Knitting on a Jet Plane

It does happen.

It's even, well, allowed.  On this morning's flight to Charlotte, I was seated next to an overly-perfumed and made-up woman and her teenage daughter (ditto).  They slept most of the flight.  I sewed buttons onto a baby sweater and knitted.  As we were making ready to land, I got out my bag and began stowing the knitting away.  This involved shifting everything in my bag.  As I was rearranging the sack of clementines and shoving in the knitting, the woman gestured to my bag and said "I can't believe they let you carry those on board!" in shocked tones.  

I thought she was referring to the fruit, so I told her, no, food was allowed as long as it wasn't packed in water.

"Oh, no," she said, "I meant those!" and pointed to my knitting needles.  (They were aluminum straights, but they're size fives.  Not miniscule by any means.)

No, I said, they're perfectly legal.

"But it would be so easy to..." She made a motion as if to stab someone.

Well, I said, you'd probably actually do more damage with a sharpened pencil.  Or a toothpick.  Security is fine with it, I said.  (Besides, I thought, anyone who takes the trouble to knit lace is not going to risk ruining it by doing something ridiculous like stabbing another passenger!)

She turned away with a sigh and a shake of her head, and said nothing more to me.  I shook my head, too.  I sew buttons on baby sweaters and I knit lace.  Clearly I'm a hardened criminal who oughtn't to be allowed to have even semi-sharp objects.

Look.  Lace and non-dangerous needles!

Hopefully my seat-mates on the next flight will be more enlightened.  But even if they're not, I'm going to knit anyway.  And then I'm going to drive home and hug my cat!