Craig must have planned his trip this weekend just because he knew I was hurting for blog content. I have been knitting, and ripping, and knitting this week and just don’t have a whole lot to show for it.  Craig took his sock to Holiday World and to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom this weekend (he’s ahead of the curve… the rest of us will be down there next weekend for Holiwood Nights).

Apparently Santa told him that he must be bad due to the size of his stocking.

And at Six Flags the sock met a couple of characters.

Craig, if you can get that sock in the hands of some poor teenager at a Six Flags who’s walking around in a Marvin the Martian costume, I might just make you a couple of those coaster-rider washclothes after all.

Remember all those wee-tiny socks?

One of them has gained a purpose in it’s wee-tiny life.

I suppose I should tell the back story. Guard your children, this one is a little on the *ahem* adult side. Only a little though.

My coaster friend Craig keeps joking about wanting socks. His ulterior motive when I’m wearing or working on handknit socks in his presence is to get one from me and take it into a private place for a “photo session” ala Red Hot Chili Peppers.

So, when I made all the wee-tiny socks for the swap, I decided one of them would be for him. Because if he’s going to have a hand-knit sock for such photo sessions, he should have one that fits.

I gave it to him last weekend at Six Flags Great America. This was his reaction.

So, he’s decided that his project for this summer is for the sock to show up in photos on his various trips. This weekend, he took it to Indiana Beach.

You never know where that sock will pop up. I’ll keep the blog posted with updates while it’s visiting the amusement parks of the world this summer. I hear it might even make it to Europe.

On the 4th, my brother, sister-in-law and I went downtown for the fireworks then headed over to the Frauenthal for the Four Finger Five show. The Summer Celebration put on a decent fireworks display for the fourth and we had a reasonably ok spot down along the road.

Following the fireworks, the concert was equally impressive. I may be biased considering Four Finger Five is headed by my cousin Joe, but they definitely put on an amazing show. They filled out the band with a handful of guest musicians, had an on stage muralist working on an art piece for raffle during the show, and drew a decent sized crowd of about 200.  All in all a great evening out. And for the second time this week, I learned that concerts are great for sock knitting.

The purple traveling stockinette pair have  had a lot of neat places and things knit into them, and I’m proud that they got the concert on Wednesday night knit into the toe of the second sock. I started them prior to our coaster trip in May, they saw every park on that trip. They’ve had a little knitting time here and there around the house, and the second sock saw Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Four Finger Five in concert before they were completed. Let me just say, doing toe decreases and grafting a toe in a dark theater… not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. But, it’s another finished pair. 

I followed the finishing of that pair with another start. I’m almost done with the first sock in a new pair for mom. I’m doing the cross stitch block pattern from More Sensational Knitted Socks in handpainted yarn from Sunshine Yarns in the colorway Earth Day. If I can finish the first sock today and get a good start on the second, I might be able to leave them with her before I go home on Sunday. Here’s hoping I can finish my sockpal’s that quickly.

We covered a lot of ground last week, driving through at least 10 states, putting almost 3,000 miles on my car and adding some new coasters to the counts. It was a blast, it was exhausting, there were a few hurdles, but for the most part everything went smoothly and we had a great time.

Holiwood Nights was an incredible event for the second year in a row and we had a blast hanging out with all of our friends who were able to make it there. Camden Park was a little scary, but a lot of fun. Dollywood was crazy busy and we were glad this was a repeat visit for both of us, as we wouldn’t have gotten a great impression of the park this time around. Busch Gardens was amazing as usual, and we took two days to take it all in at a leisurely pace. Six Flags Great Adventure was also crazy busy, but we managed. Clementon was a quick stop, Memorial Day traffic around Philly was a nightmare and an unplanned last-minute overnight with friends in Pittsburgh gave us an excuse to swing by Cedar Point for their new coaster’s opening day on the way home. All in all, a great trip.

Now, one doesn’t put nearly 3,000 miles on a car without finding a little time for some on-the-road and in-park knitting. The purple stockinette sock got some quality time at Holiday World, including a start to the heel. I did get some strange looks and comments knitting in line, and took the dorky walkback photo posted a couple posts ago during the “backstage” tour of the Voyage. The first sock in that pair is just in need of a little more work on the foot and a toe before it starts to gain a mate. Had I realized Maverick at Cedar Point had bins for stuff in the station, I wouldn’t have left the camera and knitting in the car, and the sock would probably be finished. Now I know for my next visit in a couple weeks.

My in-the-car knitting was primarily the Aran Sandal Socks, and while Mikey was sound asleep from Dramamine in the hotel in Williamsburg, VA about halfway through the trip, I finally put the toe on my second Aran Sandal Sock and wore them in the park the following day.

What can I say about this pattern? The appearance makes them look so complex (then again, what cable pattern doesn’t look complex to the uninitiated?) but really, 3 relatively simple cable patterns spaced out with some twisted ribs are all that make up this pattern. It was a little tricky figuring out how to go from in the round patterning to back and forth for the heels, more so on the smaller cable pattern that trails down the heel than on the main diamond pattern though. And the row counting gets a little trisky with different mismatched cable rows, but once I got into a groove it wasn’t that bad.

And I absolutely adore how they came out. Squishy, attractive, practical, bold, subtle, comfortable. There were a few cool clever details to keep things interesting. The pattern continuing down the heel while a little tricky to devise, is by far my favorite feature of these socks. The seed stitch gussets that continue down the side of the foot just add one more textural element for added interest.

These have definitely boosted my confidence for other cabley patterns, and now that the needles are free, I’m ready to dive into those Austrian Socks for Sockapalooza.

Enjoying the knitting and coasters where I am, hope all is going well where you are!

It’s a random day today, I’ve got too much going on and pulling me in a zillion directions.

Knitting has been scarce around these parts the last few weeks. I’ve been cleaning like crazy (successfully for once) and just have some quick bathroom scrubbing to wrap up tonight. Mike gets here tomorrow night, I’m working Wednesday and we’re on the road as of either Thursday night or Friday morning.  Almost two full weeks of much needed vacation in the works though. We’ll be roaming on the road for a week of that getting to Holiday World, Camden Park, Dollywood, Busch Gardens Europe, Six Flags Great Adventure and Clementon. Had to go with mostly big parks this year since the small parks aren’t open during the week yet.

It’s not all cleaning though. I’ve also been sacrificing some knitting time to discussing and organizing knitting stuff over on Ravelry. I totally lucked out and got on the invite list early enough to get in early last week. I love this site! It’s totally addictive in it’s current form and all the features they’re looking into adding will make it the be all and end all resource for project planning, community networking and just about everything else you can think of that relates to knitting.

On top of that, I’m loving the Pligg Alison set up for Sockapalloza after we broke blogger. I’ve more or less just put a lot of focus on reading about knitting and not as much into actually knitting.

Although, I did finish a pair of socks last week. 

These are the J-Knits lightweight sock on size 1s that I started when the Harlot was here. There was a ton of yarn left, enough that I could probably get a pair of footies out of them, and will definitely go toe-up with calf shaping when I get around to knitting the other colorway I have.

I’m making some progress on the second Aran Sandal Sock, and once those are done, the needles will be free for my Sockapalooza socks. Based on the comments on the last post, no one can decide on a varrigate, but the lavender color got rave reviews all around. Of the cabled patterns I had in mind, I think I’m going to give the Austrian Socks a shot. I haven’t seen any show up in blogs so they’ll be more unique than some of the other socks out there. Plus the construction intrigues me. (If you haven’t looked that closely at the pattern, they’re constructed top-down by making an i-cord, grafting it into a circle then picking up the stitches along the length of the i-cord.) If that is too much, I reserve the right to try a different pattern later if these don’t work out. But I have to give them a chance, they’re too pretty not to.

In the meantime, I need to get back to the scrubbing and packing, I’ll probably post some from the road where internet is available.

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.”