Another race day today. I should say track day. They only race about once a month and practice on the rest of the weekends so this weekend was all practice. Saturday my bf and I actually worked on the track as corner workers. (He'll get free track days for working, I get a tan. Fair enough.) The track is separated into sections and we were stationed at corner 3. Our job was to watch our section of the track for downed riders and debris and also to wave the checkered flag at the end of each session. No, not the finish line flag, they weren't racing. Our corner happened to be the busiest - a number of riders went off the track and one guy left his foot peg on the track. For those instances I was waving the caution flag. While not waving a flag I was SWATCHING. I don't usually swatch, but more on that later.
Riders can go off the track and it's no big deal. Sometimes they even manage to keep the bike upright and get back on the track to continue racing. Other times they crash and just need to dust off or maybe their bike got mangled enough not to roll away but they are still fine. Then there's the times they don't get up right away and that's when it can be more serious. That happened three times this weekend which is almost three times more than usual. The ambulance took the first guy just to be checked out. First-time falls are scary for new riders because they just don't know how it feels yet - good hurt vs. bad hurt. The second one was actually air lifted. Not good. He was unconscious after his crash, maybe longer than the EMTs liked and they called in the helicopter. The last one was a young girl, intermediate skill, and the word is she may lose her thumb. Crashes happen, you just always hope for the best. My thoughts and prayers go out to these riders.
I've been knitting at the track for about a month now. This weekend the comments started rolling. Some were even engaging conversations. Odd since it's mostly guys. Sometimes I had to explain my project: "I'm making a vase." Huh? "It's going to be felted." What's felted? "It'll make it look like thick fabric." Is it going to hold water? "No, just decorative. I'm going to put my needles in it." Ohhh okay. One guy even called me out on a UFO! "Did you finish that blanket?" Uh, no. "Wha...?" He was flabbergasted as only a non-knitter would be. Only once did I correct someone that picked the wrong craft (needlepoint). The funniest comment so far was, "That's hot." Given that the pits are like testosterone on crack, the comment went further. Not appropriate to repeat here but hilarious.
SWATCHING - I made a breakthrough this week. I reasoned with myself: I'm making two pairs of baby bell bottoms so if I swatch once (light bulb) it's good for both! And guess what happened? My gauge was spot on perfect :) I'm making 3 Ribbed Beanies for Christmas, one swatch. Improving swatch efficiency two+ projects at a time.
Pics another day, I'm tired.
1 comment:
Those baby pants are cute. I wish I knew about them when mine were that little. Look at... http://nonaknits.typepad.com/nonaknits/2007/04/index.html I remembered reading this in the spring. You'll have to look at the 2 posts about the baby bell bottoms. I had this rowing out problem on sweater of mine...about the same time that Nona wrote these entries. I would have had no idea what it was called. And I still don't know how to fix it. I think I tried to pull tighter/looser on my purl/knit rows. Andyways, whatever I did made it less noticable, but I am no where near matching guage flat and in the round. I don't want to scare you, but when I saw the 'rowing out' the first time I was more freaked out that I couldn't figure out what I had done.
Now just remind the G to tell all the other racers that the 'hot one' is his. =0)
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