The alarm went off early, at 7, such a cruel time in the weekend! It was for a good purpose, however, because today Marianne, Naomi and I were organizing the KarmaKIPnick. The what? Well, on Ravelry I founded the Nederlandse Karma Swap-groep (NKS) a couple of years ago. Since last year, we have meets on a regular basis, which are always very nice. And KIP? This stands for Knit In Public. This week it was international KIP week, and of course we as a group had to participate in some way. We came with the idea to go to Arnhem, to the Sonsbeekpark, to picknick and knit together.
My fellow moderators and I went there quite early to set things up. It started out great, because my train was delayed because it was behind a train with a defect. In Gouda Naomi would join me in my train, and her train was late, but fortunately, mine was too. We expected to arrive in Utrecht at 8:51, and we had to change trains to a train which would leave at 8:53. It would be tight. I texted Marianne that we might not make it. But… the train catched up a little and arrived at 8:49. We went to the other platform, where we would meet Marianne. We didn’t see her! Maybe she had already entered the train? We went inside and walked to the front. Then Naomi saw Marianne outside and called out to her. Unfortunately, Marianne didn’t hear her and the whistle was sounding already! The doors closed and we were inside and Marianne was outside… Fortunately, fifteen minutes later there was another train, and she catched up with us soon.
In Arnhem we first went to Starbucks for a coffee. Meanwhile, we talked about what we were going to do. We were going to indicate the route to the park by placing yarn at strategic places. Marianne brought some acrylic for that and we had a lot of fun knotting it to strange places. It really became Ariadne’s thread in some places. In the park, we found a pretty site near a waterfall, and we started the KIPnick. We all brought stuff against the rain, to make sure the sun was shining. I brought an umbrella, and no sun screen or glasses. Marianne brought a special hat.
At eleven thirty the first guests arrived, and a second group followed soon. Within fifteen minutes we were picknicking, chatting and knitting with more than twenty woman. It was nicely quiet, dry, the sun showed itself from time to time, what more could we want! After a while, it was not so quiet anymore. That day there was a walking tour as well, and it went straight past our KIPnick spot. There were a lot of remarks from the walkers. It seemed as if in every group one of the men just had to place a “witty” comment to confirm to his companions that he was a funny bloke. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t very original. Here’s a shortlist, which we will use for our Bullshit Bingo at the KIPday next year.
Knit two, purl one!
Great, we wouldn’t be able to knit without this remark. Many people said this.
Hey, wild knitting!
Wild knitting is the leaving of knitted objects in public places, like on a statue, a tree, etcetera. It is also called yarnbombing. We knit “in the wild”. Tiny difference. At the nth time somebody said this, Marianne suddenly turned and growled at the passers-by. The woman who made the remark walked away really fast, blushing./p>
I need some socks, size 43!
After which I directed the man to the HEMA, since the socks there ARE for sale.
Don’t drop any stitches!
Fortunately this was said regularly, otherwise we probably would have.
Hey, the knitting club!
To which we reacted, after some time, with: “Hey, the walking club!”
Look, they are crocheting!
People just don’t know their crafts these days…
Some were actually very funny. For instance, a group of soldiers marched past us. The leader was shouting “left-right!” and when they were next to us he said “head… TO THE RIGHT!, after which all the soldiers’ heads were turned towards us in sync, while they continued marching. We were just laughing so hard!
We were quite surprised that mostly men seemed to find it necessary to vent every brain fart they had, and how the women mostly didn’t say anything, or just said something to each other like “that looks fun”, or came to us with a question.
