Life, Knitting and the Pursuit of Roller Coasters

This weekend was my first road trip of the season, and my first chance to try out the knitting in amusement parks experiment. For the most part, a rounding success. With Nicole at the wheel, I had two lengthy drives and several short drive during which I was able to knit. Instead of focusing on the chevron scarf as I’d intended, having turned the heel on Thursday night, I kept on going with the Baudelaire sock as car knitting. Although I did do a little blind knitting on the stockinette sock once it got too dark to see what I was doing very well. We got to our hotel, watched the guys get drunk and play poker for a while and crashed for the night around 3.

Saturday morning we headed to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom for cheap season passes and some quick rides in the morning. The first test for the sock: park security. The bag screener looked though my camera bag, then opened the knit sack, looked at me quizzically and said “knitting?” and I just smiled and replied “yup”. And she let me though without any further questions. I knit while we waited in line for Chang, I knit while the guys rode T2, I knit while we waited for them to finish the extra rerides they snagged on Thunder Run and Twisted Twins. I even knit a little on the ferris wheel. I didn’t get too many strange looks (except from my friends, and it was as much strange looks as it was them sitting and watching trying to figure out how it all worked). And yet somehow while Bugs and Daffy were visiting with us when we took a short break, I didn’t think to hand one of them the sock for a photo op.

We headed out on the road (more car knitting) and stopped by the KY Action Park to ride the Alpine Slide. It has to be fun, there was a waiver involved. An Alpine Slide is basically a cement trough with twists and turns built onto the side of a hill. Ride a chairlift to the top, grab what is essentially a sled with wheels and ride back down to the base of the hill.

From there we got to our main reason for the trip, the Rumblefest coaster event at Beech Bend Amusement Park in Bowling Green, KY. We arrived in time to take a go-kart run and ride the drop tower before heading back for the wonderful dinner the park setup for us. The sock came out once the food was done and while we waited for things to progress.

After dinner, we had a walk-through tour of the Kentucky Rumbler with the ride’s designer where we got to climb around under the ride for a while. Here’s a photo of me knitting on the deadman. And the sock got to walk out on the brake run.

Following the tour, I discovered that there was a needle fatality. Not as a result of knitting in the park specifically or even rough handling of the bag, but from taking the sock in and out of the bag during the tour when I also had the free t-shirt the park gave us rolled up in the go-knit pouch. If it weren’t a possible security concern, I’d probably switch to metal needles for in-park knitting to try to prevent this sort of an issue but it really survived well all day until that point.

Once the Exclusive Ride Time started, the sock and camera bag spent the remainder of the evening living in the bin in the station while I proceeded to ride the Rumbler for almost 4-straight hours and probably a total of around 70-80 ride cycles. It was a blast.

Sunday, we drove all the way back up to Michigan. And with Nik in the driver’s seat glancing over to see if I had a finished sock yet, I finally bound off the second Baudelaire somewhere between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.

These are my favorite socks to date. I love the pattern (definitely a winner from Cookie) and the yarn (gorgeous and rich and subtle from Sundara) and I love how they fit (yay me). They were my first toe-ups which is something I will no longer shy away from and I also learned that it’s far easier to match a pair with a more intricate pattern repeat than it is to eyeball sizing a plain pair. I knew exactly how many repeats of the lace to do before turning the heel, and exactly how many cable twists to put into the cuff on the second sock.

I’m starting to think that the rest of my wardrobe pales in comparison to these socks. I love them and I want to show them off and I have no idea what to wear with them.

I’ve been thinking about blogging instead of actually blogging this week. I’ve got plenty to talk about though. Mostly knitting related. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic or saddened by the horrific events of this week in the news, but if knitting is a coping method, then talking about knitting is too.

For some reason I’m becoming enamored with complex patterns right now. It’s always at the most inconvenient times though. Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, it is in fact approaching spring and summer, and for me, that means that coaster season is ramping up. I’ve got my first amusement park road trip planned for this coming weekend and a longer trip planned next month. Many weekends will be spent traveling and while I can play with more complex knitting on flights or maybe even as a passenger in the car, it’s probably best for me to stick with fairly simple projects while I’m on the road. So I should be dreaming of more simple patterns or at least those with easy to remember repeats that just look complicated. Instead, I’m eyeing things like the Austrian-patterned knee high socks in the Socks.Socks.Socks book or Eunny’s Bayerische socks or Nancy Bush’s Chalet Socks. I have this odd all-consuming itch to make teeny tiny cables on little bitty sock needles and I think that itch needs to be scratched soon.

Of course, I also want another pair of jaywalkers and a pair of monkey socks for myself, and I want to make Cookie’s Twisted Flower socks, and keep some needles free for the rest of the sock madness patterns, and make mom another pair or two, and… too many to list really.

Not that I don’t already have plenty in progress. It’s definitely time to tackle a roundup of the WIPs. And I need to show a little bit of discipline and wrap up a couple projects before I start adding more to the list. Really.

Pomotomous - these are my more complex linger and savor slow moving sock project right now. I’m still on sock #1, slowly making my way onto the foot. I’m not sure why I’m being pokey with this pattern, the repeats aren’t that difficult to remember despite being a reasonable-sized chart. It may be all the twisted stitches. I am enjoying the yarn however, so it is kinda nice to savor it and use it up slowly. They’ll get done when they get done and not a second before.

Baudelaire - These are moving along a little faster, I’m ready to do the heel on sock #2. Once I get the heel turned, the cuff can and should finish up fairly quickly. I just need to sit down and do it. I love how the first sock came out and I can’t wait to wear the finished pair. These should be wrapping up soon.

JKnits stockinette socks - The first sock that I was working on when the Harlot was here is done and I’ve started sock #2. These are going to be my trial at in-park knitting this weekend. I’ve got the go-knit pouch all ready to go and depending on how much in-park knitting I actually do, I may have this pair done this weekend. I’ll probably try to keep some stockinette socks on the needles all summer to serve as in-park knits if these work out well this weekend.

Amusement Park Chevron Scarf - This is getting longer and longer when I pick it up. I’m almost to the halfway point and I still absolutely love it. It’s quick and simple and easy to pick up and knit a couple rows here and there. If it weren’t getting so long, it would be a good candidate for in-park knitting. Instead, this will be my car/hotel knitting this weekend between parks and on the long road down to and back from Kentucky. Its another project that I think may wrap up sooner rather than later.

I also added two new projects to my needles this last weekend.

Mad Weave Socks - I’m out of the competetive side of sock madness, but I’m still knitting the patterns and this was the one released for round 4. I had originally started it in some Wildfoote that was dark purples with turquoise and pink, but that yarn will get a new life as my next stockinette pair as it was a little too dark to show off the patterning. So I frogged it and cast on with this bright and fun merino from KimiK. My last sock madness socks were sunset socks, these are going to be my sunrise socks and so far the colors are showing off the pattern remarkably well. They’ve been my bedside knitting for the last couple nights.

Also new, despite several failed and naieve attempts with other yarns, I’ve made my first forray into real lace knitting with real laceweight yarn. I got the knitpicks needle set over the weekend and grabbed the single ball of red lacy lamb I had purchased last summer and cast on this scarf from Victorian Knitting Today. I’ve done enough with sock-weight yarn now, that the laceweight isn’t seeming nearly as intimidating. I’ve made it though the first repeat of the center pannel pattern (I don’t claim to be fast) and I’m enjoying it as well. It’s an 8-row repeat done 48 times, and I suspect it will grow slowly and be a much longer term project until I clear the needles some more and increase my comfort level with both the laceweight yarn and the knitpicks needles. If this goes well, I’ve got some other laceweight yarns in the stash to play with eventually too and I’ve built up a bit more of a lace library to play from.

As for the legwarmers that I gave up on in February, they finally got frogged tonight for being too tight. I’ll give that pattern another chance later on. For now I’m far more intrigued with cables and lace than I am with colorwork. I think that’s all thats on the needles for now. All these itches and a bout of start-itis, another STR Sock Club Kit package (I really should get around to making the first kit soon too) and some more loophole purchases lately may add some more things to the mix however.

Gromit says, “Mom, get out of the window, I’m trying to stalk the birds.”

My third round sock madness socks are done now. I don’t know what it was about this pattern, but it this round seems to be going a lot slower than the previous rounds.

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish quite quick enough to get through to the next round. But I got a finished pair of socks out of the deal. Or, actually, mom got a finished pair of socks out of the deal. I brilliantly started the toe too soon on the first sock, so they were short enough to be uncomfortable for me, and fit my mom perfectly.

I’m still digging for the tag from this yarn as it was fabulous to work with and I loved how the colors came out and I want to attribute that hand-painting work to the proper person and maybe see if they have more for sale. All I know is that it was an ebay purchase sometime last spring and the colorway is called Muted Sunset. Very aptly named and I felt like the plain stockinette sections of the sock definitely have a streaky clouded sunset look to them, no strange pooling or striping, just well distributed hand painted colors.

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Update: I found the tag for the yarn! It was dyed by Aspen Moon Arts.

Stupid me had to do silly things like sleep, and work. Oh well, I can slow down on finishing the second sock now (who am I kidding, it’ll still get finished tonight). Congrats linnakat, I’ll be cheering you on in the sweet 16!

Must. keep. knitting.

This is my sock #1 of round 3 of Sock Madness. (can’t remember who dyed the yarn, it was an ebay purchase… but I do remember the colorway name. Muted Sunset. )

5 Marginally deplorable things I’ve done in the last 24 hours in order to finish this sock:

1) cast on and started knitting in a team status meeting

2) knit in the elevator while walking out to my car at the end of the day

3) snuck in a few rows discreetly at my desk this afternoon while waiting for software to install.

4) knit while driving and waiting in the drive-thru line at McDonalds.

5) deprived myself of sleep (staying up late isn’t unheard of for me… getting up early to keep going, pretty much unheard of, and I did it this morning and probably will again tomorrow morning.

• A trend.
• A free variation on the pattern that I actually kinda like a little better than the original.
• A knitter with a weakness for anything remotely reminiscent of amusement parks. (as an aside to the yarn-dyers out there who may stumble upon this, please don’t take note of this particular obsession of mine, I’d like to have a little money left to visit the amusement parks too).
• A far too convenient shopping locale.
• A very dangerous loophole that I have yet to close.

There’s one obvious and logical conclusion that can come from adding up all of these factors.

I spent Monday evening working on the start of a Claudia’s Handpainted carousel & cotton candy chevron scarf.

And I love it!

While I was eating lunch, I took a headcount in the comments, plugged the numbers in at Random.org.  The knitter winner is Theresa, non-knitter winner is Lori! Congrats, I’ll email you both this evening.

Thanks so much for all the comments! It’s been fun branching out of my shell and meeting all of you the last few weeks, even if only virtually.

And today has been a blast tracking down a lot of the blog posts about yesterday and placing virtual places with real faces (even if I really wasn’t all that social yesterday and only met a few people officially, I’m still recognizing a few people I saw in passing) I thought my bloglines was full before, I’ve added a ton of new blogs to my reading list, and Dana hasn’t even posted her nametagged list of bloggers who were in attendance yet which I’m sure is going to add several more on to my list.

That is the only appropriate word to start a speech with when it starts almost 3 hours late.  Stephanie came out a little blurry, apparently I didn’t have a steady hand…

What a day. I wouldn’t wish Stephanie’s day today on anyone, but I also can’t wait to read how she writes it up.  I can’t think of any other group that would be so patient and understanding.

She’s going to be late? No problem, we’re going to have a 200 person knitting circle for 3 hours. I would have met a few people and had brief conversations if she had been on time, maybe jotted down a couple blogs to look up when I got home. Instead, we sat, we chat, we had a grand afternoon of knitting. We celebrated Tracey binding off her sweater, we passed projects and pattern books around, we had parades of children from one of the April Fools activity groups in the library come through to show off their projects. It made the wait go quickly.

I primarily chatted with Kim, Tracey, and Melissa. I met several other bloggers briefly, and we sat with some others as well and had a good afternoon.

Once Steph arrived, those of us who’d stuck around were treated to the story of stories. She had a long long long day from hell with flights and airports and it culminated in her getting a ride to Ann Arbor from the airport with a total stranger.  She went through her speech, we had some great laughs and then it was done. I opted to follow Tracey and Melissa over to Busy Hands instead of waiting in the line to get my book signed. Tracey gave me a lift back to my car as it had started raining and I headed home.

So, essentially, I went to Ann Arbor for the day and I knit. What did I knit? A sock, of course. A new one. I didn’t want to fight with the defiant yarn, didn’t want to have to focus on something with a more detailed pattern (Baudelaire or Pomotomous) and the next round of Sock Madness doesn’t start until Wednesday. So on Friday night, I cast on a simple stockinette sock in some JKnits yarn and had knit about 2-3 inches of it Friday night and Saturday, I finished the leg and the heel flap on the sock this afternoon while we waited. I’m guessing I’ll have another un-matched single sock by the time the next round starts up.

Unrelated, I’m going to extend the comment giveaway on the blogiversary post an extra day since I expect a bit of an increase in traffic after today. So I will draw the two winners Monday at noon Eastern Time.  I got the yarn from KimiK in the mail on Saturday, it’s lovely.