Knits in Action

Yesterday I, along with Eric, my 3 brothers and their friends, my uncle and his friends, went to the Patriots AFC Championship game in Foxborough.  In total, we had a caravan of 8 cars.

The tailgating was awesome.  We had food stations with slow-cooked pulled pork, ribs, chicken wings, chili…. but the pièce de résistance was deep-frying chickens, and then anything else we could put in the deep fryer – meats, cheese, PB pretzels, cookies.  We all reverted to our inner 15 yo boy selves around the deep fryer.

(I don’t know who the weird guy in the background is, and yes, that’s a TV hooked up so we could watch the NFC Championship game.)

I don’t want to talk about the game, or what an absolute spanking it was.  The overlooked story of this game was the wind chill, and the battle of gear vs weather.  I came to the fight prepared:

Snowmates.  Endpaper Mitts layered under Bella’s Mittens, to allow fingertips for picking at chicken or opening beer.

These handknits were but a small portion of the wool.  I had knee-high smartwool socks under a wonderfully soft and warm pair of Red Maple alpaca socks I got at Rhinebeck from Mel & Dave.  I had full-body woolen long underwear, under another pair of long johns, jeans, 2 woolen sweaters, a down coat, a giant woolen scarf, lined woolen hat with earflaps, with my down-filled hood up and pulled snug.  I had hand warmers and toe warmers stuffed in mitts and shearling lined boots.

Overkill you say?

The opponent was a sustained wind in 18 degree weather, for a windchill of 5 degrees F (That’s -8 / -15 C for the rest of the world.)  Our seats were about 10 rows from the very top of the stadium, so I don’t know, we were probably 10 stories up in the air, with no shelter.  In fact, what’s the opposite of shelter, because it felt like the stadium created a wind tunnel of brutality.

I stood in this for 4 hours straight.  Almost comfortably.  Almost.  I still have all my fingers.

The real victor last night?

Wool.