What's the Point?

This past Saturday morning, I decided to take the trekking socks (colorway 104, by the way) for a little walk to the lake. This was prompted by the fact that it was a billion degrees in the apartment, and I knew it would be cooler by the lake.

I live about two blocks from the lake in Hyde Park, home of the lakeshore park known as Promontory Point (or, for Hyde Parkers, the Point). In between Hyde Park and the lake, however, is Highway 41, better known as Lake Shore Drive. It's a beautiful drive, but it does mean that when you are at the Point, you can hear all of the cars drive by so you can never forget you are in the city.


To get across LSD, the city of Chicago has thoughtfully made pedestrian underpasses like this one.






At the Point, there's a really great view of the Chicago skyline. I'm not all that interested in architecture, but I think Chicago has a fabulous skyline. It's all laid out in a line jutting off into the lake and the buildings have a nice variety of heights and shapes. This picture is pretty hazy because of all of the humidity.





If you've never seen one of the Great Lakes, you probably have no idea how big they really are. On the other side of this lake is Michigan, but no matter how hard you try, you can't see it from here. When the wind is really strong, the water gets very choppy and crashes up against the rocks on the shore in large waves. Those of you who are used to the ocean (especially the Pacific) probably scoff at the idea that a lake could have waves that are measurable, but they are pretty impressive to this Iowa girl.

I sat down on one of the rocks by the shore, dangled my legs over the edge and started knitting. There was a delicious breeze blowing on me and I didn't even mind working with wool. The water is pretty clear right now, which means that it is still cold. When the water heats up, more things can grow in it and it becomes cloudy.


Even though the water was churning a bit around the rocks, the socks were unafraid because they are superwash.

The shoreline is pretty unique in this area. Sandstone boulders have been laid out so that they resemble steps.
The steps are getting pretty uneven, and slightly dangerous in some areas. For this reason, the city wanted to redo the shoreline at the Point. It was a huge to-do because the city wanted to shut down the entire Point for two years which would've denied Hyde Parkers our shoreline, plus the huge park that is the mecca of every picnicker in the area. Additionally, they wanted to get rid of the sandstone boulders altogether and make it into sterile, white concrete. The citizens of Hyde Park were up in arms about all of this and made a huge stink about it. The city and the Hyde Parkers have been in negotiations about it ever since. I think it's been 7 or 8 years now. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy the Point the way that it is.

As for the socks, I am doing one of the zigzag patterns for self-striping socks from Sensational Knitted Socks. I finished the garter-stitch cuff and started the pattern, but unfortunately discovered that one of my socks has two extra stitches. This brings up one of the disadvantages of knitting two socks on one circular needle. If you have to tink back on one sock, you almost always have to tink back on the other, too (although, I was un-purling, so would that be lrupping?). And, not wanting to go through the hell that was casting on again, I decided to decrease by two stitches on the one sock. But, now I'm not so sure how I feel about that and may end up ripping it all back and starting over. With a different pattern. I don't know. We'll see how I feel about it the next time I bring the socks out.