It has been a long and exhausting day of travel, but not so long and exhausting that I couldn’t fit in some crochet.

Yesterday, when I was putting the finishing touches on packing for my upcoming trip, I was in a quandary about what to bring. I wanted to be able to work on the journey of a thousand crochet squares, but I didn’t have room to bring even a modest traveling stash, so I decided to bring the many crochet rectangles I had unearthed the other day and to leave things that needed more than joining or ends woven in behind.

This proved to be the best choice, even if it wasn’t my favorite.

The first part of my travel journey began before dawn, where I waited at the airport for the first of the day’s flights. Because of the early hour and the general sleepy tenor of the flight, I did not attempt to pull my crochet out, as I did not want to disturb my seat mates, but by the time I was on the second flight, everyone was awake, and I had my bent-tipped Clover needle at the ready and I began joining the rectangles one to another along their longest sides.

My efforts were only interrupted when the flight landed and I began the second leg of my journey: a road trip to Pittsburgh.

The first part of the drive I scored a spot in the back seat.

As a child, the back seat was the bane of my existence. Grown ups always got to sit in front where they could talk and choose the radio station. I spent many hours in the back seat reading the books and magazines I had brought along and desperately trying to engage my parents in games of twenty questions that they would have preferred not to play.

But today, I reveled in the invisibility and opportunity the backseat has to offer, and while my youngest son took the wheel for the first part of the trip, I continued to join more of the crochet rectangles.

But my time in the backseat had to end, and eventually we stopped. I took these photos of the work I had gotten done:

and then I resumed my non crochet adult life in the front seat as we continued on our way.

Tomorrow is a new day, an I am looking forward to putting these pieces together as they move toward their life of purpose, one stitch at a time.