Fine Craft

Just a moment away from tales of our journey, and tales of my knitting on board, to share some great things I found online in the past couple of days.

Prince Charles trying his hand at tapestry at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne.  Really!  It’s not that scary! Actually, I’m sure he’s hamming it up for the press.  He is a wonderful supporter of the wool industry.

And this lovely image of a woman knitting….

Some highlights from the past week are all about food!  What better balm is there for terribly dreary weather?  We stayed on the docks in Savannah for a couple of nights and treated ourselves to some of the high spots of Savannah.

I discovered the Tea Room almost 20 years ago and have visited it each of the rare times I’ve been in Savannah since then.  In fact, I’ve been mail ordering their “Emperor’s Bride” loose tea for all those years.  This year I had “Red Fruits” black tea, and it is my new favorite. As you can see, there is a lot to choose from.

The store and the dining room is done with an “Arts and Crafts” theme that is really lovely!  I could live here…..

On another day, our friends from Brilliant recommended we all have lunch together at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room.  What an experience!  You line up on the street with about a thousand other hungry people, and you are admitted to the dining room a table’s worth at a time.  Most of the tables seat between 6 and 12 people, so you are seated with others when a table becomes available.  You don’t order food; there is no printed menu.  Food just arrives at the table in large serving dishes, and you help yourself to what appeals to you.  I have never seen so much food on a table!  It’s more than Thanksgiving!  I think some of these dishes must always be on the menu:  fried chicken, black eyed peas, Brunswick stew, barbecued pork, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, rutabaga, squash, green beans, candied sweet potatoes…..I’m sure I’m forgetting at least a dozen other dishes.  It was amazing.  The only thing you have a choice on is your drink, which can be sweetened or unsweetened iced tea, or water!

This is the little alley-way that leads into the dining room.  When we arrived at 12 noon the line was already down the street.

And here’s a shot of the table!

Oh yeah….just looking at this photo shows several dishes I forgot to mention!  Baked bean,  cornbread, biscuits….. it was amazing!

I’m not going to mention the three days it took us to get to St. Marys, Georgia.  The weather has just been so dreary that it’s best not to talk about it….best for me to just put it behind me.  I will say I had another day with some rather severe homesickness….

St. Marys (and it is not St. Mary’s) is just over the border from Fernandina Beach, Florida.  I mean literally.  I think the two towns would be connected if not for the border.  Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.  They do share the same harbor entrance that splits before you reach either town.  And that means that moments after we leave here we will be in Florida.  Wow!

In the meantime, we intend to have a marvelous few days here, and it’s going quite well at the moment since today I awoke to sunny skies for the first time in about two weeks!  Every night leading up to Thanksgiving there is some kind of evening get together for sailors in this town, or morning coffee and treats at one of the local shops.  They have a tradition here of taking good care of sailors for Thanksgiving!  I don’t know how they do it, but each year they serve Thanksgiving dinner to about 200 sailors.  “They” supply the turkeys and the sailors supply all the side dishes and desserts.

I’m off to shop for my contribution so I can bake tomorrow.

….Oh! And last night I wore my Ann Jacket for the first time….sans sleeves, but still, I wore it!

It starts with a latte made by Bob.  It’s a great way to start the day!  I highly recommend it!

Then, of course, there is knitting.  I knit everyday.  And I plan meals… both those activities go without saying.

On this trip our new tradition is to read from The Boy, Me and the Cat at some point each day.  This is a classic cruising tale about a man, Henry Plummer, and his teenage son who sailed a small catboat down the coast from Massachusetts to Florida during the fall/winter/spring of 1912-1913…. exactly a hundred years ago!  Some things haven’t changed at all during the past century, and some things are light years different…

Henry started his journey a full month after we did.  So, after all my complaining about being cold, I’m now reading how he woke to mornings with icy decks and had to break the ice in the basin in order to have a wash up.  Yikes!  I don’t know anything about hardship, do I?

Some of most entertaining parts of the book involve the antics of Henry’s cat, Scottie, who was drafted into the trip.  She is a feisty little thing, and with no ‘kitty kibble’ onboard her meals are always interesting…

Eleven years ago Bob and I worked on a new edition of this book.  I edited the text and chose some of Henry’s original photos to add to his wonderful line drawings, and Bob worked on all the details of getting the book republished.  It came out in 2001, bankrolled by The Catboat Association, who are the repository for all of the Plummer family’s many treasures related to this book.  Our edition got very high praise from Wooden Boat Magazine, Elizabeth Meyer (founder of IYRS) and even Walter Kronkite!…among others.  We are very proud of this edition, and we worked hard to include lots of information that the previous editions (and subsequent editions too) could not.   This is the only edition that includes Henry’s photos and appendices that include his correspondence from that time, newspaper articles about him, and family information and what became of the Mascot.  It’s a great story whether you read our version of one of the others….but our edition has the most to offer!

So, as we sit anchored in Beaufort, North Carolina, we are reading about Henry’s visit here in early December of 1912.

Turned out at 5 to find all quiet, still and dark. So quiet that from the quarter I could hear the ticking of our little clock.  So calm that each star was mirrored on the water.  Away under power by 7.  Out into a golden sunrise the pride and beauty of the day.  Here was a morning for sun worshippers to kneel.  Sea and sky melted into one great glory in the east and behind us faded into soft pearly mists in which horizons were lost, and we seemed to be floating in air.  So flat the bosom of the sea that the meanest stepmother in the land would have been proud to call it hers.  The duck feathers floated on the surface as lightly as — well, I can’t think just how lightly now, but gosh-dinghed lightly.  We turned her on a 20 mile leg southwest at 8, and sailed all morning on this wonderful sea.  Why can’t somebody come here and tell people of the beauties to be found?

You can see why we look forward to each day’s installment!  Henry Plummer was one of the first adventurers to sail these waters for pleasure.

This evening we will have a little party onboard for other sailors we keep bumping into (not literally!).  We will finish the last of that peck of oysters!

 

I’m feeling a tad homesick these days…..so I can’t stop taking photos of houses…. these are  the lovely houses in St. Michaels.

Days 15 and 16, Sept. 25 and 26: St. Michaels

There is a yarn store here which I’ve visited in past years, Frivolous Fibers, which just might be the friendliest yarn store ever!  When I got there yesterday there was hardly room to peruse the yarn shelves because there were so many women lounging together working on projects.  It wasn’t a class; it was a gathering, and it happens every Tuesday! They invited me to find a seat and join them.   These are my people!  Women were working on sweaters and afghans, lace shawls, cowls….you name it!  They were discussing books, knitting, grandchildren, husbands.  It felt like home.  It felt like my wonderful knitting group from NJ… I miss them SO much!

Back on board Pandora for a little ‘wine and roses’ before dinner.

Then back ashore for dinner at Ava’s, a wine bar and brick oven pizzeria.  Wonderful!

What a lovely town Chestertown, Maryland is!  Fall sure does bring extreme weather with it.  To me the oddest days are beautifully brilliant days with high winds.  Everything looks so lovely and gay even, like the trees are prancing in the wind….but being out in these conditions puts me in quite a state of anxiety.  So when we left Rock Hall until we entered the Chester River was far too adventurous for me!  Yet it made a pretty sight….white caps on the water, trees bending in the ‘gale’ (okay…honestly, about 25 mph), bright sun….

When we turned into the Chester River the wind was then behind us, so we were able to put out our smallest sail.  In the river there were no waves and with the wind behind us the day suddenly became truly wonderful!

Doesn’t this look peaceful?  And it was….you’d never know the wind was blowing over 25mph!  What a difference wind direction and protected waters make!  It was about 25 miles up the river to Chestertown, and I enjoyed the sights while working on the little baby sweater.

This sweater is a fun construction puzzle, made all in one piece.

Chestertown is a pretty town with Revolutionary War history.  We may have afternoon tea today in an old inn and hopefully I’ll get some good photos!  The river is full of duck blinds, edged by rolling fields of farmland, lovely old farmhouses and newer manor homes.

Day 11, Sept. 21: Lay Day in Rock Hall

Day 12, Sept. 22: Rockhall to Chestertown

Day 12, Sept. 22: Lay Day in Chestertown

My finished shawl for Margo!  I’ll have a couple of her friends make their own prayers and wishes, along with mine, for healing when we get to Annapolis.  Then I’ll pop it in the mail.

 

Day 5, Sept. 15: Atlantic Highlands to Atlantic City

Zephyr is my favorite word related to sailing, and I’ve been saying this years.  Zephyr….bring it on.  A particular word related to sailing that I detest is gale.

The Greeks had many words for wind, and if I had better internet coverage here I’d try to find out just how many words there are for wind. Anyway, that is a sure sign that they have a lot of wind.

I imagined myself making peace with sailing down the New Jersey coast on a zephyr, relying on our motor to get us down the coast.  No such luck…. Bob is using a well respected weather router named Chris Parker, and if you are a sailor you will know that Bob has chosen well.  Chris Parker said it was a favorable time for us to tackle the New Jersey coast because even though there was a north wind which is highly fickle with lots of gusts (reaching gale velocity….my least favorite sailing word!), the wind would be behind us.  You know that famous blessing: “may the wind be always at your back…”

Well, this landlubber thought today sucked!  I dealt with it as best I could by taking half a stugeron at 7am and again at 2pm which insured that I slept about 6 hours during our 12 hour slog southward.  I still hated it.

But at last we came into Atlantic City as the sun was setting, no easy feat with the sun right in our faces and the buoy lights not on yet.  It was nerve wracking to me, the land lubber.  But at least I can say it’s a fairly quiet anchorage, in spite of the insane night lights of this gambling city.

I remember when Stitches East was held in Atlantic City for a couple of years…..now it’s held right in my new backyard (Hartford), but I won’t be there to attend this fall.  If only I could have done some knitting today….. not sure tomorrow will be any better.  We have to get to the C and D Canal (Chesapeake and Delaware) by Monday evening because Tuesday’s wind is going to be off the charts.  I need to find the appropriate word for that.  We plan to be in Chesapeake City, and I hope to be snug inside Vulcan’s Rest, a weaving/knitting shop, rewarding myself for enduring this fickle north wind, even if it is at our backs.