mostly back

My self and my carry-ons (including a set of double-pointed bamboo needles with lots of sock-yarn) arrived safely in Pittsburgh at about 11p.m. Eastern on Saturday night. The trip was looooooong (I awoke at 12a.m. Eastern on Saturday morning in Amsterdam), and filled with several security checks and a delayed flight, but nothing horrible except that my checked luggage did not arrive with me. British Airways has been under enough stress these past couple weeks, I am not terribly upset. And I'm quite sure it will all return to me soon enough.

Unfortunately, one of the items in my lost luggage is the USB connector that goes between my digital camera and the computer, so my photos are currently trapped on the camera and its memory cards. Sorry...! I'm going to wait to go on about the trip until I have pictures to go along with the text. It will be much more enjoyable that way, I'm sure.

However, being that it's a Tuesday, and that means knitting day here, I must tell you without pictures about my knitting escapades!

Essentially, the trip to Europe was all about socks! I took along two projects that were already on the needles - the Aran sweater and the second Retro Rib sock. But they're on metal needles, and I didn't want to risk trying to get those through security, so I went out and bought some bamboo double-pointed needles small enough to knit socks on. I put those, a ball of sock yarn, and the generic toe-up instructions from Knitty into my little bag and happily waltzed through the security checkpoint and to my gate. I was about three hours early. Better early than late, right?

Well, the three hours allowed me enough time to figure out that I hadn't measured my feet in a while and had no idea how many inches I wanted to make the sock circumference. And it allowed me to use the few resources I had to measure my foot by wrapping yarn around, marking how long it was, and then "measuring" against a piece of paper I knew to be 8.5 inches across. In the end, I was pretty much on, although I might have scared a few people by taking off my shoes and socks in the waiting area. The rest of the three hours were spent casting on (here was another moment of genius -- I had no scrap yarn with which to cast on my provisional stitches, and so...I used some of the dental floss that I had made sure to pack because the little break-the-floss-off thing works wonderfully in lieu of scissors, but unlike scissors can actually be legally taken on a plane) and starting the toe, only to realize that I had not read any of the directions and had cast on only half the number of stitches and was now making a toe for a sock that might possibly fit a thin earthworm. By the time I got on the plane, I had figured out my errors and was ready to cast on and start the sock for real!

These socks became my primary project for the rest of the trip, with a few breaks from the repetition of "all stockinette, all the time" with the sweater and the patterned socks. I was amazed that me in my knitting slowness actually finished one whole sock! And cast on the second one! I also over-estimated my capacity to knit when I brought along another ball of sock yarn I had purchased during my travels, in expectation of finishing this second sock and needing more yarn to work with. That certainly did not happen. (Incidentally, the casting on of Sock Two was even more traumatic than sock one, because it was done on the planes back to Pittsburgh, and I couldn't find the floss, although when I landed the floss was right where it should have been in my carry on! I discovered that if you wrap yarn around the button of your jeans and yank really hard, you can get a pretty smooth break and even stranger looks than when measuring your foot with yarn and paper.)

You'd have thought that I would have just gone and finished Sock Two in the two-day recovery period following my return flights (hooray for Sunday and Labor Day!!), but instead I set to work finishing the Starry Night sweater that had been sitting at home the whole time. This involved a little bit of embroidery and the knitting of a collar and much weaving in of ends. And then, being lazy and impatient, I decided not to block the sleeves (disaster waiting to happen?) and just sewed them onto the body of the sweater. I was sewing up the side seams last night while watching The Prisoner of Azkaban on my computer (I have no DVD player...and effectively no television, because the box that should be a t.v. doesn't get any channels) when my brother called, and once we started talking I realized I was exhausted, even though it was only 9p.m. So I tossed aside the sweater begrudgingly and went to bed.

...Maybe tonight the sweater will be finished! Good thing, because it's getting rather chilly. Not really autumn-cold, but a high of 70F instead of 90F as it was before I left for Europe. I like it. Sweater weather is more than welcome in my neighborhood! Bring it on!!