Blanket in progress

Much as I love teaching, the trans-continental travel involved in my teaching trips is very disruptive to the creative process as well as the book-finishing process. I’m now mid-way through an intensive period of travel, from California to the UK and points in between.

My future new book offering, A Little Book of BIG Holes for Hand-knitters, is so near completion! However, since I just can’t work on it while on the road, I planned that the book would be back on Lynda Gemmell (of Cabin Fever)’s desk during this period, so that she could work her layout and formatting magic whilst I was away.

Of course, for long periods of travel one needs something to knit! Preferably something that wouldn’t require endless notes or immediate writing, because, once this period is over, I’ve got to get back into and finish the book. This is not as easy as it sounds: A book is years of effort and work, all expended with no income whatsoever until it is released. It takes self-motivation and stubborn tenacity. For some reason, I would rather just keep knitting…

As you may have detected, I adore double knitting, absolutely love it. I’ve been experimenting lately with a perfect circular tubular cast-on for double knitting: It is so beautiful and elegant. I’ve also been wanting to make a basket with pockets up the sides for storing needles and crochet hooks, these pockets to be created with differing stitch numbers between the layers. The basket began on a 10 hr road trip, which I hardly noticed as I was so absorbed in the initial stages. (When our van was being checked over by customs on reentering Canada, the border agent did comment drily that I must really love knitting! It rather resembled a surreal spider web of yarn within our vehicle.)

DK Basket version

I worked a basket and was pleased with the result, but I just wasn’t ready to finish knitting. So I started another double knit circular object, but this time with the resolve to go big or bust! I’m up to over a 1000 sts per round and LOVING it. Once the cast-on and the first few fiddly rounds are over, it’s plain sailing. Of course I’m having all sorts of ideas for more exotic designs and I may well start another one very soon, but it’s so much fun to have something HUGE and entertaining on the needles to grab and go.

Although I do admit it is beginning to be a rather large piece of carry-on for the airplane tomorrow! I wonder if this is the excuse I need to start a new project? Have any of you carried really big knitting on a plane? I’d love to hear!

Air Force 1 in Boston

Really, Really Good Morning! I’m in California, just outside San Jose. The sun is shining (I gather Nova Scotia has had a cold dreary wet week). It’s so lush and green here, with steep, bubbly hills covered with trees (with leaves!). The natives take this all for granted: of course there are leaves and sunshine in April! To me, it is still entirely magical. Leaves happen in June, after all.

As part of my new policy of sniffing more roses, I’ve taken a couple of days out of my trip to spend some time with a knitting friend before traveling on to Nine Rubies, just outside San Francisco, for weekend workshops. Is all this perhaps the wisdom of age starting to poke at me? Perhaps life really is short?

In spite of an inauspicious beginning, this trip has been going well. On the evening before my early morning departure, United Airlines left me a message informing me that they’d cancelled my flight, but not to worry: “We have rebooked you for a day later!”

I then spent six times the amount of patience I had, on hold, trying to get through to them on the phone.  Surely they could have left a number that would have led me to assistance a little faster, since they were the ones messing me about? When I did get through (thankfully the phone battery held out), their attitude was that I was the one being a nuisance, wanting to change things!

I ended up flying to Boston, rather than Manchester, as I needed to get to my destination the next day. Classes began at the Elegant Ewe on Friday. I usually allocate a whole day for travel legs (to allow for slight delays), but allocating two days, just in case the airlines mess up, seems ridiculous!

Our plane’s arrival in Boston was held up by some guy with a big, shiny plane called Air Force 1, who seemed to want a more than the usual amount of air space. Surely that calls far more attention to his presence? I was, however, very saddened by the news of the Boston explosions. The contrast between freedom, joy and personal achievement that characterizes the Boston marathon and the horror and wanton destruction made this atrocity even more obscene.
The workshops at Elegant Ewe went swimmingly. I believe this is my 5th multi day knit-fest for them! Wonderful place, delightful and creative students.

Then I got to the tricky travel bit: getting to Washington State. Flights seem to either leave ridiculously early or much too late. I prefer to take the early option so that I have a fall-back position if that one fails, something which seems to happen disturbingly frequently these days. However, when I had to get up at 0345 and head west, with a 3 hour time change ahead, it didn’t seem quite as jolly!

Yorkshire Yarns was fun and Sonya a delight, but it all went by like a whirlwind. I left straight from the workshop to the airport, just in case of encountering newly created hold-ups in security, which I’d been hearing about. As it turned out, I was through in 7 mins, but it’s the uncertainty that gets to you. Perhaps I do need to be a day early for a flight? I am always so relieved when I get to where I ought to be.

I absolutely love meeting new knitters (old knitters, too) on my teaching travels, but the stresses associated with the actual traveling are a little less entertaining.

The Capitol in Concord NH

Yorkshire Yarn next to the old theater

Home Sweet Home on Tancook Island

I am posting (with the author’s permission) a delightful email I got recently.  Coming as it did, mere days before my next long teaching trip is starting, it banished my annoyance at having to pack so many knitting samples, at facing another round of airport security types,  flight cancellations and at sleeping somewhere other than home.

“Dear Lucy, (and I do mean dear!)

I have been a newbie knitter for about 30 years, LOL! Seriously, I have always loved knitting and crocheting, and have dabbled for a very long time, but I have always had such trouble with my tension, that my stitches were SO tight on my needles and I couldn’t ever fix it no matter how hard I tried. So I gave up. Over and over again, I gave up. All that changed when I found your website through Cat Bordhi’s website (who I stumbled across on Pinterest).

On a whim, I decided to try holding my yarn continental style and, like magic, I could control my tension and stitches! I knit and ripped for practice a few times, then I dove in headfirst and knit a baby hat. Now I’ve just started an adorable cardigan for a dear friend who is going to have her first baby this year.

So I just wanted to write & say thank you so much for your amazing videos. They (you) have LITERALLY changed my life.

Sincerely,
Name redacted “

Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the wonder and delight of being a teacher, an enabler. Exactly THIS is what gives my life so much meaning and makes all my hard work worthwhile. I love to share the joy of knitting, especially the joy of knitting well and with pleasure.

I will leave on this next trip knowing that what I have to share may make some knitter(s) very happy. I look forward to all the wonderful knitters I will meet in the next few weeks!

Air Force 1 in Boston

The Capitol in Concord NH