the Amtrak knitting car

This is an Amtrak Lounge Car. Not any Lounge Car in particular, just a representative of such.
When I travel to and from California on the Southwest Chief I spend most of my waking hours in the lounge car. Why? First of all, it has great light and a much better view of the awesome scenery passing by outside. Second, you can often meet some nice folks in the public space of the lounge car. Third, I have to sleep in my seat and I just don't sleep well in a place where I am also spending all of my waking hours.
On my most recent trip, from which I just returned, I was in the Lounge car reading when I glanced over and saw that the couple next to me were doing some sort of something with yarn. They were using these plastic thingies with pegs that I have seen before at various craft stores. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked what they were doing. They described it as "cheating knitting," but they were really enjoying it and were busy "knitting" scarves for their granddaughters. They pointed out that the man down the way was doing "real knitting," which turned out to be crochet. The gentleman crocheting looked like he had just walked out of a ZZTop video and that he would have been more comfortable riding a Harley, John Deer, or Big Rig of some kind than crocheting on a train, but alas he was a lover of all the fiber arts. At the sight of all of this "knitting" I decided I had to get out my own project and join the fun. The next thing you knew the woman behind me was knitting too. It was like a regular old Stitch N Bitch right there on the old Southwest Chief number 4 train.