Heading to Copenhagen

I only had 4 days notice I would be traveling to Copenhagen for a business trip so I had to scramble to get everything ready to go - both from a work and knitting perspective. Gathering up my power converters, passport, maps, addresses of hotels, company badge, work office and customer locations, telephone numbers for co-workers in country is the easy part. Planning ahead for "travel along" knitting takes longer because some knitting projects are much more conducive to travel than others because of limited space to work on the plane as well as limited space in luggage. Now that the airlines have imposed stringent weight restrictions and a fee for checking luggage it is even more imperative to plan ahead. Scottie put in a request for various sweater kits from renown Danish knitwear designer Hanne Falkenberg. Now, I'm not sure how much room Scottie thought I would have in my suitcase to carry "lots and lots" of yarn back from Denmark for her and she was quite optimistic I would manage just fine... but to be on the safe side, I used a larger than normal suitcase and I tossed in some "space bags" to compress the yarn and clothing for the journey back. My itinerary dictated a 9 hour flight to Paris, a 5 hour layover and then a 2 hour flight to Copenhagen. The Air France flight was code shared with Delta and had a wonderful in flight system with movies and music. Like all flights these days, it was packed full but I managed to get a seat in the center section that had only two passengers for 4 seats. So I had an empty seat next to me to put my knitting essentials close by. That is the best! The other occupied seat in my row with taken up by a handsome military pilot from Seville, Spain who was working with the German Air Force in Munich. As a matter of fact, 30% of the flight was filled with German Air Force men and women who had just concluded a 7 week joint military exercise with the United States and Japan in Alaska. I am never able to sleep on flights so I settled in to watch in flight movies and knit. Soon after take off, the cabin lights were dimmed for all the other passengers who are able to peacefully slumber over the northern Atlantic Ocean, however the lighting was too dim for me to read the complex cable pattern I was working on for Project 8 Nihon Vogue. What to do, what to do? I recalled I had a tiny, battery operated reading light from Eddie Bauer that I keep in my work back pack. I took the rubber band off my yarn ball, looped it through the link on the light and through the cup holder above my tray table. Voila! The nearby passengers witnessed a demonstration of ingenuity arise out of necessity and I was able to continue knitting for several more hours.