the middle knitter

I promised I'd post something that had nothing to do with Harry Potter, so here it is! This is the pair of socks I worked on on my trip to Rome.

When I knit something, the circumstances under which I knit it tend to get associated with the item for me, so that particular item always represents certain memories. Well, these socks represent airplane hell.

I started them in the airport in Denver. By the time I finally got to Rome, I had finished all but the toe decreases on the second sock. The first lesson I learned was never, ever try to connect through Chicago in the winter. The second lesson I learned was that when you finally have a seat on a flight out of Chicago, DO NOT say, "No, this is great--once I get to London it will be easy!"

It was not easy. Nothing about London is easy. I'm fully convinced that Heathrow is built over a portal straight to hell.

I ended up spending twelve hours in Heathrow, trapped on a crowded concourse with not enough seats for all of the other stranded passengers. I had no money, because all of my money was in dollars, and I couldn't change it into pounds since my final destination was Rome, and I didn't want to deal with the massive fees to withdraw a small amount of money to hold me until I left the airport.

So, for twelve hours, I sat in the airport, knitting on these socks and eating the trail mix I had just happened to pack in my backpack (thank heaven I hadn't finished it on the plane), and trying to get enough out of the drinking fountain to quench my thirst. I did at one point meet a very nice British woman who gave me some chocolate. (She didn't even know that I was starving. At that point, I was so jetlagged and travelworn that I didn't even know I was starving.)

At any rate, after some time on standby, I finally made it to Rome, where I discovered that not only had my luggage been lost, but also every ATM in the airport was nonfunctional. So, I was hungry, and exhausted, and in bad need of a shower, and I was stranded in a foreign country at 3am, with no money. I think it was only because I was on the verge of tears that I managed to convince a cab driver to take my credit card.

That's the story. Once I made it to Rome and met up with Aud and got to bed, the trip was amazing, but I admit, there was a point there in Rome's airport where I sincerely wondered why I had thought it would be a good idea to leave my warm fire and my soft cat and travel halfway around the world by myself.

Oddly enough, though, I really like these socks. They're made from Knitpicks Essential Tweed in Plum. I tried a 6x2 rib on the leg and foot, and I really like the look. (Also, it was much less annoying to knit than, say, a 2x2 rib.) I also corrected a lot of the things that have been bugging me about my other handmade socks--feet that are too short, and heels that are not deep enough, so that the sock gets worn out right above where the heel stitch starts.

I hate to say it, but this post is probably about the closest you'll get to an account of my trip to Rome. I had big plans to go through day by day and post pictures of what we did and talk about it, but . . . I don't think it's going to happen. I'll throw up the photos into an album eventually, though, and you can look at that and pretend it's accompanied by witty and pithy narration (which is more than you'd get here anyway).