Eine Prosit, eine Prosit der Gemutlichkeit!

Well, we sat under canopies of hops & Himself was in heaven. I can't tell you how many pictures of hops and hop vines he took. Even he was impressed with how many pictures were on the camera. He decided that he might have been a bit 'tipsy' at the time. Really? You think?






We got to the Oktoberfest at about 1:30 pm and left at about 8:00 pm. That was quite the day. I never get to go out like that and not be the designated driver. It was a crazy day. The even was sponsored by the Washington Beer Lovers group (That's WA.B.L. - wobble, if you will) and it was a pretty nice event. My only real complaint was that they started out with a German oompa band and ended with a reggae band.




Are you kidding me? It is OKTOBERFEST. If people don't want to hear the polkas, let them go hang out somewhere else. It isn't Oktoberfest if you're listening to R&B, Ska or Reggae. Sorry. I can be a real purist. And the girl in the Halloween German Beer Maiden outfit? Good grief! (We're talking the Naughty Beer Maiden outfit, not a 'real' dirndl.)

While we did have an oompa band, there was a lot of loud singing and carrying on. When the other bands started playing, it just got loud and hard to talk. Fortunately, I had something to occupy myself with.

I managed to get in quite a bit of sock knitting during the day. You know, until I was knitting the purls and purling the knits. Then it was pretty much time to admit the beer had won. Still, I more or less doubled the length of the sock that day. While my friend and I were knitting, we had one whole person stop by and ask what we were working on and compare styles, etc. The gentlemen were playing senet (you can see the board behind the beer mug above) and they must have attracted more than a dozen people by the table to see what they were up to. Granted, knitting is pretty recognizable, but I thought it was kind of funny.



I really only dropped one stitch, which I found before I finished that needle, so it was an easy fix. But I missed the k2,p2 count a couple of times on one round and just decided it was better for me to stop. I don't expect these socks to be perfect, but I was obviously too distracted. Not really toasted, though I wouldn't have passed a breath test, that's for sure.

The event hosted about 37 breweries and each entrance fee bought you 12 tasting tokens. The mugs were marked at the 3 oz. level, so that equaled one taste. If you wanted a full mug o' beer, it was 3 tokens. You could buy additional tokens and advance ticket holders got 3 more tokens. The mugs were glass for WABL members and plastic for non-members. More than you needed to know? LOL Anyway, it was fun trying so many different beers and many of them were either Oktoberfest brews or other beers brewed specifically for the event (and therefore not available anywhere else). That always makes me feel special.

All in all a good day of friends, german food, good beer and knitting!