answer.) E) does it bother me that it is a sexy show.  (It is The Handmaid’s Tale. It is not sexy, it is actually sort of the opposite.)  F) Do you have to purchase meals on this flight? G) A thousand other things.
  3. He manspreads his legs so wide that I have little room to exist, even though I am not very big.
  4. He leans towards me, shouldering into my space and forcing me to either cuddle with him or flinch against the plane wall. (Naturally, I choose the latter.)

Finally (although there was so, so much more) he tells me that his mother used to knit, and he thinks he could too, and then (holy cats I swear this is true) he proceeds to explain to me how many things he could make if he knew how to knit, and relates in intricate detail – all absent any actual knitting knowledge, how I could make a sweater if I wanted to. He tells me I would need a front piece, and a back piece, and some sleeve pieces, which I could “sew together” to make a sweater. He draws the shapes of these pieces on his tray table. He says he thinks (like he is probably the first to consider it) that you could likely make many things this way. Making shapes with knitting, and then fastening them together in various ways. He waits, at the end of this speech, for me to thank him (I do not, and it is a little awkward) before he tells me more about his knitting theories, and how many things he knows about it, because it is “common sense” that this is how it would all work.

He stops just short of patting me on the head and says that he could knit if he wanted to, but for (of course) that he has a job to do, and thusly, could not knit on planes, but maybe “some other places” but that most likely he doesn’t have time. You know. I somehow magnificently manage not to point out that he’s done absolutely nothing for the last 5 hours except bother me. Not read a book, not watched a film. Not napped or looked at the inflight magazine for the love of wool. Nothing. NOTHING I almost scream, and then I notice that I’ve been shedding green mohair all over him and for one perfect second, I hope he has an important meeting, and I am quietly happy.