Category Archives: Fine Craft

This exhibit opens today at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT.  It will run until Saturday, April 26.  There is an awards ceremony on April 11, and a day of weaving desmonstrations on April 18th.  The museum is closed on Easter and Easter Monday.

I am thrilled to have two pieces in this show, and I hope to visit the show on the very last day it is open.  I’ll be skidding into town just in time!

The chairwoman of the show wrote me earlier this week to say that “Sunet on Wilson Cove” has received two awards!  2nd Place for Wall Hangings, and a special award for Best Use of Color!  She made my day!  The jurors were Sarah Saulson and Anita Thompson.

“Thread of Life”

We are passing through an area of abandoned rice paddies.  The colonists worked very hard to cut down miles and miles of bald cypress swamp—and that has to be a hard job (wonder if they had slaves to do it then)—and now it has all returned to bald cypress swamp once again.  Hard to tell man ever tamed this area.

I have learned a little of why rice is no longer grown in South Carolina.  It turns out that the process of growing rice the traditional way, which means flooding the fields at some point in the growing season, can only be done by hand.  Because the fields are so marshy and at times underwater, everything from sowing seed to harvesting the rice has to be done manually.  In other rice growing states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and California) a hybrid type of rice is grown that requires irrigation, but is not grown in marsh conditions.  Mechanized equipment can be used for the whole process so the cost of growing rice is much less.  That pretty much put Carolina rice out of business.  There are still a few farms, but they do not export the rice and it is only available in small boutique type shops.  We bought some gold rice (not polished to white) from nearby Palmetto Plantation at the museum shop in Georgetown.  I made it last night, and I do wonder if some of the dark particles I found were just pieces of chaff or if they were critters.  I really to had to cull the rice before cooking it, just in case of the latter!  It has sort of put me off to making it again….

Since leaving Georgetown we have been traveling through the cypress marshes.  It’s always nice to be alone again….at least for a bit.  I never like being alone on holidays, and we are rapidly approaching Easter (tomorrow, in fact).  It would be nice to find an acquaintance we know when we arrive in Wrightsville later today.

Here are some scenes from the marsh. An abandoned rice paddy where cypress are coming back.

An osprey on the nest watching us as we pass.

Traveling through a landscape that has returned to unspoiled marsh.

And turtles sunning themselves on a cypress root.  I just had to include it even though it’s blurry! (So….what do you call a collection of turles?  A bale or a turn.  I’m going with bale since we are in cotton country!)

As I post this it is now several days into spring, and the weather has only gotten colder!  It’s been grey with high winds and horizontal rain.  I’ve been curled up down below knitting, while Bob has been standing out in the wind and rain at the helm, steering us ever northward.  The ICW in Georgia is very shallow so we can only move from shortly before high tide until shortly after high tide.  When the winds and currents are against us it’s not worth trying!  Hopefully tomorrow we will se a bit Savannah in sun with warm temperatures!  That’s what the weather predicts and I’m holding to it!

On the first day of spring we spent the morning walking the streets of Fernandina, while a dense fog had Pandora and various other transient boats lost in the mist.  It was perfectly clear on shore, but dense as pea soup out in the harbor.

Fernandina really is a beautiful southern town! Here are some of the lovely houses we saw along our walk.  I think this house might be the largest house in town–certainly the largest on our walk.  It is now an inn.

This house was fascinating from all directions!  It was hard to choose just one photo, but the view of this hand hewn porch won.

 I never get tired of looking for beautiful front doors, or doors of any kind.  A beautiful entrance to a house is just SO inviting!  And there were plenty of houses in Fernandina that just begged me to come sit on the porch or take a look through the front door.  I managed to refrain….

Camellias in bloom at many houses, along with azaleas and roses.

A series of lovely doors!

Even a side door caught my attention….

This house had such pretty birdhouses posted as finials on the gate to the front walk!

I know you want to see a close up!

I don’t know what this vine is that is growing on this outbuilding–I bet it doesn’t grown in Connecticut….

And an orange tree with both flowers and fruit.

Many streets smelled positively heavenly with mock orange shubs blooming at several houses.

Getting back onboard I happened to check my email and found a comment from Marjorie recommending that I make sure to visit Bristly Thistle, the embroidery shop right in Fernandina!  Yikes!  I am so disappointed that I did miss it!  By the time I was reading Marjorie’s comment, we had dropped our mooring and were headed to Cumberland Island.  If we went back we’d have to give up our visit to Cumberland.  It was not an easy decision for me, but I also knew I’d already tortured Bob for quite some time during my visits to all the pretty shops in the center of Fernandina.  Well, Bristly Thistle is on my list for next time.  I won’t make that mistake twice!

Just to give you an idea of shopping hell for Bob:  this shop had curiosities, vintage items and antiques.  I had a ball…..Bob, not so much…  now I’ve got ideas for what I can do with all my shells.

By mid-afternoon we had anchored off  Cumberland Island and were headed ashore in the dinghy. We walked to the ruins of the Carnegie mansion on Cumberland Island, and then into the small town that was built to hold the employees of the mansion.  It was beautifully clear on shore with blue skies above us.  We thought we were done with fog!  Not so!

If you look really closely in the photo you will see that I’m wearing on of my recently finished sweaters!  All in all, it was a glorious first day of spring!

We left just after sunrise on Sunday morning in order to take advantage of the rising tide. While we travel through Georgia we will only have 4 or 5 hours a day, just a couple of hours on either side of high tide, to make our way.  At low tide the Intra Coastal Waterway here is too shallow for Pandora.  So we will move while we can, and then stop each day to await the next high tide during daylight hours.  There are no towns on our route, so we will have several days of quiet passage and peaceful anchorages in the salt marshes.  The landscape is beautiful here, and there are still dolphins following our wake, and lots of beautiful shore birds.

Arctic terns are following us quite closely at our stern.  They are flying just about eye level with us, and at the same speed we are going.  It’s fascinating to see a bird in flight this closely.  Today I saw one bird cross its legs and rub them together like he was scratching his legs!  And I am making eye contact with the birds.  It’s so strange to look right into the eyes of a bird in flight and find him looking right at me!  I can see closely how they move their heads as they fly, watching the water for interesting tidbits.  I think we must have been stirring up stuff on the muddy bottom that attracted these terns.  I tried really hard to get a photo of one of terns looking right at me…..no luck!

It’s the first day of spring, yet decidedly unspring-like in Fernandina Beach, Florida.  We have awakened to dense fog, and the scenery in late March looks just like the little tapestry I did of our view here back in early January.  I am always going to think of St. Mary’s River in the gloaming…

There was a lunar eclipse this morning that I’ve heard was quite dramatic throughout northern Europe.  Here, I was quite excited to get up early (5.30 am) and view it, but since we had thick fog it was not meant to be!

On the morning when we left St. Augustine I saw a most alluring trick of light.  At one point during the sun’s rise from the horizon the water of St. Augustine turned a lovely color of cornflower blue!  I’ve never seen anything like it!  And the boats at anchor were glowing white as if they were lit from within.  It only lasted a moment—maybe not even 10 minutes—and it was so lovely!

The day we traveled north from St. Augustine to Fernandina Beach got windier and grey as the day wore on.  By early afternoon we had apparent wind of 25 – 30 mph coming straight at us.  It was screaming!  And with the tide against us as well we made very slow progress.  Long day.  We were exhausted when we got to Fernandina.

So it was lovely to wake up to a beautiful morning here yesterday.  We took advantage of the day to spend some time ashore.  Along the residential streets there are azaleas in bloom, along with camellias and even some wistera blooming amidst the palm trees.  Now that’s an odd sight!

Charming houses along the residential streets…

The business district of town has some classic early 20th buildings.  Here are the courthouse and the Post Office.

And a view down the main street in town.

 There are some great shops in Fernandina and some enticing restaurants.  I am particularly tempted by a shop with some funky, hand-made looking shoes.  Since we have fog this morning I may go back and try on a couple of pairs.

When Bob filled some water jugs on the dock  yesterday, he was right near the fish cleaning station.  Several pelicans thought it was handout time for fish scraps, and they stared Bob down waiting.  Unfortunately he had nothing to give them and they were not happy about that!  None of my photos quite catch the condescending looks these birds give you!–probably due to always having their beaks down so they look like they are looking down their ‘noses’ at everyone!

  My coral sweater is finished!—I even wore it during the windy, cloudy travel day here.  No photo yet, but here is the pattern I used—sort of.  My sweater doesn’t look much like this photo at all.

First of all, I don’t do hoods, so my sweater has a K2, P2 ribbed neckline leading into the Henley neck opening.  Then the color is bright watermelon, or coral, linen/cotton blend of Berrocco’s “Linsey.”  I finished the bottom of the sweater and the sleeve cuffs with the same K2, P2 ribbing that I used on the neck.  Voila!

I still have to sew on the 2^nd sleeve of my “For Irene” sweater designed by Carol Sunday.  I don’t know how successful my version is.  I made the body rather A-line below the armscythe.  That is a good look on me, but I may have overdone it!  It is quite large at the bottom.  I don’t have a full length mirror on board, so I can’t tell.  I guess I’ll find out when we get to our hotel in April for the upcoming wedding.  If I don’t like it, it will not be hard to fix, although not in time to wear for the wedding.  I can leave the sweater completely sewn together at the sleeves and shoulders and just undo the side seams near the bottom of the sweater and re-knit with fewer increases.  Luckily it was knit from the top down, so it will unravel easily!  Hoping I don’t have to do this—and hoping I can muster some energy for sewing in that final sleeve!  I am a slug when it comes to assembling sweaters.

So after a bit of shoe shopping this morning, we plan to sail to Cumberland Island midday—if the fog lifts.  Cumberland is a lovely spot, with wild horses, and wonderful shells.  I always meant to make some wreaths with the shells I gathered here two years ago.  Maybe I’ll finally get to that this summer…

We are headed north now.  We have a deadline—always a bad choice to have deadlines on a boat (so that is a bad decision!).  Mother Nature loves to mess with deadlines.  Another wise, old adage goes like this:

The most dangerous piece of equipment on boat is a calendar.

You see, we have a wedding in South Carolina in mid-April, and we want to be there!  We are also putting Pandora in brokerage this spring in order to buy another boat, so getting her to her brokerage home before the wedding would be the best plan.  I’m sure Mother Nature will have a good time with our plans, but we have to make the attempt.  So we are headed north.

For the past week we have sailed north and just taken enough time to stop each night to rest before continuing each morning.  These have been long days, either sailing out in the Atlantic or motoring up the Intra Coastal Waterway. We even had two days with good wind for sailing up the ICW. While these days have not included any shore leave, there have been lots of interesting sights on the water:  flying fish, manatees, dolphins, shore birds—even some very interesting man made birds that have been thrilling to watch as they fly overhead.

We missed getting photos of all the lovely wildlife, so I’ll just include some sunsets.

And this tiny island where someone had set up a tent!

Yesterday we arrived in Daytona and decided we’d like to see this city that we have previously always passed by.  We had a wonderful dinner at The Cellar, which is located in a beautiful early 20th c. house that used to be Warren Harding’s summer home.  What a lovely spot and a beautiful home.  The menu is amazing and so are the wine choices!

We ate in the pretty sunroom.  This photo (which I did not take!) was taken from the window table where Bob and I sat.

We arrived here on the last day of the annual ‘bike week’ here in Daytona.  We could hear the revving engines of many, many bikes as we set the anchor when we first arrived.  It put me in mind of the famous racetrack, and I did wonder if there were some kind of car race going on.  We will have to get ashore early this morning if we want to see the bikes before they leave town.  Perhaps this bike rally is a significant part of what makes Daytona so popular for college students on spring break.

Next stop is St. Augustine, a place we’ve visited numerous times, both by water and by land.  We will spend a few days there since we hurried out of town back in January when it was so cold!

It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve posted anything here—for various reasons.  I have been pretty productive over the past weeks, so it looks like I will head home with three new sweaters, and I have made enough progress on my Portuguese Man of War tapestry to feel that I know where I’m headed with that.  I set aside my third lace heart a few weeks back and have not touched it since.  And I made one, very fun, sock from Cat Bhordi’s Insouciant Knitting book.  Although that sock was fun to knit, I am not that smitten with the sock style and probably will never get around to knitting the second one….  Ah, well….

Here is that interesting sock…

And current progress on tapestry:

 There have been some unsettling moments over the last few weeks, and that is usually what takes me away from blogging.  We have had some sad news from several friends who are having health issues.  I am so worried for each of them and waiting for news is so stressful that it is very hard for me to concentrate on anything else.  I hate to even bring up this kind of thing here, but it has taken up so much of my daily thoughts I will just say that I am willing good friends to regain their health.

Also, we recently had two very frightening sailing incidents.  I hesitate to spend time describing what happened—this is, after all, a blog about weaving and other handwork, not about sailing!  But sailing is a major part of my life each year, and while sailing, Pandora is my floating studio.  Every sailor encounters bad situations.  I’m often reminded of the old adage:

Good decisions come from experience.  Experience comes from bad decisions.

After 40 years of sailing together,  I hope that we have gained enough experience, and made enough bad decisions, to be guaranteed in only making good decisions now.  Alas, not so!

Bad decision #1 is not one that carries much blame for us.  I will always take the easy route to get somewhere, so if it were up to me, I would spend our whole trip motoring and sailing up and down the Intra Coastal Waterway and never go out in the ocean!  Bob, on the other hand, would always choose to be out in the ocean, so he tries to pick the days that will cause me the least stress.

Going out in the ocean from coastal US below New Jersey involves using inlets because the entire southern coast has barrier islands.  Inlets are a sailor’s challenge.  Some are better than others, but since they are all dicey,  it’s better to avoid the bad ones entirely and to be cautious of the ‘good’ ones.  We have used Ft. Pierce inlet over the past few years since it is well known as one of the ‘good’ ones.

However, about a month ago, there was an accident in this inlet where a barge in tow sank and one person died.  This sunken barge is a significant hazard in the inlet, and the inlet has been closed since the accident.  We recently heard that the inlet is now open during certain times each day as salvage operations have begun.

So when Bob wanted to have a good day of sailing up the Florida coast from Key Largo to Ft. Pierce, he contacted the Coast Guard to see what the situation is with the Ft. Pierce inlet.  The Coast Guard told him that on the day in question there would be divers working on the wreck during the morning, but that the inlet would be open to small vessels by 11am.  We hit the high seas to make passage to Ft. Pierce.

When we arrived about 2.30 in the afternoon, we called the Coast Guard again for instructions on how to proceed into the inlet.  We had been told that the wreck was marked off with buoys to prevent boats passing over that part of the inlet.  But the Coast Guard then informed Bob that the inlet was closed until the end of the day because salvage operations, including divers, were still underway.  Ugh!

We noticed two other sailboats nearby us; one was a boat we have crossed paths with several times over the years in the Bahamas.  In fact, they had just sailed overnight from Chubb Cay based on the same information about going through this inlet by late morning.  They had arrived at Ft. Pierce at 11am and had been anchored off the beach all day.

This was one of those times when there were no good choices.  It’s never a good idea to anchor on a lee shore, which is what they chose to do.  But the other options were not good either: to sail back and forth near the inlet waiting for it to reopen which is exactly what Bob and I did.  For our friends, who had already been up all night for their passage from the Bahamas, this was not such a good choice.  Another option would be to keep sailing to another inlet.  The next inlet north is Cape Canaveral, and it was closed for the upcoming rocket launch.  So, given this lack of good choices we all did the best we could.

The third boat waiting for the inlet was not known to us, but after a chat on the radio we learned that he was onboard alone and had sailed from Miami with the same information that the inlet would be open by late morning or noon.

It was 6pm by the time the divers were up and the salvage barge with a large crane aboard had been up-anchored and moved to a safe location inside the inlet.

Here are the guidelines we always use for entering inlets.  It is best to go at slack tide.  Water does not like to be restricted—and that is exactly what inlets are.  The water approaching the east coast of the US has come all the way from Africa and is suddenly coming in contact with shallow coastal areas and then being funneled into a tiny inlet.  Just imagine what happens to all that water—it gets very agitated.  So it’s best not to add any further agitation such as flooding or ebbing tides.  Slack tide will have the least additional agitation. Wind also plays a significant part at inlets.  Never go into an inlet when the wind opposes the tide.

We planned our 2.30 arrival to coincide with slack tide.  There was moderate wind out of the east (yes, all the way from Africa), but with no tidal activity we should have had a reasonable transit through that inlet. It is almost impossible to get all these variables to be in sync with each other, but we do aim for as many positive players as possible.  But at 6pm in the evening, when we were allowed through, a number of things had become rather worrisome.  First, the sun was low in the west, right in our eyes, so it was quite difficult to see the obstructions that were marked in the inlet.  Second:  now the tide was at full ebb and the wind was from the east—bad situation.  The water was very confused.  Third:  I really hate to admit this—I have the highest regard for the Coast Guard– but on this day they were not giving out the best information.

Our friends on Five and Dime entered the inlet first, followed by us, and then Morgana, the boat that had sailed from Miami.  The Coast Guard advised all of us to ‘hug’ the north side of the inlet and proceed close to that jetty.  The wreck was on the southern side of the inlet. The waters were so confused we were all sluicing around and heeling over quite significantly in both directions.  Pandora was heeling about 30 degrees, first to port and then to starboard, so we were heeling a total of 60 degrees every minute or so.  We needed almost full throttle on the engine to keep her going forward; otherwise, she just sluiced around from side to side.

Shortly into the inlet Five and Dime ran hard aground in the area we’d been told to go.  She was right in front of us, so it seemed likely that we would run right into her.  It was harrowing to watch her pounding repeatedly on the bottom.  She was heeled over quite far, so she was pounding on the side of her keel and hull.  It looked terrifying.  They made an immediate distress call to the Coast Guard who, along with the local harbor police, came out to help within a moment.  A few big waves hit all of us then, and Five and Dime came off the bottom and managed to get back underway.

During this time, Bob saw no other option to avoid hitting Five and Dime than to turn around and head back out a bit.  The marked area we were to transit was a bit too narrow for turning around, so we ended up going over the sunken barge a bit, luckily with no incident.  By the time we did an entire 360 degrees, Five and Dime had progressed enough for us to continue forward.

Morgana did not have enough engine power to get through the inlet on power alone, so the captain, who was alone, had to go up on deck to put out his jib.  Boy, did I suffer a heart stopping moment watching him do that.  Our boats were all heeling and sluicing around, and I don’t know how he managed to stay onboard.  But after a tediously long few minutes, we were all safely in.  Five and Dime went to anchor near the Coast Guard station in order to be near help while they assessed any possible damages to their hull.  Morgana and we went further in to a protected anchorage.

The winds had freshened quite a bit during the late afternoon.  We set our anchor, but now neither of us remembers how thoroughly we backed down on the anchor to set it.  Clearly, not well enough.  At just after midnight, which meant it was now Friday, March 13^th, Bob got up to check things.  He often does this at least a couple of times each night.  To his horror he found that we were no longer even in the anchorage.  We were dragging quite rapidly toward the bascule bridge that was just beyond this anchorage.  He called me to come up on deck as quickly as I could.  I also was horrified as I came up the companionway to see the bridge rapidly approaching our stern.  Of course, it was entirely the other way around, but it did look like the bridge was bearing down on us, instead of us bearing down on the bridge.

I took the wheel while Bob went forward to assess the anchor.  As he left the cockpit he warned me not to run over the anchor.  Yikes.  I set the throttle at a moderate speed hoping it was not too much to overtake our anchor.  Then I looked back at the bridge and was terrified to see that we were now very close to one of the huge abutments.  Fear took over and I pushed the throttle to full forward.  I can think of only one other time in my life when I was this scared.  I could actually feel us hitting the abutment and our mast striking the bridge–although it never actually happened.  I was in quite a state!  Pandora felt the kick of the full throttle and began making slow progress forward.  I guess we were in quite a current pushing us toward that bridge.  It was deadly dark, except for the excruciatingly bright lights on the bridge, as we tried to re-anchor in this overly crowded anchorage.  This time we backed down good and long to make sure the anchor was well set, but neither of us felt confident enough to go back to sleep.  It was a long night.

I do not blame us for the harrowing experience of getting through Ft. Pierce inlet.  We did our best to choose a safe sailing day for the trip, and we did due diligence by contacting the Coast Guard about the use of that inlet before setting out.  Sometimes things just conspire against your best efforts.

But the anchoring fiasco was entirely our own poor doing.  And the danger of dragging rapidly back to that bridge was quite a bit higher than even the experience of a bad passage through an inlet.  It still haunts me, two days later.  I think it will haunt for me quite a long time to come.

Over a decade ago Bob and I edited and published a book about a man who sailed the East Coast of the US in a very small sailboat.  He had a marvelous ability for understatement and often referred to these harrowing experiences as a “busy cup of tea.”  The whole day was indeed a very busy cup of tea for us!

And I’ll end with another old adage:

Boating is hours and hours of pleasure, interrupted by moments of sheer panic!

Frankly, I often feel it is the other way around….

It’s almost here, and I hope it comes in like a lamb!  We just got word from our oil company that we are dangerously low on oil and that the truck cannot get in our driveway due to the closed gate.  No one can get that gate open when there is so much snow piled up on either side of it!

There is not much to report here.  The weather window for heading out of Florida has closed so nobody is leaving which means we are still anchored back in the mangrove swamps.  The herons and egrets and pelicans have good hunting back here and are wonderful to watch.  It seems that everytime they strike at something in the water they are swallowing a tasty morsel.  The juvenile eagle ray swims by Pandora at some point every day.  I think he must also find good feeding back here.

Our older son Rob came for a visit this week after having some business in Miami.  It was wonderful to see him!  We spent a day together in Key West, using his rental car for the trip.  As you know there is only one road that runs down the Keys, US 1, and that road has only one lane in each direction.  Much of it is causeway going over water.  When there is an accident it pretty much closes down the ability to move in any direction.  If you are stuck on a causeway there is no getting off.  That is what happened to use on the trip back up to Marathon at the end of our day in Key West.  It was a bad accident and had the road closed for most of the day, so in the long run we were pretty lucky.  I’m sure lots of folks never got to their destination that day.

Here are Rob and Bob enjoying some cool refreshment on a pretty front porch in Key West, at a bar called “The Porch.”

I have a good crop of mint growing in my window box– along with cilantro and bright red geraniums– and we used the first mint harvest to make mojitos!  Yum!

It was quite hard to say goodbye to Rob, not knowing when we will see him next…. and quite hard to learn the news that Chris has decided to move to San Francisco temporarily in order to make some connections out West for his banking start up.  This vagabond life is a little hard at times like this.  It’s hard enough to get enough time with my kids without also disappearing off the grid for months and months.  Sigh…

Our dinghy got damaged several weeks ago, and although Bob bought a repair kit, the fix was not to his liking.  We decided to have it re-done professionally.  Here it is going back in the water after a day at the shop.

We had to stay ashore for the day while the repairs were done–no other way to get back to our boat.  I found a beautiful spot for us to pass some time while we waited….and have lunch as well! This lovely resort is on the other side of Marathon so we were looking out over the Gulf.  Some dolphins came near shore to entertain us during lunch.

Today will be a quiet day onboard.  I have plans to make bread and get back to weaving!

How do I account for the ‘fluther’ of Portuguese Man of War that drifted into our little mangrove creek yesterday?  It has to be serendipty.  Bob jumped in the dinghy and got lots of photos for me.  Now I have plenty of good images to draw from for my tapestry.

The poor things will die back here as they tangle with the mangrove roots.  We will have to be very careful going under the lines we have tied in the mangroves as we go to and fro in our dinghy, as well as when we leave and Bob pulls in those lines. At low tide the lines droop down in the water, so there is a good chance the lines have poison on them and can sting Bob’s hands when he pulls them back aboard in preparation for leaving. We’ve put dishwashing gloves on our provisioning list.

The water is a very weird color back here in the mangroves–a milky green.  We think that it’s caused by something the mangroves themselves produce and leech into the water, but we have no certain knowledge about this!

What I do have certain knowledge about is the collective word for jelly fish: fluther! A fluther of Portuguese Man of War.  I love collective nouns; they are so evocative.  A ‘murder’ of crows is one of my favorites.  A “bloat” of hippopotamuses, a  “kindle” of kittens, a “parliament” of rooks. Last night when I went searching for a collective word for jelly fish, I found that a ‘gaggle’ of geese is for geese on the ground.  When they are flying they are called a ‘skein’ of geese.  I love that! Ducks also fly in a skein.

Just now Bob called me up on deck to see a small spotted Eagle ray– a juvenile.  Isn’t he beautiful?

I’ll end with a shot of Bob I took yesterday.  He was attempting to befriend a pelican.  Not successful!

Those are big concepts…. and words that come to mind for anyone who is at the beginning of a new project.  Excitement for the new idea and the commitment to try it jostles with the anxiety of entering the unknown and doubts about one’s ability to tackle this new idea.  In the case of weaving, and especially weaving tapestry, there is the calming process of making the warp, spacing the warp threads and weaving a header.  This process involves relaxing repetitive movements with your hands that help chase away the negative doubts and worries.  If you are very lucky–and I am!– you are holding a bobbin made by John Moss, a beautiful tool that you know was made with great care and precision and feels good in your hand.

I am trying a continuous warp this time, where I have all the warps on both front and back of my copper pipe loom and will advance the warp around the loom as I progress.  Normally I make a continuous warp that has half the warp on the front of the loom and half on the back and I bring the two together with a shedding bar.  Making a warp the way I have this time allows me to weave something twice as long as my small loom.  The downside is that when I advance the warp around the loom I will have to be very careful about keeping things straight!  I have been meaning to face this fear for years!  I also have to keep the back warps from distracting me so I have inserted a card so I will only see the front warps!

There is just nothing so soothing as the look of a brand new warp.  There is no other time in life when things are so neat and tidy and every warp thread is perfectly parallel with its neighbor, with even tension across the whole surface.  Life is certainly never as even as a warp!

Several weeks ago I made an acquaintance with a tapestry weaver from the Baltimore area, Ann Booth, whose works I’ve enjoyed seeing online.  I’m using up a data this year keeping myself inspired by looking at artworks online and staying in communication with other weavers.  Next year Ann and her husband may be out here sailing down the coast and across to the Bahamas.  I hope our paths will cross.  Perhaps we can even weave together!

When I mentioned that I had only met one other weaver during our three years of cruising (and that woman, a Canadian, had left her looms behind and brought only knitting along for her trip), Ann introduced me to Doris Florig, who is currently living on her sailboat in Guatemala.  Doris is such an inspiration!  She reminds me of the enthusisam and quest for knowledge of my younger self, when I was so intrigued by learning everything from the ground up: spinning my own yarn, dyeing, weaving cloth.  It was in my young adulthood that I learned these techniques.  Somewhere along the way I have lost the wonder of these things.  I still spin and dye and weave, but over time that original awe and wonder has left me.  Doris is still cultivating and nurturing that spirit of adventure.  The main saloon–or cabin– of her boat is not very different from my own on Pandora, and she has set up a large tapestry loom in that space.  Wow!

I can tell Bob is worried I’ll want a set up like this soon!

We sailed from Miami to Marathon, with a one-night stop at Rodriguez Key near Key Largo, over the past couple of days.  The wind has been extreme but mostly at our back which is far better than sailing into the wind.  It was a hard couple of days for me since I get seasick easily, but even Bob found the long days hard going.  He has to do all the hard work by himself.

We are now in Marathon, and it is the most crowded harbor I have ever seen in the US!  You’d think every boat from the US and Canada is here.  There are no moorings available for rent, which is no surprise.  We are #32 on the waiting list for a mooring, and I thought that would mean we had small hope of getting one before June, at least! The bigger surprise was that there is no room to anchor in the harbor.  We arrived late in the afternoon, not long before sunset and I was quite worried when I saw how crowded things are.

Here’s a layout of all the moorings, now full.  All additional space is taken up with boats on their own anchors.  Sheesh!

We motored up into a creek off the harbor that leads into a mangrove swamp.  There were already about a dozen boats up there “Med-moored”–short for Mediterranean moored– to the mangroves.  This is a technique where you put down your anchor in the middle of the creek and then back the stern of your boat toward the mangroves and tie your stern onto the trunks of the mangroves.  The boats end up lined up next to each other like in a parking lot.  There was less room than we’d like between boats, but we managed to squeeze ourselves in.  Luckily the two boats on either side of the spot we chose were very welcoming! We barely got ourselves settled as the sun went down.

Tied to the mangroves!

The wind is still howling, but we’ve learned that once the wind stops there will be gazillions of no-see’ums.   I guess I hope the wind stays up! There are some cautiously optimistic weather predictions that March may come in like a lamb this year.  If the weather truly does get milder many of the boats here in Marathon will head off to the Bahamas.  We do not plan to go yet, so that may leave us room to move into the harbor. Maybe we’ll even get a mooring!  Early next week we plan to meet up with old friends who have a 2nd home down here, and our older son is planning a visit next week after he finishes a business meeting in Miami.  I am really looking forward to that!

On our first trip to shore yesterday we encountered this manatee.  Shortly later we saw a group of four floating together in one of the small canals.  Amazing creatures! The water is very green in this harbor.

So, now that I have done all the preparations I will start weaving today.  I want to explore some ways of depicting water in cotton thread, and attempting the Portuguese Man of War that we saw in Boca a couple of weeks ago.  For those of you who have seen my past postings you know that I plan to weave a large tapestry of a Portuguese Man of War.  I’m looking forward to playing with water images today! Hopefully I will gain some insight on what I can do with the larger tapestry that is waiting for me at home.

There should be no surprise that when I avoid chores as well as I have lately, they just pile up more and more.  I really love to make things and, for some reason, detest finishing things.  My little tapestry is still waiting to get the back threads trimmed and buried and have its warp ends finished in some way.  While avoiding this tedious chore I have been knitting the “For Irene”sweater.  As of this afternoon, it is now also completed and that means it also needs finishing.  Not sure which I detest more: finishing tapestries or sewing sweaters together.  Ugh.

I had one of the worst night’s sleep ever last night because of high winds blowing through our anchorage.  When the wind is blowing Pandora is much like an anxious dog.  She tends to tug as hard as she can at her anchor line, first pulling as hard to port as she can, which includes heeling over a bit.  Then she’ll pull hard to starboard and heel over there too.  Back and forth… all night.  When it gets really windy it feels like I might fall out of bed.   Who could sleep through that?

Shortly after we got up this morning a really nasty squall came through.  Our middle of the night wind was nothing compared to this.  Bob thinks the gusts probably hit around 70 mph.  We both thought we would drag our anchor right across the harbor and crash into either a mega yacht docked in any of the mega-mansion back gardens or one of the other traveling boats anchored along with us.  Other boats around us did drag rather significant distances, and we all felt lucky that no one bumped into each other.  Bob thinks we were probably a bit closer to one of the mega-mansions with mega-yacht than we had been the night before.  During the big blow there was a solid wall of horizontal water coming at us.  Poor Bob had to go out in the cockpit during this squall in order to keep vigil in case he had to deal with an emergency.  The whole storm lasted less than 30 minutes, but it was NO fun.

Afterward we saw some lawn furniture float by from one of the mega-mansions, and Bob saw what looked like the entire top of a palm tree in the water.

I have been meaning to mention that although I never did get afternoon tea at the Breakers, we did have a fun time there.  We did not find afternoon tea, but we made do with having an afternoon aperitif!  Most expensive drinks ever!  Bob had a draught beer and I had a glass of house wine, and the bill was over $30!  Still, there aren’t many places where the actual bar, where you rest your drink, is an aquarium, and right in front of you is a wall of glass for admiring the Atlantic Ocean.  Sometimes you have to pay for a view like this.

I’m pretty certain that the hotel is closer to the water’s edge than it was a decade or so ago when Bob and I stayed here for one of his business meetings.  Hmmmm….

This year is our first visit to Boca Raton.  We have anchored in Lake Boca before, but for some reason we did not go ashore.  Now we have seen a bit of what we’ve missed!  It’s a lovely town for walking….lots to do!  Naturally I found some gardens and houses that I couldn’t resist photographing.  The mailbox seems so completely out of place at this house.

I loved this pale lavender house with green plants and planters and the deep rust of the gate.  Great color choices!

We also happend on a beautiful florist along our walk.  The arrangements on display would have fit right in at the Breakers.  I guess lots of people have foyers on that scale.  For Pandora I just needed a tiny arrangement.  It was hard to decide between cut hyacinths or spray roses.  Finally it was the yellow and pink that won out over pale lavender and purple hyacinths….but it wasn’t easy to decide!

At the dinghy dock in Boca we saw a flock of very tame ibises who are used to having their photos taken.

Most interesting of all to Bob and me was that we found a Portuguese Man of War floating between the dinghy dock and the ICW bridge.  I think it’s pretty unusual for them to come in from the ocean.  Seeing it made me wish I had my big loom onboard so I could continue to work on my PMoW idea.  Sigh….  If you look closely on the left side of the creature you can see his tentacles.  Menacing tentacles!  I love what happened with the swirling water in this photo….very painterly!

So, now it is mid-afternoon and we have arrived in Ft. Laurderdale at the anchorage we have visited for the past three years.  It’s considerably more crowded than we’d like, and I keep thinking about squalls brewing.  It’s still quite windy and now the harbor is narrower and more crowded than Lake Boca, and I wish the wind would calm down a few notches.  Sewing my sweater together is not looking like such a bad chore now.  I think I’ll get on it.  Hopefully I’ll take photos soon!