Yesterday's soundtrack

Do you ever ask yourself hypothetical questions like this one: if there was a soundtrack for my day today, what would it be? I'm sure I'm not the only person who's thought of this. I mean, what are all those IPod commercials featuring people with dancing shadows and stuff about if not this exact sort of question? (This question with an advertising angle, of course.)

I had a very long day yesterday involving a business trip to Nashville. It was one of those fly in-meet-fly out business trips, but it got complicated by the severe weather we had across the entire middle region of the U.S. (Nashville can get some really nasty weather. Yesterday there were 70 mph wind gusts blowing the sheets of rain horizontally; I was glad to be sitting inside a cozy airport and not on a plane at that time.)

As you can imagine, the gate -- heck the entire airport -- was pretty chaotic for a couple hours. I think all flights in and out of the airport had ceased for at least 20 minutes while the violent winds and rain were sweeping through. There had been people from 4 separate flights at this one gate, all anxiously awaiting the opportunity to get the heck out of Nashville and begin or complete their journeys.

I was well-prepared for delays, though. In my spacious knitting/business bag, I had two small knitting projects (a sock and a hat), a book, and my MP3 player (in addition to my laptop and notebook for work, of course). While I was sitting at the gate patiently waiting with many others, I experienced a couple "soundtrack moments."

By 8:30 PM, there were only about 30 of us left sitting at the gate awaiting our plane from Chicago which would land, off-load passengers, and then load us up and return to Chicago. That's what we passengers and the gate agent urgently wanted to happen, at least.

I was knitting away on the sock and was listening to the randomly shuffled "Mellow" music playlist on my MP3 player. The plane from Chicago landed, people were walking off the jetway into the gate area, and "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen starts playing. ("Everybody knows that the boat is leaking; Everybody knows the captain lied; Everybody got this broken feeling; Like their father or their dog just died") Not a good sign. Sure enough, the gate agent announces a few minutes later that we won't be boarding right away.

About 40 minutes later, I'm still knitting away on the sock and listening to my Mellow music playlist. Another Leonard Cohen song comes on, "Hallelujah." Partly through the song, I have to pause the player as the gate agent announces that we can begin boarding the plane. And there I am, walking down the jetway with "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallaelujah, hallaelujah" echoing through my earphones and my head.

Classic soundtrack moments, no? If I was editing the movie of my day, those songs were totally perfect.

I got a lot of knitting done on the sock, too.

Fiona is kindly modeling the sock today. (Maybe I should submit this to Stuff on My Cat.com.) I think about 4 inches of that sock were done yesterday while I was on a plane or waiting at the gate for a plane. (Knitting really helps me with travel angst. I actually kind of look forward to business travel now because I know I'll get a good chunk of uninterrupted knitting time.)

This is my first toe-up sock. I'm using two patterns as references for this sock: Wendy Johnson's Generic To-up Sock Pattern and the Little Shell Rib stitch from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks (page 41). The yarn is Knit Picks Dancing and I think the color is Square Dance. I've had this sock yarn for many months and just haven't gotten around to using it until now.

Here's an extreme close up of the sock pattern.(I was having some fun with the zoom on the camera, wasn't I?)

Hey, it's getting spring like outside! Heads up: garden season is starting soon!