When I left Albuquerque on Sunday, I remembered to pack what I think of as my “traveling crochet,” but I forgot to pack any time to work on it.

Still, when I got up early yesterday and made my way on Interstate 44 from St. Roberts, Missouri, to Edwardsville, Illinois, I still had some misguided (as it turns out) hope that I would get some work done.

As I traveled east, past the Jesse James Wax Museum in Stanton, Missouri, I was reminded of my long ago ancestors made the trek westward from St. Louis to California during the Gold Rush, and it was there, somewhere near the Feather River, that they managed to amass enough gold to go back to Illinois to purchase some land.

Unfortunately, some catastrophe befell their first efforts, so they went back and started over. This time, however, they met with more success getting the gold to it’s destination–Madison County, Illinois.

And yesterday, like my ancestors before me, I too was successful in returning to Madison County, Illinois.

I arrived shortly after nine o’clock in the morning, and while most of the day was spoken for, I had expected there might be some time to get at least a little crochet done, but instead, I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down at a cousin’s kitchen table and got to the business of visiting.

My traveling crochet stayed in the car, while I chatted with one person and then another. And it sat in the car while I went about the business that had brought me there in the first place, and then later in the day, when it was time to leave and continue my eastward trek, it stayed in the trunk where I had left it.

And today, I continued eastward, finally arriving in Durham, North Carolina well after dark, the only progress I made on my traveling crochet was getting it unpacked:

I am hopeful that tomorrow, I will actually get to sit down with a cup of coffee, and begin working my way forward, one stitch at a time.