Solid gold creativity

On Christmas Eve, Australian knitters got the Christmas present they’d been waiting for.  The Australian Government finally removed knitting needles from the list of items prohibited on a plane.

It’s been a sore point for many years that famous knitters in North America like Stephanie Pearl McPhee could swan on to a plane with an armoury of steel and bamboo implements.  While we in the Antipodes were having a little cry at check-in for all the wasted hours ahead when obliged to relinquish our project to the hold.  How was the heel going to get turned down there?

Knitters would scheme endlessly at ways to outwit the authorities.  Which just goes to show they’d got us knitters exactly right: we were not to be trusted. 

One woman on a blog speculated about using a bamboo circular to hold her hair in a bun while getting past the x-ray machine.  Which was clever, yes, and probably could have worked, only I did wonder a tad how she was going to explain the woolly mess on her tray table on the “final rubbish pick-up.”

And then — would you believe it? — we Australian knitters had been celebrating for a mere 24 hours when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up a US plane with chemicals in his underpants.  We’ve all been vwerry vwerry quiet ever since lest the Australian Government again put 2 and 2 together and get 5: knitters + Australian planes = terrorists in the US.

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Of all the needles worth getting caught for smuggling on to a plane it’d be my Clover 4mms made in Japan from the finest bamboo, or the acknowledged Rolls Royce of knitting needles, my 5mm Addi Turbo circular, made in Germany from nickel-plated brass.

The Clovers are as pleasing to look at as they are to use.  They’re long and light and strong with – really there’s no other way to say it — the most sweetly shaped knobs at the end.  The Addi Turbos claim to be the fastest in the business and they are.  Hollow little torpedoes, they move the yarn smoothly and silkily from one point to the other with a lovely airy click.

Both of them are shown in the picture, along with my unloved Casein needles and my current project.  The Caseins are the white ones and that’s because they’re made of milk.  Yes, milk.  Don’t ask me how a milk protein – Casein – ends up as a stick but it does.  They’re probably designed to imitate the antique needles made of ivory, yet given ivory was the ultimate covetable material I can only think it’s a rather poor imitation.  Because the Casein feels plasticky, and too cool and inert to my hand.

My current project is, wonders, not a sock.  It’s a short cardi-bolero-thingy from a Jo Sharp pattern.  This one’s definitely a “product” knit, not a “process” one.  Can’t say why but it’s boring to knit.  Only way I’ll be smuggling it on a plane is by wearing it.

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Images: Jo Sharp (top); by me (bottom)