One More Thing…
This is the sun that set on my father’s remains on his first evening traveling the Gulf Stream.
May all the dolphins, turtles, and sailfish, and all the creatures of the warm Gulf Stream sing you home….
A Very Strange Post
This might be the strangest entry I’ll ever post here. Perhaps too much information….but there you go. I made a brief post almost three years ago that my father died very unexpectedly. He chose to be cremated, and he asked that his remains be released at sea. When he talked to me about this, long before it was on anyone’s mind that it could possibly become a reality, he suggested Long Island Sound. He sailed there most of his short time as a sailor. But during that short time when sailing was so important to him I knew that he longed for bigger and warmer waters.
At one point he and my mother bought property on the West coast of Florida, hoping to settle there and keep their boat there. That never came to pass. And at the time he passed away, he had no idea that Bob and I also had big plans to sail farther than our standard stomping grounds, from the Chesapeake to Maine. My father was never interested in Maine. He was a southern boy all the way through, and he never got used to living in the northeast.
So, over the past 2 1/2 years that he has resided on a shelf in my house….(I know, please don’t judge me!)…I have had an underlying knowledge that he would love to be set free in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. His remains could travel the world in a way he’d always dreamed of doing in life.
My father and I always had issues, and I’m disappointed that we never could find a common ground while he lived. At least in this I think I can make him happy. My biggest regret is that my sister and my kids, who all loved him, cannot be with us to experience the moment. I have told them all my best guess as to when I’ll be doing this…. it’s hard to be exact, even in the 21st century, when the plans involve sailing! At the specified time this afternoon they will send positive energy out for their dad and granddad and say prayers. It’s long overdue, and he deserves this.
“Parable of Immortality”
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight . . . that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .
” Here she comes! “
— Henry Van Dyke
Warm and humid
It was actually too hot today. It doesn’t seem possible! We drove only moderate distances for four days and went from single digit temperatures in Connecticut to what feels like the heat of a sultry August day. I almost wilted today…
My little copper pipe loom is not completely assembled yet or I would have had the perfect opportunity to warp it up today…. in the shade of the pavillion next to the building with the laundry room. I did four HUGE loads of laundry today and got a fair amount of knitting accomplished on my first Oktoberfest sock (instead of weaving little circles!). I am almost ready to turn the heel.
A couple of manatees were in the harbor today and one of them visited our boat for a while! He is gigantic, isn’t he?!!
There was a large turtle near our boat, and Bob declared it a freshwater turtle, so the water in this harbor must be fairly brackish. We watched the ibises congregate in the mangroves for the night…. it is such an impressive sight. There are lots of pelicans here.
I also worked on a bit of embroidery, something I haven’t touched in about a decade. All in all, it has been a very relaxing day… culminating with watching Renee Fleming sing the national anthem at the Superbowl (the only part of the game I watched!). Tremendous!
Living Small in Big Way
What a luxury being at a marina in for a few days in Ft. Pierce. We are staying at the Harbortown Marina, and there are several boats here that we remember from the Bahamas last winter. It’s a small world!
I always go through a bit of mourning when I come onboard. Everything is so small. Once again I’ve got too much stuff with me. This time around I think I will mail some clothing home. I can’t fit it all into my three small drawers! But this time around I have a 3rd set of bedsheets for when there is no laundry for weeks and weeks on end! This year I know that sheets are non-negotiable!
Last night we met some of our new/old friends at the little open air bar at the end of our dock. It was a slightly chilly evening so we sat at a large fire pit that had gas flames flickering up through a large bowl of colored glass fragments. Very hedonistic! Just off from our dock are a few large mangrove bushes, and as sunset passed a huge flock of ibises began landing in the mangroves for the night. They looked like large puffy white blossoms on the bushes. Intermingled with them were a few blue herons and pelicans, but it was mostly an amazing vision of fluffy white ‘blossoms’ on the deep green mangroves. I hope to get photo this evening!
To ease into boat life I had planned a very simple dinner with virutally no cooking. I made a large salad of greens and vegetables with goat cheese for a bit of protein. My mistake was that I’d recently had a delicious salad dressing at the Old City House Inn restaurant in St. Augustine, and I had just had to see if I could re-create it. It was a roasted shallot vinaigrette, so naturally I had to roast some shallots! And since I was doing that I figure why not roast a head of garlic as well which will surely get used in the near future. Well, imagine a slightly oily baking pan from the roasting, a messy miniature food processor from pureeing those shallots, a salad bowl, all the raiments from cutting the vegetables….in other words, I managed to make a HUGE mess in my tiny galley on an evening when I was just going to do something simple with no fuss. Ugh!
Today promises to be picture perfect! Blue skies, a gentle breeze, soft temperatures.
I have started my first “Tsock” pattern from the “Tsarina.” It is called “Octoberfest,” and I love the bright golden colorway, including a light frothy ‘head’ for the top of the sock. I enjoyed trying out her toe beginning. For my other toe-up sock, the “Skew” sock from Knitty, I started by wrapping and casting on to two needles held parallel. For Octoberfest you cast on half the number of stitches and work back and forth in short rows to create the toe. It was easy and somewhat mythical watching the toe emerge from this simple technique! Today, if there is time after the endless chores, I will knit the straight stockinette bit of the foot toward the heel.
On the Road Again….
We have slipped our land moorings and are on the road to our vagabond life on Pandora. I will miss my looms over the next few months, but I’ve brought some fun projects to keep me company….knitting (of course!), and this time some embroidery and a small tapestry loom. I’m intrigued with this image, and hope to play with it a bit. It will give me lots of practice with circles, won’t it? Circles are considered the hardest shape to weave…..I’ll deliberate on that while I weave a few dozen of them!
As you can imagine I’ve brought just about every color imaginable….small loom, big bin of yarn. I really wanted to design something with minimal colors, but my time was spent elsewhere over the past few months….and I’ve always been a sucker for color! It has been such a hectic fall and winter, and I have struggled to find a balance between weaving and designing while also enjoying the holidays and spending precious time with my husband’s parents during our last wonderful month’s with Bob’s dad. It was a tremendously moving time for both Bob and me. One week ago we moved Bob’s mother to her new assisted living facility, into a one bedroom apartment with magificent views of Long Island Sound. It was one of those days with gale force winter winds, and the views of the Sound were quite dramatic. She likes it! Her belongings look very pretty in her new place, and it already has a nice sense of home. On Saturday she told Bob that he has taken wonderful care of her since his father died, that she loves her new place, and that she felt he should take a well deserved, long vacation. So, although we hated to leave her so soon after such big changes in her life, we have hit the road for Florida where our boat Pandora has been waiting for us since November. Honestly, I was in no big hurry to return. I have grown quite complacent to be home in our quiet little town on the Connecticut River, even with the single digit temperatures and the snow. I got a fair amount of work done over the summer, and this most recent project is finished pretty much to my liking. Surprisingly, the first painted warp is the one I prefer. I could not have known this until I did the second one. I have made two braids that the piece will hang from, and I am happy with them as well. 
Here is a detail of the braid….a fiddly process of making a tiny braid in the middle of the strands of silk, and then closing the braid into a loop and adding in more silk to continue with a bigger braid.
We have rushed down the East Coast in order to stay ahead of the ice and snow that has shut down Georgia and the Carolinas. We spent a wonderful night with Rob and Kandice in Baltimore before we hightailed it for Florida. We are in St. Augustine now, and although it is a nippy 40 degrees F with wind and drizzle, we don’t dare complain!
We are staying in this pretty little inn right in the historic district. Our balcony overlooks the Lightner Museum. We managed to sit out and enjoy the view for a few minutes before the chill drove us back inside. Here is a shot of our room with the railing outside of the large window and the little balcony for sitting just off to the right of it.
I am looking forward to dinner in the cozy, intimate dining room later today. Yesterday we enjoyed a glass of wine in the bar. A cocktail in the evening and a full breakfast in the mornings comes with the room.
Stocking up on a few luxuries for our time onboard, like blood orange infused olive oil and some good books from the used book shop!
Later we will visit the Lightner Museum and tomorrow we will do a little more touring before heading down to Ft. Pierce where Pandora awaits.