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Dear Jan,

I had a brief sojourn to the Toronto airport the last couple of days.  Yes, literally the airport and not Toronto - it was one of those business meetings, held in an airport hotel (I never even left the terminal, for heavens sake!), with tight schedules that don’t allow adventures into the city that is 20 miles or so away.

For those of you wondering about the security measures for flights from Canada to the U.S. - yes, you can bring your knitting (neither my metal circular needles nor my bamboo needles caused any concern once they were inspected), and yes, you will be inspected.  My bag was inspected twice (once every single item was removed and patted down), my bag was also swabbed twice, and even I was swabbed once.  All told - with short lines - security took about 40 minutes.  With long lines, I can see why you’d want to allow up to a couple of hours.

But, I made it back into the country, knitting intact.  My trip knitting was further progress on Norwegian Hugs.  Here are the beginnings of some sleeves.  Erica reminds me that I might be happier if I’d change to the proper needles - the circulars I’m using just don’t have the right flex for the magic loop method and I think I should change to dpns while I’m thinking of it.  Magic loop is slower for me than double points - just too fiddly.  And I put less stress on the fabric, especially in colorwork, with dpns.

Before I left on the trip, I frogged and reknit much of Springtime Sugarplums.  I am very happy, indeed, with the new gusset and thumb.  No bunching, the decreases up the pad of the thumb pull everything into place so nicely, and the mini-gusset that eases over the webbing between the thumb and hand seems just the trick.

Perhaps even more delightful - look what greeted me upon my return home.  My weeping pussy willow, bought for a lark at Trader Joe’s, must have remembered its Canadian providence, greeting me on my return from the Great White North with  catkins to remind us that it is Imbolc, halfway from the solstice to the equinox.

From close up they look like little candles, adding their light to the returning sun.  But from a distance they look like snowflakes, reminding me that we still have more of that to come.

I’ll do my best to take joy in whichever presents itself next, snow or sun.  I hope you are finding joys where you travel, too.

Love,

Ellen