ArgoKnot

ArgoKnot
A journal of my weaving, spinning, and knitting life
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Author name: ozweaver

Knitting My Way through Life!

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The past two days we have awakened to temperatures in the 30s!  Sweater weather!  We will be leaving Charleston today and heading ever more southward…. St. Mary’s, Georgia, by Thanksgiving!

I have come to the rather deflating realization that my Ann Jacket will not be finished by Thanksgiving.  Even if I had been knitting during the past week, which I haven’t, I still would not have finished it.  Sigh…

Before I took a hiatus from knitting in order to spend my days sightseeing in Charleston, I took a break from knitting the final body panel in order to knit the front left onto the back at sides and shoulders.  Once again, Vivian Hoxbro’s clever ideas kept me quite enthralled!  The way the shoulder knits together even includes an angle at the neck edge in spite of the fact that both body pieces were simple rectangles.  Brilliant!

This is really a terrible photo….the shoulder connection is not tapered as it appears here.  It’s just they way Bob is holding it.  And you can’t see how the front neck edge is tapered in spite of the front body panel being a rectangle.  Trust me, it’s ingenious!

I plan to spend some time today working on that final body panel, the right front, since we’ll be heading out of here shortly.  We’re not certain where we’ll stop at the end of the day.  Most likely a secluded place, which will be a rather nice change from being on a dock in a big city like Charleston….

I’ll end with a fun song I stumbled on a few a weeks ago.  I’d better warn you it will stick in your head for days…. but it’s catchy!

Sweetgrass in Charleston

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We are in Charleston, and I have not posted anything here since our arrival last Thursday.  Bob has posted lots of photos and descriptions of what we’ve been up to, and he’s done such a thorough job, that I’m not inclined to try to catch up!

I’ve been distracted.  We are photographing doors and window boxes, something I’m always intrigued to do… I’ve been thinking of window box images taken from every place I’ve been in the past decade or so…. Maine, France, England, now Charleston.  There are so many beautiful little window gardens…  I’d like to choose a few and weave them using Theo Moorman technique as Daryl Lancaster does (and as I have now done a couple of times), and put them together in a window frame fashion.  I’ve got just the spot in our house for this…

I’ve also been distracted thinking about the potential group tapestry project that the Wednesday Group might do.  For the first time in aeons I have been reading papers on classical literature and reliving my past when this was such a major part of my life.  It’s been aeons of aeons since then.  It’s rekindling the love of words and ancient languages that I’ve neglected for so long…

And I’ve been looking for the perfect basket.  Actually, I saw it last Thursday, on my first day in the Charleston Market, but I did not know it until I’d spent days looking at hundreds more baskets!

I didn’t realize that I would have so many choices.  And in the end that perfect basket was still waiting for me this morning, although when I finally realized it someone was holding it, considering it for themselves.  They put it down, and I heard them say, “I’ll think about it and come back”…..bam!  It is now mine.

Carlene Habersham made my basket. Here she is making some last minute adjustments to the rim.

She had this book on display in her booth

Carlene said the basket on the cover was made by her grandmother.  She then turned to the pages that highlighted both her grandmother’s and her mother’s work.  I was duly impressed.  But most of all, I just love the basket she made.

Last Thursday I spoke to another woman, Susie, who had some very delicate small baskets on display.  I wanted six of them to give to some basket making friends of mine.  Susie said only her daughter did work that small, and she called to ask if her daughter could make six miniature baskets over the weekend.  Susie told me to come back today and they would be ready.  Luckily for me, her daughter came too so I could meet her.

There were lots of other stalls with small baskets, but only these were done to a scale that was pleasing to the size of the basket.  Aren’t they lovely?

This basket is done by Susie’s other daughter.  It caught my eye as I was leaving their booth.

I am in basket heaven….

Days 52 – 56, Nov. 1 – 5: Charleston, South Carolina

A Golden Landscape of Sweetgrass

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Today we are underway in a bright, fall landscape.  Miles and miles of abandoned rice paddies on either side of us, now turned to fields of sweet grass interrupted by stands of cypress.  I hope to find some sweetgrass baskets for sale somewhere along the way.  Lots of bird life here:  huge flocks of purple martins that darken the sky as they swoop by.  They are all around, swooping in the distance then suddenly behind us and around us and charging off ahead.  I don’t think there can be many insects left for them to eat on these cold days.  Every mile or so we see a bird of prey silhouetted in a dead cypress.  Mostly hawks and buzzards…eagles are getting rarer down here.  We’ve been told we might see alligators, and we’re watching for them…

Yesterday we spent another night in our secluded little Jericho Creek, all alone.  We’ve kept warm by baking bread and other comfort foods.  One morning I made an apple Dutch baby,  mmmmm…  One evening recently I made pasta.  For 30 some odd years I’ve always mixed up the dough with a food processor, but really, it’s just egg and flour.  I was pretty certain I would do fine using a pastry cutter, and woohoo!  It works like a charm.  I will probably forego the food processor from here on, even at home.  I rolled out the dough with my little hand crank pasta machine.  It is on board with me since it doesn’t take up much room, and I left the cutter attachment at home. Even at home I rarely use that since I prefer to hand cut wide pappardelle type pasta.  I figured if I got this little workhorse home from Italy in my tiny suitcase many decades ago, I could surely find a small space for it on Pandora!  I’m very glad I brought it along!

I awoke this morning with a soft light shining in my eyes and thought I must have slept quite late, but it was the moon (one day past full) casting a silvery beam on me.  It was 52 degrees in our cabin!  Brrrrrrr!  Outside the temperature was in the 40s.  Time to make haste southward!

We were off just after 7.30 as the sun rose, and for a brief and fragile moment I saw the real proof of Homer’s phrase “rosy fingered dawn.”   The tips of the sweet grass and branches of cypress were tinged rose in the first light of day….I don’t think it lasted more than a couple of minutes.  It was breathtaking!

Happy Hallowe’en!  I’m afraid we won’t get much of a spooky celebration today unless we think of devious tricks to play on each other. And there is no candy on board, so if anything, it will just be tricks,  no treats. We will not reach civilization until tomorrow.  Today is a long 60 miles or so through a narrow cut in these low lands, through marsh and by swirling inlets.

Now, in late afternoon, we have just anchored in a small creek just north of Charleston.  The wind blew hard all day, from the high teens up to 25 mph.  The sun glinted brightly on the wind ruffled waters, but by late afternoon I was exhausted from the glare.  Never so happy to be out of it for now.  As we moved out of the creeks and back into saltier waters we began to see more pelicans again.  Boy!  They look so clumsy as they plunge into the water head first and create a huge splash. Doesn’t seem like they could possibly catch anything that way! Bob saw one dolphin!  No alligators…

I can just see a bit of Charleston on the horizon, promising many luxuries which I welcome!  I do love a secluded bit of space in a lovely landscape, but now I’m ready for some civilization!

We have more than 1000 miles under our keel now.  At no point in my previous life would I have wagered anything on me doing a trip like this.  And now suddenly I’ve wracked up over 1000 miles of sailing.  I scarcely believe it….

Day 50, October 30: Jericho Creek
Day 51, October 31: JerichoCreek to Long Creek 

An Anniversary Bouquet

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Way up a creek with nothing but the swallows and hawks for company, Bob really wanted to give me a bouquet of flowers for the landmark anniversary of meeting each other several decades ago.  Pretty nice job!  And he risked life and limb to get these water hyacinths! (You never know….what with alligators lurking in the sweetgrass.) You can’t get these in any florist!

The Rainbow after the Storm

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As I write this hurricane Sandy is hitting the shores where all my family and dear friends live.  I’m holding my breath until I hear from everyone, at least a day or so from now…

Meanwhile, the winds will continue strong here until the end of this week, and we are in glorious sunshine with clear skies and bright white clouds.  The autumn colors of the cypress swamps in the Waccamaw River are stunning, and our rainbow came in the form of a woman named June.

June is related to my oldest childhood friend, and we were so lucky to spend some time with her on this journey.  Her family has lived in this area for many generations.  It’s an area of cypress swamps, fields of sweetgrass, so much bird life and aquatic life…turtles, fish, alligators…

June took us visit Brookgreen Gardens, which is not only a stunning garden set on the grounds of four historical plantations which were combined by the Huntingtons to create this space for displaying outdoor sculpture, but also over the years has acquired the largest collection of American sculpture in the US.  And it’s a magnificent place.  June’s family lived here when the Huntingtons began their plan for making Brookgreen, and I imagine June must have been a young girl when the gardens first opened in the 1930s.  June’s mother worked at the gardens when she was growing up, and June herself also worked here for more than a decade.  She made a perfect tour guide for our visit!

There are so many stunning works in these gardens, so beautifully displayed in the landscape…. it was a visual feast, and it didn’t take long for me to become visually overstimulated!

All through the landscape are live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.  Stunning… As it turns out, they grow quite quickly, so although these trees look as old as time, in reality they are only about 300 years old.

Afterward June took us to see Murrels Inlet where we saw a large flock of Wood Storks!  I did not know there were any storks in the US!  What a thrill!

We ended the day on June’s back deck, watching the light change toward sunset along the salt marsh estuaries of the inlet.

I can’t possibly describe how special this day was to us!  It was a day of days….and should I mention?…. well, okay, twist my arm…. this day of days was a landmark for us.  Forty years ago, can you believe it?….40 years ago…. we had our first date.  What a magnificent way to recognize our long life together.

 We have motored a little further down the Waccamaw and are anchored in another secluded spot off the river called Jericho Creek.  Today is about 10 degrees colder than yesterday, so I am bundled in my wingspan shawl and a pair of handknit wool socks.  I’ll be making something hot and comforting for dinner.

Day 47 and 48, October 27 and 28: Cow House Creek, off the Waccamaw River, SC.
Day 49, October 29: Cow House Creek to Jericho Creek, SC.

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