Julie asked me for a pair of fingerless mitts and she would not be dissuaded. I was not able to work on any other project until these were complete.

 

I managed to accomplish some things I’ve been putting off this weekend which sets my week up well. I hope you all are having a great week too!

 

 

I finished the heel of my current sock and have picked up the gusset. Now on to the decreases. But, since it is now the weekend and I have other projects going on, it sits happily at work and I get to spend some time looking at other projects.

Despite the fact that I claim I have little interest in knitting socks and should not due to hand pain, I am plugging away on this sock, making wonderful progress even though I am limiting myself to about an hour a day. Yesterday I brought it to the point where I have to start the heel. Today I get that pleasure.

 

I feel pretty good about my progress here, especially for socks that are half hose. The decreases keep this one interesting and it is just moving along beautifully.

Over the past week in biking, I’ve learned a few things. The first is that no matter what kind of bike ride you plan, no matter how crazy your schemes seem to the general public, you’ll find like minded cyclists to participate with you. The second lesson is that there are always a group of cyclists willing to put in extra miles, all you have to do is make the plan.

The first lesson is evidenced by the dangerously cold ride we did last week. I would say that a group of 8 willing to ride in that cold was a pretty decent turn out, and far more than I expected we’d get. This past weekend there was a large organized bike ride in our area. However, it was billed as a round trip ride of 8 miles, with a lot of stops. And “bad decisions.” Now, I know that you could say our dangerously cold ride would go under the heading “bad decisions,” but the bad decisions that this group was going to get involved in had to do with alcohol. And it was to be 45F outside, and sunny. I had no interest whatsoever in a bar hop, what a waste of an absolutely stunning day.

So I planned a “lake to lake” ride. Those of us with studded snow tires would ride our bikes on frozen lakes. A route was planned, a meet up place was agreed on, a time was set, and we ended up with a total of 13 winter riders out to have an adventure.

It was such a beautiful day. I ended up with over 25 miles. This is an accomplishment on studded tires, as they are considerably more difficult to keep moving than regular tires. It is hard work!

 

We rode frozen lakes, and startled pedestrians using the trail. I had fun watching them stop and snap our picture, imagining the conversations they’d have when they got back home.

Pedestrian: You would NEVER believe what I saw at the lake today! A whole group of people on bikes who just rode down the boat launch and out on the ice!

Family member: Pics or it didn’t happen!

Pedestrian: Check this out!

OK, I don’t actually have pictures of us riding on the ice, as the idea of trying to remove a hand from my handlebar and snap a picture is a bit distressing. But, you get the idea. The studded tires keep us (mostly) upright. The only other frozen lake riding I’ve done has been at night, so it was fun to actually be able to see the entire lake. One of the lakes had a ton of ice fishers on it, so dodging the ice fishing holes was a bit interesting. There were holes large enough to swallow entire bike tires. We just avoided them. Due to the exceedingly cold temps, the ice is about 12 inches thick, so even though we had warm temps and the ice got a bit slushy on top, we were quite safe.

We were out for 7 hours, we soaked in as much sun and relative warmth as we could, and as the sun was going down, I snapped this shot:

 

I am grateful for biking, and for friends who enjoy an adventure just as much as I do. I hope I can keep coming up with creative ideas for rides, as this is as much a part of my life, or more, than knitting and spinning is. And I do love winter riding so much!

I started a pair of socks at the end of November after going on too many dirt rides where I decide to bow out early and go back to the car to wait for other riders to be done. I clearly needed something to occupy myself with while waiting. So, I started a pair of my personal favorite socks to keep in the car as emergency knitting.

The yarn for these is Socks that Rock Lightweight. It has been in my stash for ages and I am glad to be using it for something.

 

Since knitting socks hurts my hands these days, I’ve decided that the sock I am working on only gets knit on at work during my lunch break. This may mean that it plugs along rather slowly, but hopefully it will also mean I can complete them.

 

I finished the rather long ribbed section and have moved into the ringwood patterning. I am looking forward to continuing on Monday!

I’ve really not been knitting socks much at all. However, I am finding that with my desire to actually do some knitting, the desire for the simplicity of the sock has also returned.

 

I started a sock to knit on at work. From my favorite book “Vintage Socks.” It pleases me to be knitting something so comforting as a sock from this book.

2 days ago I posted a finished Miss Winkle shawl in the colorway Flower Shop Inferno. One of the aspects of spinning that I find endlessly fascinating is that how a colorway looks in a yarn is so completely different from how a colorway looks in a fiber then spun into handspun yarn.

I began knitting a linen stitch cowl out of my handspun flower shop inferno colorway. It is beautiful and interesting. It is also completely different than the shawl I just finished. I love saturated variegated yarns. But I really must say, my heart belongs to handspun.

 

Yesterday you may recall I posted that I was going to attempt to bike in this bitterly cold weather. You see, I have a bike friend who always encourages me to do some type of riding that is on the outer limits of sane. And we planned this ride, assuming that it would be just the two of us. We scheduled back up drivers for any mechanical issues we might have, as being out in this weather is dangerous and standing around in it deadly. We knew we needed good plans. We then decided to invite just a few experienced winter cyclists, in order to make sure that only those we trusted to know their limits were on this particular ride. In the end, there were 8 of us.

All day long I worried about the ride, mostly because I was having trouble staying warm even in my house. It was just plain cold around the edges. I planned my gear very carefully, layer upon carefully placed layer.

Partway through the ride, I snapped this screenshot.

 

Before the ride ended, we’d hit -11 and recorded the feels like temp at -41.

It is pretty difficult to know when to hydrate on such a ride, I know this well. In anticipation of that, I put hot water into my insulated water bottle. After just a bit of time outside, I could no longer get water out of it. We stopped for a warm up in a friends house, and this is what I found.

 

Apparently the way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to add a shot of whiskey. That sounds terrible to me.

All in all, great fun was had! No one hurt themselves too badly, though there seems to have been some reports of first degree frost bite around the eyes. I did not have that trouble personally. And I honestly was more warm than I had been all day in all my winter gear. We had 3 warm up stops planned, and we enjoyed the company and time at each one of them so much.

Today I am left feeling completely invigorated, happy, and energetic. I would not suggest this type of “therapy” to just anyone, but what a way to eliminate post holiday blues!