Pentagon problems or I guess I'm pickier than I thought

Last Thursday before going on walkabout I carefully marked the points on the front and back of the pentagon sleeve project where I thought I'd failed to swap yarn and caused a stripe to appear.

Then I meticulously tinked (unknit, took out note that the term is knit spelled backward) back to the marked area on one of the sides. I put the knitting aside with a note of where I was in the pattern and secure in the knowledge that I had alternated the yarn so any variation was from the difference in dye lots and not a failure to swap on my part.
Even though the striping bothered me, I noted in my design journal that "I'm not picky (or am I?) enough to slip/knit to blend." I decided that the stripe was a difference that I could live with and that even the change every row rather than every other row was too much of a hassle of tangled yarns.

On Friday I got home from work early enough to put in about four or five miles of walkabout knitting, so I soldiered on knitting the pentagon sleeve project. Maybe it was the fading light of day or denial but I almost convinced myself that from a distance it would look much more blended.

Come the harsh light of Saturday morning, I couldn't really escape the fact that the striping bugs me, really, really bugs me.

The photos might not show the stripe and other knitters might not see or be bothered by the stripes but I can't live with them.

The biggest problem is that I keep thinking that I've made a mistake and since most of my knitting time is a catch as catch sort of business, I can't really have a project where I'm seeing and trying to correct phantom errors.

While I still don't think that I'm quite picky enough to slip/knit each row through the body of the front and back, I'm coming round to the conclusion that I'll have work one side at a time and alternate every row to get a blend of dye lots that isn't jarring to me.

I started to write drive me to distraction but the fact is that problems with the pentagon are part of what has helped drive me to the other knitting distractions. So while I'd like to get the pentagon back on track, I'm putting it on the back burner yet again.

Saturday's walkabout knitting ended up being a combination of three of my could be commitment problem projects. All involve bias knitting which is pretty straight forward and all have design dilemmas/decisions looming.

When I finally did make it out the door on Saturday, I opted for the Park Boulevard to Presidents Way route that adds about an extra mile or so to my usual circle the park stroll.

The Frontrunners' web site has running and walking resources for San Diego county including one route that takes you over six different pedestrian bridges in one go and logs 10 miles. Unfortunately, as of today, the routes page on their site has a lot of broken links for the walking and running routes but the site is still a good resource and I'm confident that the broken links will get fixed soon.

I've recently written about two of the six bridges and since the Park Boulevard route covers one of the others, and touches on another, I thought I'd throw them into the walkabout route mix.

Of the six pedestrian bridges, two span canyons, two span roads and two span freeways. The canyon spanning bridges are the Quince & Spruce street bridges. Saturday's walk covered two more bridges spanning a road and a freeway.

The first bridge is a hide in plain sight sort of affair that spans Park Boulevard and connects Plaza de Balboa (by the Natural History Museum & Reuben H. Fleet Space Centre) with the desert and rose gardens to the East.
Beginning at the Hillcrest sign, head East on University, South on Park just past Village Drive, follow the pavement to the right toward the plaza before turning left onto the bridge to cross Park Boulevard. To the left is the desert garden and to the right the rose gardens.

Continuing South on the East side of the street, pass the Naval Hospital and the Balboa Park Activity Centre (including the gym and the administration Building) on your left.

In the large parking lot area just South of the Veteran's Museum and Memorial Center visitors to Balboa Park can find both free parking and a free park tram. This area is called Inspiration Point and it is the gateway to the second bridge of the day, the one that spans six lanes of the I5 about 15 miles North of the international border with Mexico.
The North end of the bridge begins at the Southeast corner of the parking lot, with this vine covered entrance.
At the other end the walkway spirals down and provides a view back at the bridge, freeway & off ramps before ending in a parking lot by a sports field of San Diego High School.
If a game's in progress, give the fence and the reserved faculty parking spots wide berth as the bridge ends in a foul ball zone.

I almost always get a bit turned about once I cross the bridge this way and find myself wandering the maze of campus parking lots. Since it was a Sunday with sunset approaching, I opted to cross the bridge back across the 5 and finish the day's walk by crossing
Park, and following Presidents Way into the park and out the Prado/Laurel Street Bridge over the 163.

The bridge's usually great views were somewhat obscured with the banners of the next day's AIDs walk sponsors. Pass the Lawn Bowls courts, cross Balboa Drive and go North on 6th to Upas. West on Upas, North on 5th ending at the Hillcrest sign -- estimated mileage = 5.5 miles.