When I turned 40 a couple of years ago, I put myself on a five-year plan. I planned to sell my townhouse and move into a house with a bigger yard for my dogs. Having been recently divorced, I wanted to find myself in a loving, healthy relationship again. And I wanted to travel more and enjoy life in my forties, more than I did in my twenties and thirties, which weren’t always so great. I’d throw in weight loss too, but hey, one thing at a time. Let’s not get too crazy.

The year of my fortieth birthday is when travel really took off (pun intended) for me. I hit Boston for a long weekend and was snowed in by a blizzard. I took a girls trip to Tucson for a much-needed spa retreat. My aunt took me to Italy for two weeks (yeah, she’s pretty great). I visited New Orleans, Nashville, Puerto Vallarta, made a trip down to Texas to visit family, and ended my year with a trip to San Diego. The following year was filled with more trips to great destinations, as was this year.

Knitting came with me on each and every one of those trips, and I’m pretty particular about what I choose to bring along. For me, airplane knitting needs to be simple and relatively mindless because I will inevitably get interrupted mid row by an interested neighbor or flight attendant, and that’s totally fine. It also needs to be a single-color project, so I’m not rolling balls of different colored yarn under my seat or down the aisle (which has happened).

Over the years, particularly since the 9/11 attack, I’ve seen questions come up in Ravelry posts about whether or not it’s okay to bring needles on a plane. If you’re still uncertain … the answer is “yes, you can.” TSA even has it posted on their website. Now, I’m not saying you might not get a difficult TSA agent or a flight attendant who isn’t aware of (or doesn’t care about) the policy. In the end, it is at their discretion. I’ve just been fortunate enough in all my domestic and international air travel over the last 20 years (knock on wood because I’m boarding a plane again this week) to not have my needles confiscated.

So, how do I do it? Well, I travel with a project already in progress on my circular stainless steel needles, along with extra yarn, and a small tool pouch. I always leave the scissors at home, but I do bring my little Clover thread cutter pendant, which apparently is also a no-no, but it hasn’t been an issue thus far. I also have a long strand of waste yarn in my pouch just in case there comes a day they don’t let me bring my needles past security. If needed, I will just transfer my stitches to the waste yarn and sadly hand over my needles. And as for needles, I don’t bring expensive ones. I can stand to lose a pair of good $15 needles, not a pair of super fancy $40 needles.

Safe travels over the holiday season everyone!

Epilogue
How’s the rest of the five-year plan going? Well, that same year that I turned 40, I reunited with an old flame from college and we began dating. Two years later, I’ve now sold my townhouse and we’ve begun a new life together in a house with a bigger yard for the dogs. They think he’s pretty great too.