Fine Craft

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!

 

First, I have to admit that I have forgotten to bring a LOT of important stuff onboard this winter.  Each week I am discovering something I meant to pack.  This does not induce confidence in my aging mental capabilities.  So the most recent thing I regret not having with me is Peter Collingwood’s book Techniques of Rug Weaving.  I need it for all the finishing options for the edges of my miniature tapestries.  I don’t even know the name of the edging I wanted to use.  After a decade of Archie and Susan style finishing I have very little experience of these other techniques.

I was hoping to find some instructions for Damascus edge, half-Damascus, and Philippine edging online, and certainly a few videos on Youtube.  But I didn’t!  I found a PDF of Collingwood’s book, but when I uploaded the file I found I only had the first 120 pages of the book, not the part with the finishing techniques!

Tommye Scanlin came to my rescue within moments.  First she sent me a scan of the half-Damascus technique which is the one I am most interested in doing.  And she let me know that the whole Collingwood book is available, in 4 pieces.  I had only gotten the first section.  Whew.  I’ll be back ashore later today to visit a wifi café to get the rest of the book.  Thank you, Ralph Griswold and Univ. of Arizona for making this available!

I spent the 2^nd half of yesterday enjoying downtown West Palm Beach!  What a spot!  There are some amazing choices for restaurants, so it was hard to choose just one for dinner.  There is a huge linen store full of stunning bedding and household linens.  Quite drop dead gorgeous….

The best find of all was a very large old fashioned fabric store, right in the center of the downtown area.  You don’t find that in many places these days.  It was a feast of incredible fabrics, from upholstery to fine silks for ballgowns.  Embroidered silks and linens and heavy upholstery fabrics, and aisles and aisles to walk down and swoon over endless ideas.

Here is an aisle of nautically inspired fabrics.

The aisles were arranged by color, and I might have had the most fun in the orange aisle!

There were two fabrics that happen to be fun weaving structures that I love.  This deflected double weave is my favorite, but I had to pass it by at $98/yd.

I also loved this design, but I reasoned with myself that I’d have more fun weaving it myself.

I could not pass up this incredibly happy blue onion china print on an orange ground.  This will become a large tote bag for me for spring/summer.  I could even get started on it now since Bob has his sailmaker’s sewing machine onboard.  I’d have to make peace with using sailmaker’s heavy Dacron thread, so I think I’ll wait.  I want to use the bright blue color of the onionware for thread….

So, if you ever find yourself in West Palm Beach, check out Mac Fabrics!

And here are some views of West Palm Beach at night.  Lovely!

Our view of West Palm from Pandora at anchor.

Today we will take a long walk across a bascule bridge to Palm Beach.  I will visit the famous Worth Ave and perhaps the Breakers for tea?  ….if they serve tea!  And then back across the ICW via another bridge and back to our little anchorage.

It’s still a bit chilly down here at the top of the Gold Coast of Florida.  Bob keeps posting photos on Facebook, saying how cold we are, and you can imagine the responses from friends living in New England!  They are NOT sympathetic!

However, we are cold!  Try living outside in 50-degree temps with near gale force winds.  There is no going inside for the day when you are under way; you simply must stand in the chilly gale in order to steer the boat and navigate.  Then after 12 – 14 hours of this you can go down below which is the same chilly temperature, but at least without wind, and try to warm up.  In the long run we get into bed each night as cold as we’ve been all day, and get up each morning still cold.  Oh!  And I should mention that at least half the days onboard there is no hot water, so I also have to wash up with 50-degree water in my tiny 50-degree head (boat-ese for bathroom).  It’s not all bliss down here!

But I admit it looks pretty blissful….Pandora on a mooring in Vero Beach….she’s the boat at center in the distance.

But the sea life, the birds and the plants don’t seem to be suffering.  We still see dolphins playing around us every single day as if life is very good indeed!  Yesterday Bob missed the most exciting photo opportunity of this year. We were several miles offshore, sailing from Ft. Pierce to Lake Worth, and at one point we passed a giant sea turtle!  It was right near the boat! The turtle’s shell was almost 5 feet in diameter, and his head was like a cantaloupe!  Bob said he raised his head and looked right at Pandora!  I missed this auspicious moment because I was in a stugeron– induced fog due to always being seasick when we are offshore!

Such lush ivy growing on a wonderful tile.  The climate is certainly mild enough for tiles outside!

Doesn’t this palm frond make a lovely headdress for Bob?

 Every year Bob and I plant a window box of herbs and flowers that becomes my little garden onboard.  It’s my one little connection to life on land.  This year I could not get to my favorite nursery in Ft. Pierce, so I’ve had to make do with plants from the Lowes that was right on the bus route in Vero.  I’ve got a small mint and parsley plant and two red geraniums.  I hope they will thrive as well as the plants in previous years.  This little bit of green and red makes me so happy!

I need to knuckle down on my little landscape tapestry.  Time is growing short if I am to finish this in time to send it off to Scotland for an exhibit of miniature tapestries called “Postcards from Home.”  First it will travel to New Hampshire where it will be boxed up with other tapestries before it goes on its journey across the Atlantic.  Doing this piece has made me realize that I’d like to do a series of miniatures based on the changing scenery we find as we head south each winter.  It will be a nomad’s view of winter along the US East Coast.  But first, I need to stop weaving/unweaving and just finish #1 of this series!  At this point I am not ready to photograph it!  It still has so much that disappoints me….hopefully soon it will be looking better.

And I’m making good progress on the Carol Sunday sweater, “For Irene.”  There was a glitch with the sleeves, but once again, Carol came to my rescue very quickly.  I had gotten an email ages ago saying there was a corrected version of the pattern available with a link .  When I followed the link and downloaded the new pattern I really couldn’t see any differences between the two, but I figured I just wasn’t looking carefully enough.  Well, it seems I have two copies of the un-corrected pattern.  Carol very nicely sent me the corrected pattern as an attachment.  It does mean that I had knitted most of a sleeve where I kept fudging the lace pattern in order to get it centered.  I have set that aside to knit the correct version and am now nearing the end.  I will then rip out the first sleeve and knit it again.  If I can just make some good progress on my little tapestry I will get this sweater done in no time!  And if it does get done soon I’ll be wearing it too!

Bob and I vacuum packed our down coats and wool sweaters about a week ago.  We regret that but haven’t yet taken the plunge to dig them out.  We did UN-vacuum seal one of our blankets though since we’ve been very cold at night after all the long hours of standing in the wind and chill each day. That means we hae 3 lightweight blankets on us at night! Anyway, I’ll be happy to have another new sweater to wear!

I’ll close with this morning’s sunrise.  I was up for it, but it was Bob who took the shot!