Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Airport Security and Knitting needles. A comedy.

So about 45 minutes ago I went through security at Sacramento International Airport (in Sacramento CA in case anyone happens to care).

In my purse ( a Namaste Monroe bag, again...in case anyone cares...and because I kind of want to show off that I have a Namaste Monroe bag) I have my Puff knitting and also two skeins of Red Heart Soft, a set of size 9 dpns, 32 inch Circular size 9, and the size 4 dpns required for puff knitting.

I am no stranger to air travel. I have flown several times with knitting and knitting related paraphernalia. I've never been questioned or challenged about anything.

Today was different.

So I'm going through the security line and as I walk up to the little table where all the trays are, I unzip my boots (shut up. I know, I shouldn't have worn knee high boots for air travel this day in age...but whatever they are hot and I love them.) and start gathering all of my pocket stuff to put in the little tray bucket thing. I walk up to the table, put all of my stuff in the trays, and lay my purse down in the tray (It's an Effing Namaste bag. I'm not putting this thing down on that dirty conveyor belt). I walk through like everyone else, raise my arms and get magnetically violated. After said violation I walk over to collect my stuff and the large busted, long armed woman with the metal detector wand is looking right at me.

Great. I've been singled out to be "randomly searched". They pull my bag out of the tray and Busty Lady starts rifling through. She gets to the center compartment and pulls out my knitting. SHE PULLED OUT MY KNITTING AND PULLED STITCHES OF THE NEEDLE IN THE PROCESS. Just for that alone, I should have gone completely batshit. You all should be watching me on the news right now.

I resisted the urge to go all Hulk on her ass, and just calmly asked her to please handle that with care. Then she comes to my bag'o puff knitting. She pulls out the DPNs and looks at me like I had a fuse sticking out of my shoe.

I eyeballed her back.

"What exactly are these for?" She asks.

"Knitting." I say.

"My grammy knits. I've never seen no Crazy lookin short sticks like this before" She says.

*sigh*

I explain the uses and advantages of DPN's and next thing I know, I have four women and one adorable and totally NOT straight Airport Security person standing around looking at my knitting needles. THEN she pulls out the puffs. OH SWEET BABY JEEZUS ON A CRACKER.

It took me 40 minutes to get through  A COMPLETELY DESERTED security line because I had to explain over, and OVER again to several different people the appeal of puffs.

ON the upside. I did get two phone numbers ( of elderly grandma types...but it counts) from women who want to learn to knit and want to be directed towards the Ossim that is Ravelry.

Moral of todays story is....

Well there really isn't a moral. It's just kind of a funny story.

2 comments:

  1. :) I got searched on the way back from Jamaica and when the lady opened my very carefully pack interchangeable needle sets one of the cords decided to kind of pop out and throw a stitch holder up. Scared the crap out of her.

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  2. ;)when my daughter took flight from Italy to UK (n.b European Union both countries) they put a side her suitcase ( not hand luggage) and she had to open it to allow them to go through the staff ...she was bringing me loads of nice Italian yarn , no needles...and of course, everyone looked at her as a geek...Non - knitters are funny people <3

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