SassyBlonde

Oh, ho, hum. Or rather, Hi ho, hi ho. Exactly two weeks from today, the bus takes off yet again for another orchestra tour. This time, it's the dog tour, the Christmas show, and people, there will be knitting.

At this very moment, in my living room in the Knitting Trunk, sit fourteen neatly packed Ziploc project bags, complete with their required materials and instructions as well as my new needle set and knit-knacks bag, packed for travel. I don't think I've ever been so happy about socks and scarves and hats and sweaters in the making. (All of these projects and the unfinished ones I'm already working on have been duly cataloged over at Ravelry, for you knitters in the know and having invites-- I swear to God Ravelry may be the new YouTube for me.)

See, for those of you who don't see me on a daily basis, knitting kind of translates for me into what other women think of a spa days or weekend vacations.That being said, I can only do it when my to-do list is carefully balanced or I have no other choice. In this case it's a little of both: when my to-do list is too long, I get anxious and fret away my precious free time trying to whittle away at it. When it gets short I get restless and start to make work for myself to compensate. When I have no choice, such as on bus travel performance tours, it's a perfect medium: I'm simply forced to accept what I can't change and happily churn away at the project in my lap, like a child in time-out.

These tours are like vacations for me in some ways-- I'm not really responsible for where I sleep, where and when I eat, what my schedule is, or anything else but getting on the bus on time and playing my clarinet. It can be really freeing once you get past the crazy people that inevitably make up a percentage of your traveling companions, and a good set of headphones make the world an infinitely brighter place, as does a place in the stage manager's van from time to time to escape the voices of braying assholes who complain too much. Pop in the iPod phones and soon all you have to worry about is where you should turn the heels of a sock and what on Earth the hero or heroine of your audiobook will do to get out of that mess.

There are socks of every description begging to come to life, beautiful scarves and hats, and even a gorgeous sweater in the queue. I wonder how many of my colleagues will want to learn this time? Last time we had sixteen out of forty clickety-clicking away, so anything's possible. I'll try to get photos up of the progress, but don't expect a lot of disclosure-- there are Christmas gifts in line, so there will be gaps until after the holidays.