Diana’s Aran Shawl from Three Black Sheep - Day 4

Cables and more cables...

This section was all about the cables.  The other one was, too, but this one felt a bit more...well...relentless.  I counted, and there were eight columns of sixteen cables each.  That means I used my new cable needle 128 times to accomplish this section.  That's a lot, even for a knitting fanatic like me.

We were on vacation this past week, driving all the way to Texas to show the boy some college campuses.  Down and back, we spent thirty-six hours in our car--lots of knitting time!  Most of us knitters don't think of travel time as lost at all...travel time--either driving or flying--is ideal knitting time.

I travel for work and for fun--and for DestiKNITions.  I love travel.  As such, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you the two travel aps I won't leave home without:

Waze - Since a fellow author shared this wonderful navigation app with me at a book fair two years ago, it has become my go-to travel partner.  I find it far more accurate and helpful than the standard map program that came with my phone, and I like that it can go with me to any car--my own, a rental, or a friend's car.  I love the turn-by-turn audio directions and the crowd-sourced real-time traffic info, although I will admit the program occasionally makes routes more complicated than they need to be in the name of shaving a few seconds or minutes off a travel time.  I'll always take a less-turns-but-five-minutes-longer trip.  I often travel alone, but fellow "Wazers" make me feel like I'm never completely alone.

RoadNinja - This is one of those not-yet-perfect but still useful programs.  I'm a massive fan of Steak-n-Shake, and one of my on-the-road traditions is at least one Mocha milkshake from the place on every trip.  Road Ninja was made for just such cravings.  It will tell you (most of the time) which restaurants and gas stations are along exits on most major highways.  My husband is partial to Shell gas, so this helps here as well.  If your life is enhanced by knowing where you can get your Dunkin' on or where to grab your next Grande Skim Mocha from Starbucks, this is for you.  Vital travel info, right?

One more travel note:  this particular trip was the first in a long time that didn't include DestiKNITions. Our schedule was just too tight with campus visits to carve out yarn shop time in advance.  Plus, I thought maybe my son deserved one trip that was mostly about him, rather than about yarn.  Guess what?  That was a bad thing.  Turns out that while not all of us love yarn, we all love the adventure DestiKNITions sends us on in a new city.  Usually, we're scrambling to include all the recommendations I get when we go somewhere.  This time, we spent way too much time staring at each other asking, "what do you want to do now?"  Never again.  From here on in, DestiKNITions comes along on every trip!

So far this shawl has been in six states: Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and I'm enjoying each segment.  I'm looking forward to the finished product of this "seasoned traveler."