Scarf FINISHED!!

[Alison] I am still stunned by the fact that I can knit in the car. I almost said “while driving” but I haven’t got to that point yet. Unless the road is very very twisty, and the trees and close to the edge of the road, I can knit with impunity. I always have to look at my work while I’m doing it, but I can look up frequently and scan for wildlife or other fascinomas, and still keep track of the pattern. More importantly, I don’t get sick to my stomach. For a person who can almost talk oneself into motion sickness while not moving, this is quite an accomplishment. So rest assured, knitting is being accomplished on this long driving trip.

This brings me to another distantly related topic, the non-twisty-ness of the road. It is pretty amazing that the road down from Alaska through the Yukon and BC is relatively straight or only gently curving, given the mountainous nature of much of the terrain. There has been some considerable work on straightening initially tortuous sections to the point of bone-straightness in some instances. I remember hearing that Prince Charles had once commented on the “unnecessary” wide swath cut through the landscape for the AlCan highway, and I must say that I concur… the roadway itself plus the verge on either side seem to be pointlessly wide trough much of the highway’s course. Now that it has been such a devastating year for forest fires in BC, however, I can now see the utility of having the wide right-of-way as a potential firebreak, and for the driver, the opportunity to spot wildlife before it/they spring out onto the road is an advantage as well. (Also straightening adds to the areas knitting output.) What does Prince Charles know of these things? SFA, obviously. And me too. XOXOXOX