Don't Bring Your Knitting to a Football Game

So, a couple of weekends ago I went to go see the Jets/Bills game at the Meadowlands.  I've wanted to go see a Jets game for awhile now, but despite the fact that the Giants/Jets stadium is only a twenty minute train ride out of the city, game tickets set you back at least $80 alone and I never bothered thinking about it when I needed to.  Until recently that is, when a conversation about the Super Bowl (also at the Meadowlands this year) turned into my boyfriend and I making a quick decision to buy tickets for the game a week later (because we're nuts).

To bring this back to yarn craft, I have a habit, passed down from my crocheting and football loving mother, of knitting/crocheting while watching the game.

If any of you watch (American) football, you'll know that there are usually nice gaps of time within the game: between plays, half time, two-minute warnings, etc.  As well, we were planning on getting there at least an hour early (ended up being an hour-and-a-half) so that we could find our seats, get beer (which is way overpriced there, but anyway), and so forth.  Therefore, I looked up the stadium's policy to see if I could bring my knitting.  Which was a good thing, because it turns out you can't bring anything but one very small purse and one clear bag of a certain size into the stadium (which damn, I've never heard of a bag policy like that before).  However, no where in their policy does it say things such as knitting needles are banned.  Weapons, sure.  Outside food and drink, sure.  Non-clear bags, yep, in detail.  Actually, within the whole clear bag policy description it said something like (paraphrasing): 'this is not a ban on what fans can bring into the stadium, just what they carry it in.'  So I brought my knitting with me, along with the bunch of random crap (phone, binoculars, etc) in a clear zip-lock bag (well, I used a small fold-able bag to get it there because I didn't think running through the city carrying all my stuff in a clear zip-lock was a good idea.  I then folded the not-clear bag up into a tiny square and put it in the clear one).

I then got to the stadium gates, bag in hand, and handed it to the women checking bags in my line.  The following then took place:

Security Woman (looks at better dressed security guy...probably her supervisor):   Hey!
Supervisor: Hello!
Security Woman: Can you come over here; this is the first time I've seen this.  (At this point I'm standing behind her wondering what she could have found in my bag).
Supervisor: Sure. (Comes over).
Security Woman: Is this allowed?  She's got her sewing with her (holds up the project and needles that she fished from my yarn ball).
Supervisor: Nope.
Me: Really? (mumbles) This is why I checked the website, there was nothing about knitting there...

So I had to go take my knitting and go back outside the gates to the bag check, in which the person looked at me quizzically when I held up the knitting and asked to check it.  Oye. Luckily the game was fun (and the Jets won, yay), so I didn't miss it too much.

So don't bring your knitting to a NFL football game; it may not be let in.  Though, in hindsight, I probably should have tried it with wooden needles first, not size 1 metal ones.  Those can look a bit scary, even though they're a sharp as a well-sharpened pencil, which I'm sure is allowed. But I'm not sure if even the wooden ones would have been let in; their only advantage is that they are dull, and so they may have passed under the security women's radar since she couldn't even tell the difference between knitting and sewing enough to know what the hell the yarn was for.