How a Magazine Saved My Sanity

For all the fuss and bother over which knitting to pack, I ended up with very little knitting time. The airport? Dead loss. I flew from Chicago to Houston on a morning when the worst weather in the country was in Chicago and Houston. Plus, it was O'Scare, which sucks even on a clear and sunny day. There wasn't an empty seat in the waiting area -- no knitting when you can barely find standing room in the midst of that chaos -- and the flight was jammed with frantic people who were all about to miss connecting flights to Trinidad and Aruba and other places much more exotic than Houston.

Which leads me to why there was no knitting on the plane. I got stuck in a middle seat, which is never comfortable for anyone. But let me tell you about my neighbors.

To my left, a very large man with a very bad cold. He spent the first half of the flight hocking phlegm into a barf bag, and the second half snoring and sprawled and twitching. Let's just say the man occupied some space. I'm not exactly petite, either, but I can fit in the seats. He had our row so jammed up, though, that I couldn't even lower my tray table. I couldn't even see his.

And he was the good neighbor. To my right, I had a walking stereotype, one of those sweet lil ole southern gals who mistakes ignorance for a virtue. She had never in her life been on an airplane and was terrified. Hell, until three days before that, she'd never been outside of Texas. But she had memorized her bible verses, and she had a hank of hot pink hair with glued on eyes that served as a stuffed animal/keychain/security blanket, so she was ready for the occasion.

She liked to talk. Unfortunately, she had only three topics of conversation. One: how much she loves Jesus. You know, I'm never going to take anyone's religion away, but that doesn't mean I want to hear about it. Okay, maybe if the plane had been on fire and plummeting to the earth, I wouldn't have minded a few prayers, and probably would have let loose with an OH GOD or two myself. But once we got above the weather, we had a nice easy flight, and she really didn't have to complain quite so much about not being able to use her cell phone to call her prayer partner. Really.

Anyway.

Her second topic of conversation: hunting. I've been a vegetarian for eleven years. 'Nuff said.

Which left topic number three: Why she hates Chicago. My hometown.

Yeah.

The flight sucked real bad.

Luckily, I had managed to get my knitting magazine out of my bag before my enormous snot-filled neighbor claimed half the row, and I was able to read it if I kept it folded back around on itself -- absolutely not enough room to open it flat -- so I microscopically examined the current Knitter's, page by page, as a way of avoiding the conversation of the critter-killin', bible-quotin', pink-troll-strokin', Chicago-hatin' pain in my ass.

I read that magazine for three solid hours. Practically memorized it.

Without even cracking the Knitter's cover again, I can tell you that I want to knit the brown lace-up Norah Gaughan vest with the bell motif on the lower edge. I've already deciphered the pattern and figured out how to alter the neckline edging to avoid the crochet shell trim. That's the item I'm most likely to knit from this issue.

I'd consider knitting the dolman sleeved sweater called Liquid Silver, the one with the tied, slashed sleeves, but that I want less depth at the armholes. I also loved the blue cabled hoodie, the one with the matching skirt, but don't know if I love it enough to knit it. And the pattern Fracture, the one with the drop stitches cable-twisted through the body of the sweater, fascinates me but might be a little too 80s flashback. The tank from the cover has an 80s Issey Miyake feel to it, too, (what is it with the resurgence of 80s fashions?) but I think in darker colors -- black, steel grey, eggplant -- it could be tres chic in a retropunk kind of way.

Someday the memories of my awful flight will fade, and I will recover from my bitterness, not to mention the persistent shoulder cramp from sitting like that for hours. But for now all I can say is -- Good thing I saved the magazine for that flight, eh?