One of my work colleagues lives in another part of the country and travels here for part of the week. When here, we often “do lunch.” She’s been watch in fascination while I knit on a project or two, so I offered to teach her how to knit.

Last weekend she went to a LYS in her home town and picked up some lovely blue worsted-weight yarn and a pair of plastic needles.

Plastic needles that, she tells me, were so flexible that they could easily bend and then spring right back.

I never got to actually see these needles because they were confiscated by airport security. Despite the listing of knitting needles TSA list of permitted items as OK in both carry on and checked luggage. Despite her helpful demonstration of the flexibility of the needles that rendered them almost completely unsuitable as stabbing weapons.

Knitting lessons have been postponed until replacements can be obtained. I’m thinking bamboo and plastic circs, which won’t show up on xray.

I feel so safe now, knowing that some over-zealous TSA employee has kept the skies safe from attack by a needle-wielding knitting neophyte.

I think the TSA should encourage knitters to travel often with large pointy sharp needles in hand. We’d make a terrific backup security team, donchathink? Even though most knitters are actually quite peaceful people. Heck… they should pay us to fly with needles!