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.