Train Knitting

I take the VIA Rail train quite a bit (almost every month) to visit my parents. It is about a 4 hour train ride between my station in Oshawa, Ontario and the station where they pick me up/drop me off in Dorval, Québec. This gives me quite a bit of time to knit and read (and sleep).

I got the idea to mark my progress on my knit project by taking photos at every station from a post by Yarn Harlot (read it here). 

Great idea? Yes, in concept.

In practice it was slightly more difficult.

I left for Dorval station Friday night after a long work week, and I was exhausted. So guess how much knitting I got done... you done guessing? I knit 2 rows... 2 lonely rows. So my first attempt was a complete bust. So instead I told myself that I would knit furiously on the train ride back and have some great progress photos to show off. So here is how my train ride went:

 Just got on the train, take out my project, eager to start making some progress.

 First stop - Cornwall (one hour into the ride). Knitting alone could not keep my attention so I started to read. Then quickly realized that this sock pattern was way too complicated to knit while reading a book that was as interesting as this one was. So I took a break from knitting to read. 

Then I fell asleep and did not get a picture at the next stop (Kingston) and did not make any progress on the sock until the last hour of the train ride.

 Just before my stop in Oshawa.

So not much progress... I did not even finish the leg. Oh well. Does everyone else have as much trouble as I do staying awake while knitting? I need something else to hold my attention while I knit. I need to be watching TV or a movie to stay awake.

I really don't know how she got such crisp pictures of her knitting while sitting in a moving vehicle. Maybe an airplane is steadier than a train, but every time I wanted to take a picture, the train would jolt and it would get blurry.

I am going back on the train next week to visit for Thanksgiving, so maybe I will try this experiment again. This time I plan to bring my portable DVD player to help keep me awake while I knit.