ArgoKnot

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

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.

Waiting out the Storm

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I should get a good amount of knitting done while waiting for Hurricane Sandy to pass by.  Luckily we are far enough south that Sandy will not even be a tropical storm in these parts, much less a hurricane.  We expect winds of about 35 mph with gusts to 50.  The downside is that this is a very slow moving system, and we may be stuck in one place for as long as five days.  On the bright side, more time to knit and read….

As I write, Sandy is wreaking havoc on the Bahamas.  Such a beautiful area, always so fragile due to these terrible storms.  And New England is hunkering down for a combination hurricane/snow storm that is being dubbed “Frankenstorm.”  Yikes!

I’m worried about all my family and friends who live from New Jersey up through New England.  Stay safe, dear ones!

Meanwhile, I knit…..and knit…

I could not figure out a good way to photograph the finished ‘Wingspan’ shawl.  This is the best I could manage…

I’ll be wrapped in it shortly when the temperatures drop tomorrow or Sunday…

It is beginning to feel like I’ve been knitting the “Ann Jacket” (Vivian Hoxbro) for half my life.  It is a lot of knitting.  I am about two-thirds done with the 3rd body panel (out of four total).  Where am I going to get the energy for that last panel??  Then there will be all the plain knitting for the sleeves!  Sheesh!  I really do want to wear it so I’ve just got to muddle on.  It is so cleverly designed, but it is endless knitting…

This is the finished back.

The two body panels are knitted together in a very clever fashion by picking up stitches going up the left body panel, place a marker, cast on a number of stitches (and the number of stitches cast on here are what will determine the width of this center panel!), place marker, pick up stitches going down the second body panel.  As you knit along this very long row of stitches you decrease on both sides of each market (every other row) so that the knitting begins to form a mitered triangle at the very center back!  By the time you have only one stitch between the two markers you hold the two ends of your circular needle together (with the wrong sides of the body panels facing outward) and use a third needle to cast off all stitches.  Yes, that one stitch between the two markers does mean there are an odd number of stitches to be cast off…. so the last “K 1 st. from each needle together” becomes “knit last stitch from one needle together with the last 2 stitches from other needle.”

I know….it doesn’t show up very well in such dark yarn!  Here is a close up view:

Funny how things often happen when they are meant to happen.  I have put aside my swing knitted jacket “Soo Feminine” because I wasn’t happy with the finishing technique. Now, assembling that jacket looks like a perfect use for Hoxbro’s mitered technique from the “Ann Jacket!”  Should be interesting looking with the long color changes of the Kauni 8/2 Effektgarn I used…and I hope will complement the swing knitted shapes.

But… before I return to the swing jacket, I really want to finish this one.  So, onward….

Day 46, October 26: North Myrtle Beach

Ibis, Dolphins, Pelicans, and even a knitting store

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North Carolina has been a lovely place to visit!  We’ve seen the first palm trees of the trip, although I doubt they are native.  They look transplanted, but have adapted well to the climate.

There are flocks and flocks of pelicans!  People here must take them for granted as such a common sight, but I find them so exotic!  Yesterday Bob saw one sitting in the water, with the sun striking him just so that he could see the silhouette of the fish inside his bill!  A great big fish….just like the limerick!

Couldn’t count them all!

Almost every inlet we’ve passed going down the coast has brought in dolphins who play at the side of the boat.  One dolphin kept leaping out of the water right beside me while I was at the helm.  He (she?) kept switching from one side of the aft quarter to the other, and I kept flinging myself from side to side hoping to photograph him in mid air!  At one point he cleared his blow hole and shot water in our cockpit!  He was so close….but I did not get the photo!  I did manage to run aground….. new rule: the helmsman must stay focused, no taking photos while driving!

What a lovely soft landscape down here.  All low country, with pearly white sand beaches, beautiful marsh grasses that are a brilliant gold/green in the sunlight….just like the amber waves of gold in the Midwest!  Only these fields of gold are cut through with shimmering estuaries in an amazing color of bright turquoise.  When I look straight down at the water next to the boat it is a wonderful shade of sea green.  When I look out across the water, or into the winding veins of the estuaries, it is blue-green.  Lovely.  And there has been sunshine all week.

We’ve seen lots of Long Leaf Pines, the wood that Bob used to make my first loom 36 years ago.  We’ve seen flocks of egrets sitting in trees like big white pillows.  The fish are jumping everywhere, which makes us think there are dolphins chasing them.  Certainly the hunting is very good for the bird life.  There are so many birds.  I realized that some of the egrets I saw are really ibis. How cool!

And speaking of birds…. North Carolina is chock full of man-made birds too!  We have been inundated by military aircraft in these waters.  At Camp LeJeune I saw two Ospreys flying in formation for about an hour.  Quite impressive.  We’ve seen more of those huge troop carrying helicopters than we can count!  We hear them coming long before we see them!

We are in Southport, North Carolina, today.  This is a quintessential lovely southern town.  Big wide boulevards, gigantic live oaks (draped in epiphytic ferns called “resurrection ferns”) shading the sidewalks, lovely historic houses dating from the early 19th century.  Many of the houses have huge upper floor porches for looking out at Cape Fear.  That inlet is a scary piece of water, as its name implies!

Oh, how I’d love to sit on this porch with an iced tea!

We need to get away from here pretty soon due to hurricane Sandy, which will be arriving in the Bahamas in the next day or so.  We’ll continue down the coast into South Carolina, only a few miles further.  From there the ICW heads inland, and that should give us good protection from the coming storm.

I always check each port we visit to see if there is a knitting store.  There is one in Southport, so mark your map if you travel this way!  It is called Angelwing Needle Arts and carries embroidery and quilting fabrics as well as knitting yarns.  It is a pretty shop with lots of temptations. I’m sorry to report that I did not find them as friendly as Frivolous Fibers in St. Michael’s, Maryland….but hey…that’s what makes Frivolous Fibers so memorable!

As I wrote this Bob took a walk and has returned with a pound of large shrimp fresh off the boat!  They still have their heads!  $5.00/lb….for that price we can clean them ourselves.  Should make a great shrimp cocktail

Day 42, October 22: anchored in Mile Hammock at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina
Day 43, October 23: on mooring in Carolina Beach, North Carolina
Day 44, October 24: docked at “Fishy Fishy” Restaurant inSouthport, North Carolina (Cape Fear inlet)

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