Pentagons, hexagons and footie

The extra days for runagogo round two are working well for me so far. I didn't make it to the Whistlestop on Sunday and yesterday was a bit of a short trek so as of this morning I was roughly six miles short of my 400 mile goal.

My truck has a date with her mechanic today so the walk back home and out to pick her up should put me at, near or over goal and making plans for round three if there is a round three.

Even though I have plenty of UFOs and WIPs kicking around (don't make me count) I've been at a bit of a now what mode for the next bit of walkabout knitting.

Nylon twine makes for good summer knitting but figuring the right needle can be interesting -- witness the yellow twine that turned on itself when I was working on the 2x twine. So I finally settled in on staying in the twine arena with some positively painful pink nylon twine. Last night it was kicking my bum a bit as I tried to get needle, twine and brain to all match up.

And yes, I added walking and Guinness to the mix so it wasn't the most successful effort. Somehow in the course of the evening, and yes, this is shocking, my knitting got noticed, my powers of observation were tested, and I actually made a bet.

I'm not a betting woman so a wager is worthy of note. I was knitting a pentagon and the wager involved whether a soccer/footie ball was composed of pentagons or hexagons.

My off the cuff response was hexagons because pentagons don't interlock well with each other but hexagons do. I've been playing with pentagons and penta-flakes and this polyognal madness for a bit now so I even wagered a full price pint on this theory.

Turns out that I was both right and wrong. The basic ball has a mix of hexagons and pentagons 20 of the former and 12 of the latter. The combination of shapes forms a truncated icosahedron that is morphed into a sphere by the air pressure.

How do I know this? Google is my friend. I'm not sure which is the more dangerous, slippery slope the wagering or graduating from flat forms like pentaflakes into these solid shapes but I shouyldn't be too shocked since I've already knit cubes and spheres.

Since I'm supposed to be settling up on the wager tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to knit a soccer ball out of black and white nylon twine -- so that was today's initial walkabout knitting. It pretty much carried me through the Adams Avenue to home part of my day's walkabout but as
matching needles to twine continued to be a challenge, I reverted back to the pink nylon twine project abandoned yesterday for the home to post office to Adams Avenue retrieve the truck.

I took a more circuitous route and along the way dropped off a knitted lily for a very deserving lady who needs a bit more beauty in her daily life.

The combined mileage put me over my 400 mile goal but since I was home early enough, I opted to do a round the park ramble for a combined total of 11 miles today. That gives me five extra miles.

Not only did I knit the whole way, I wore flip flops.