Monday, July 21, 2014

Road knitting

Road trips (as long as you're not the driver, heh) are usually excellent for getting a lot of knitting done...


unless the roads look like this...


in which case, it's good to have some straight knitting you don't have to look down at.  Because wow: even in the rain there is so much that's gorgeous to see!


Normally I'm in charge of navigation on a road trip and I'm pretty good at it too, but Pete found this extra-back-road route to where we were going last weekend that branched off from the original back-road one I had pinned down.  And what a beauty it was, through a northeast corner of Ontario where the trees are plentiful and the Canadian Shield is everywhere.


The day was sort of interesting in terms of weather - rain, sun, more rain.  And construction, of course...


because it's summer.  But when it's lane reduction on a bridge between two parts of a pristine lake, it's hard to mind.

Especially if you have knitting in your lap.


The whole way along this route I thought of one thing:


the fact that European people came and settled this area in the mid-1800s.  They had next to nothing, and the bugs here are unbelievable, so even building a basic shack to sleep in would have been an ordeal never mind the years of backbreaking work that had to follow that first job.  Without, you know, insect repellant or bite cream.


When I knit, I do it for fun - even when I'm knitting socks, much as I really like to wear them.  I'm not knitting to clothe my ever-growing family, with yarn I spun myself in breaks between 18 thousand other daily jobs, so that we all have something to put between our feet and our shoes in winter, or in Bug Season.


I wonder what they would think if they could see their great- and great-great grandchildren tooling around these back roads today, in an air-conditioned vehicle, knitting for leisure of all things, between glances at a very portable map?

And I wonder whether you had a good weekend.  Hope so!  And I hope I see you tomorrow, too.

2 comments:

Monica said...

Loved the pics; felt like I was in the car with you guys ;-) knitting my cowl!

Mary Keenan said...

Wish you had been, Monica - more in-car knitters always welcome :^)