Do You Like Surprises?

I don't.

Now, I'm not talking about little surprises like a check or hank of yarn in the mail. No, I'm talking big surprises... like surprise parties, or surprise vacations, or surprise out-of-town guests, or surprise plans... or changes in plans for that matter.... actually I'm not that big on change of any kind but we'll stick to my issues with surprises for now.

My husband once planned a wonderfully perfect weekend getaway and surprised me with the news over candlelight and champagne the night before we were supposed to leave. My resulting panic attack was clearly not the reaction he was looking for and I still feel bad that it didn't even occur to me to appear excited.

Anyway, travelling necessarily involves both change and, if you are doing so with 4 boys, surprises. And as I mentioned before, I don't travel well to begin with. I arrived at the airport with my online receipt and had to wait in line for an open ATM-type machine to get our boarding passes. This is where I discovered that our seats were scattered individually between rows 3 and 40. While this really wasn't a problem for me, I had a feeling it would leave at least a couple other passengers less than pleased. Based on this knowledge, I decided not to panic (huge step on my part) and figured that the flight attendants and other passengers would be accommodating. (They were.)

We then proceed to the mile long security line. For some reason that whole process always makes me nervous. I don't know why. I've never tried to get anything more dangerous than my knitting needles on an airplane... and I had all my liquids/gels/pastes in little less-than-3oz containers gathered together in a quart size plastic bag, but I always step through that gate with fear that some unknown metal object is going to set off the alarm resulting in detention and a strip search where we discover it's the safety pin holding my bra together. No, I don't actually have a safety pin holding my under garments together but I do have an exceptional imagination for things that can go wrong in an airport.

Then there are the other members of my travelling party... the younger, more carefree, more fearless, more curious members... no make that member of my little clan. The one who entertains himself by doing things like hiding in the refrigerator while I'm carrying in groceries so he can "surprise" me when I open it to put food away. (Yes, we had the lecture... and yes, you can thank me for not posting that picture - yeah I took one - for fear of giving any of your dear children naughty ideas.)

This fedora clad chap had never been in an airport before and was apparently curious at the effectiveness of airport security... more specifically, he was curious to know if his i-pod would really set off the system if he carried it through in his pocket. It did. And yes, once I had regained my composure and rid myself of the images of them discovering a safety pin in his hopefully clean underwear (which he doesn't have either... the safety pin I mean), we had the airline security lecture as well. Then I took a couple, uh, Tylenol and prepared myself for the next 5 hours of travel.

I've let him play a lot of X-box over the last few days just to avoid surprises for a while.

And I've knit a bit. Here are my 4th pair of socks for the Summer of Socks 2008.



Spring Forward Socks
South West Trading Company TOFUtsies - Color 730 (pink)
Size 0 Knit Picks circular Magic Loop

These may be my favorite pair ever. I can actually imagine knitting this pattern again. The yarn was a bit splitty, but I love the finished result. I also found it worked well for this pattern because it was thinner than many of my other sock yarns which kept turning out too big in this pattern.

Next up...



A Swell Yarn Shop Skinny Duet in "Royal Tenor"

I'm knitting these while reading The Shack by William P. Young. Not sure what I think so far... about the book I mean... I love the socks.