Thursday, August 10, 2006

Knitting and Geocaching

Since this is, theoretically, a knitting blog, here is some knitting content. First up are Squidette's newest socks. They are knit using the chevron pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. The yarn is Knitpicks Dye Your Own dyed in a color and spacing pattern determined by Squidette.
Next up are the two newest sets of socks to hit the needles. On the left is the Dye-o-rama sock using the beaded rib pattern from Sensational Socks for moi. On the left is the latest plain sock for Papa Squid. The toes and heels will be green (socka) and the rest will be in a green / yellow colorway from Cherry Hill Yarns. The plain sock is my "walking around" sock and with Papa's big feet, I should be able to do a lot of walking.When we visited with Ann, she asked about the Geocaching that I frequently refer to. So, here goes for the rest of you.

Geocaching is a hobby / sport which involves a GPS device, a web-based database and good sleuthing skills. Cachers hide caches all over the world and post the longitude and latitude coordinates on the Geocaching website. They may or may not provide a description or hints to help you find the cache. A cache can be composed of a tiny container with just a small sheet of paper to log that you were there or a big ammo box containing all sorts of trinkets / toys / swag that you trade for. When we find a tradeable cache, we leave a tiny knit sock with a Z embroidered on it as our calling card. Cachers then log their finds on line and the site keeps a tally of all caches found. You may have noticed the logo / tally on the right side of my blog. We are up to 36 caches with the last 11 being found in the last 2 weeks.

GPS devices come in a variety of flavors. We have two, a running / biking GPS which was purchased for those purposes but can be used for caching using the coordinates along and a larger GPS which can be used on the bike and in the car. The second one can have the cache coordinates loaded on to it and display them in the form of a cute treasure box with an arrow pointing the way to the cache as you close in on it. No keeping numbers in your head with this one. This is the GPS which navigated us to DBILs easily. It does lots of other stuff but the caching and car navigation are why we purchased it.

The caching has lead us to places we might not have gotten to other wise and we have seen lots of neat stuff along the way. For more information, go to http://www.geocaching.com .

1 comment:

Ann said...

I found this all incredibly interesting. After we had breakfast that day I came back to the office and checked out the site and found quite a few caches near where I live and work. Amazing stuff!

Ann