You stay classy, San Diego

I lamented to my copilot a few days ago that I had done no proper knitting or proper knitting blogging for a couple of weeks. He assured me that life had just been busy and equilibrium would soon be restored. I'm still dubious, since life has me on the road yet again.

"Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina." - Ron Burgundy

As far as conferences for work go, it's hard to complain about visiting the ol' Whale's V. It also meant a good 4 and a half hours of uninterrupted plane knitting time (not to be confused with 'plain knitting time', which I assume would involve garter stitch). I decided to finish up the fingerless test mitts, which I had neglected since only one mitt was required for testing purposes. On the first flight leg, I completed the palm section and was confident that I could finish up the thumb with plenty of time to spare. I was planning to prep the yarn I'm going to use for WifeMomKnitter's shawl knit-a-long (a very free-form affair--choose your own pattern and timeline, and receive encouragement from fellow knitters). After boarding the second flight, I tried the mitt on--wait a minute...why is the thumb-hole sticking out of the palm of the mitt??? I willed the thumb-hole to shift to the correct spot. When that failed, I started willing my thumb to regrow out of the center of my palm. When that didn't work either, I sadly started pulling out the previous couple of hours' work. I don't think the woman next to me was a knitter, but she seemed to sense that a minor tragedy had occurred.

I've always been tempted to knit during conferences. I'm one of those people that tend to be able to focus better when I keep my hands busy, but I'm always afraid that the speaker will find it insulting (though personally I think it's a lot better than people whipping out their laptops during presentations, which happens all the time and seems to be perfectly acceptable). Mystery Wedding Project is a perfect candidate for this kind of thing; it's a 'turn your brain off' type of knitting. Unfortunately, it's starting to get a bit cumbersome in size to keep toting around, and damn it, I wanted to finish those mitts! This is one of the most laid-back conferences I've attended in a while, so I decided to test the waters. I whipped out my dpns and started to business, while trying to make it clear that I was still engaged. And...no one cared. Other that one of the conference organizers happily squealing "Look! She's knitting!" to her seatmate, not a soul even seemed to notice. So I learned some cool new tech stuff, and accomplished a little crafting as well:


I'm modeling it here so you're convinced that I actually made the left one, and am not just trying to pass off the right-hand one again.
Another interesting discovery is that what San Dieg-ans refer to as a 'tall boy' beer is substantially larger than what we midwesterners are used to. I was a bit embarrassed when this arrived for me:

Then on the way back to the hotel I even had an encounter with some wildlife:


Eep! American opposum! Not the cute NZ possum, unfortunately.
The only thing lacking? Actually starting on the shawl-a-long. Does picking out a yarn and pattern count?