I am by no means the hardcore knitter that some of my friends are. Nevertheless, combine the facts that this trip involved loooooong flights on both ends, that knitting needles (particularly the pathetic plastic kind I was using) are no longer contraband on international airliners, and that I was returning to the U.S. just in time for a double baby shower for which I had had no time to shop (and anyway sort of wished to offer something a bit more personal than something from the registry), and it seemed like a good idea to plan a simple project to keep my fingers busy and produce suitably cute adjuncts to the registry picks for which my mother was graciously letting me add my name to the card.

Turns out I did precious little knitting on the airplanes, but found plenty of opportunities in airports, in my brother's in-laws' living room, and on the beach.

Sorry, no picture of the finished products: two hats and two pairs of booties, one in pink with pastel blue and green and one in blue with green and navy. Due to having had to start over one of the booties three times, I didn't actually finish the gifts until close to the end of the baby shower, and handed the final finished pair of booties off to one of the mothers-to-be after the rest of the gifts had been opened. And the battery on Mom's camera went caput before we could get the archival footage.

You can get the general idea from looking at the hat and socks that alpineflower made for her nephew, only imagine different colors and a bit more lumpiness. I'm not at all sure that my hats and booties will fit my new first cousins-once-removed at the same time, but all in all it wasn't too embarrassing for a first run at baby-gift stitchery.

I may graduate to sweaters yet.