Bertie Bott's, trip knitting and other uses for knitting tools!

We took advantage of a school break last week and some frequent flyer miles and headed to Florida for a few days of fun in the sun. After a quick stop in Orlando to visit Hogsmeade & Hogwarts, where we sampled Butter Beer, visited Olivander's Wand Shop and dined at the Three Broomsticks, we headed south to stay with some good friends in Miami. There, we hit South Beach, went out in the boat and sampled some of the freshest and most delicious seafood. Yum!

Side note: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans are the perfect entertainment for kids! (Okay, and adults, too!) We took some to our friends in Miami and it was too funny. Sampling these jelly beans one by one, waiting to see if the flavor is good or awful, and then trying to figure out what the awful flavor was... hysterical. Thankfully I only got a few bad ones - soap and what tasted like lemon pledge and sap. Fortunately, the kids got all the terrible ones - vomit, earwax, dirt, etc. Fun fun!

I packed two knitting projects for the trip. One was a lace-weight project with Noro Sekku, and the other was a hat in the new Malabrigo Rasta. I'm not a big fan of lace-weight yarns, but since we had a 3 hour layover at JFK (yay, frequent flyer miles!!) I started that project first. I won't divulge the pattern here because you'll see it this Friday on "Free on Fridays". I can say that it was my first project with lace-weight yarn where I opted to use the Addi Turbo Lace Needles.

These needles were just fantastic to work with! The points are incredibly pointy (without hurting my fingers) and the needle surface is just grippy enough that the teeny-tiny-skinny yarn did not slip. I will go so far as to say I enjoyed knitting with this yarn - and that's a complete turnaround for me. It just shows you how important the right tools are. Here's a preview of the scarf, straight from South Beach. (That's Marc teaching Helen how to boogie board in the background.) It's almost finished, too. Just a few more rows to go and you'll see it on Friday.

My Rasta and Brittany double pointed needles saw no action. They were just along for the ride. I did learn that Brittany dpns are versatile tools though, and can be used for non-knitting related activities! Our flight from Miami to JFK was delayed, so we were put on another plane that should have given us plenty of time to make our connection to Burlington. However, things did not go according to plan, and we ended up sprinting what felt like 2 miles to our connecting gate, running past people on the moving walkways, screaming "On your left!". We arrived just seconds before they closed the door to our plane.

When we got into our seats on the minuscule plane, it was 8pm, and we had not eaten since 2:30pm. (Bad planning mom, I know!) I had purchased some of those (super healthy!) Cinnabons in the airport, but had forgotten silverware. Those things are certainly not finger foods, but at this point, we were starving. Those small planes don't even have silverware, and so I searched my backpack to see what I had that could possibly assist us in eating the messiest meal possible.

Thankfully, my Brittany size 13 double pointed needles did the trick! I used one as a knife to cut the Cinnabons into small pieces. Sophie and Helen each used one as a fork, and Marc used 2 as chop sticks. Our tummies were satisfied, and the needles received a good cleaning when we arrived home, and they're good as new. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!