Fine Craft

Day 3, Sept. 13:  City Island to Sandy Hook

This morning we played our own version of a “Top Gear” race.  We left City Island by boat, under power, and our younger son left his apartment on West 112^th St. (the block that has Seinfeld’s “Tom’s Restaurant” at one end and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at the other) for a race to the bend in the East River (#7), near  Roosevelt Island across from Gracie Mansion.  I think we (on the boat) even got a bit of a head start, but our son the biker beat us on this leg of the race!

After photos and a lot of exuberant waving (and happy tears on my part) we began the second leg of the race: the Upper East Side to the Battery (#8).

In Chris’s case this meant dodging a lot of traffic on 1^st and 2^nd Avenues.  We, on the other hand, were just sluicing down the East River at half throttle, with a favorable current pushing us and luckily no other traffic!  We won this leg by several minutes.  Chris had some bad information on the quickest route downtown, so he was terribly disappointed to miss getting a shot of us going under the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Given Chris’s struggle with morning traffic coming down the East Side, it was impressive that we only beat him to Battery Park by about 10 minutes.  That boy can ride!

 I had quite a moment of panic when Chris jumped over the railing in Battery Park to get a photo of us.  The folks nearby asked if he was planning to swim out to us….

I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition, the Verrazano Bridge and the colonial fort near the base.  And that brings me to the similar clash of cultures I felt as we went through New York today.  We were on our very small vessel, not a lot different than a floating gypsy caravan, with all our power in our little world generated by four solar panels that sit atop our bimini at the back of our cockpit.  Meanwhile, we were motoring through one of the largest cities in the world, the city I have lived nearest for over 40 years now.  It’s vastness was almost as great as the ocean to me….and I felt pretty tiny on board Pandora.

We anchored inside Sandy Hook (#10), New Jersey, in time for lunch.  The excitement of the morning had thoroughly worn me out!  So it seemed appropriate for some quiet time with my current book and then a nap.  At this point, it’s almost opening time!

Day 1, September 11:  Black Rock Harbor on Long Island Sound (#2)

We are on our way!  The gypsy life has begun, and so far the weather gods have smiled on us.  Beautiful September light, crisp air, calm seas and wind.  It looks very like that day 11 years ago, which makes us both sad.  We would not have chosen to leave on this day, but weather trumps all other factors.

As we left the Connecticut River yesterday, the only other boat out on the Sound was a small catboat under sail.  This seemed particularly prophetic to us since it was virtually the same boat Bob and I first owned when we started sailing 33 years ago.

To end the day, we stopped in the port where we had kept that first boat, a catboat named “Tao.”  We have friends who are still members of Fayerweather Yacht Club there.  They had arranged for us to tie up on the dock and spend the evening together.  Their son is now about the age we were when we bought that first boat and joined that very club, and he is now the dockmaster for the club, so he helped us dock.  What a moment!  We spent the evening with our dear friends and their son, and our own older son Rob joined us as well as Bob’s parents and another good friend who lives a bit further down the coast in Rye.  What a lovely ending to our first day out!  Thank you Chris, Travers, and Pat for hosting us and thank you to our family and dear friend Craig for coming to share such a memorable day!

Today we have sailed down the Sound past many familiar spots from our ancient BC past (Before Children).  I was on the phone with Rob this morning as we passed Southport Beach, not far from where he currently lives!   Then on past Wesport and the Norwalk Islands, Stamford, Greenwich, Mamaroneck….all our old haunts.  Bob made a stellar lunch of Croque Madame with turkey and brie, enhanced with  sweet red grapes on the side.  Yum!  Tonight’s first dinner on board looks promising: beef filet tips with mushrooms sauteed in red wine and served with rice.

The extent of my gypsy garden… rosemary, tarragon, chives and sage.  I’m hoping the salt air will be good for them and keep them healthy through the coming months of cooking on board!

I spent a good part of the afternoon knitting the flower basket shawl.  I have only one more repeat to go before beginning the 10-row edge border.  It should definitely be done before we reach Chesapeake City, where I hope to mail it to our friend.

Day 2, September 12: Little Neck Bay (#5)

 

 

 

What would you take in your caravan if you were pulling up roots and hitting the road?

Bob would love it if I could manage to fit all my fiber dreams for the fall and winter (and early spring) into these two bins.  It’s harder than I thought it would be.

On my list:
Non-negotiable:

1. Alice Starmore “Mary Tudor” supplies (in basket so colors will stay organized)
2. Vivan Hoxbro “Ann Jacket” supplies
3. Nadita’s “Soo Feminine” supplies
4. Vivian Hoxbro “Zig Zag” wrap supplies (more than 75% done I’m happy to discover!)
5. Einstein Coat supplies, ready to start sleeves
6. Bergere du France wrap, with its 3 cones of Zephyr
7. Partially finished circular shawl by Liz Lovick with notebook of instructions
8. Revontuli shawl supplies
9. “Wingspan” shawl supplies
10. Evelyn Clark “Flower Basket Shawl” supplies
11. skeins for 6 pairs of socks, some already in progress
12. All my knitting needles

It appears that I might not be cut out for the gypsy life.  Perhaps I am too much of a home body, nesting in all my wooly, silky, fibery material possessions.  How can I cull this list?…because I know it will not all fit in my two bins.  And I haven’t even started to list the spinning projects!

1. Electric spinner (at least this does not need to fit in the bin!)
2. Drop spindles
3. corriedale hand painted roving
4. Mohair hand dyed roving
5. Ginger red alpaca batt

Lastly, for those times when neither knitting or spinning seem to fill the bill, I thought I’d bring along one or two embroidery projects.  This is my solution for not taking any weaving with me.  Meanwhile, I have not even done any embroidery in about a decade.  I do realize this seems a bit manic on my part…. the fear of not having just the thing to occupy my textile obsession.  At least embroidery takes up so little room.

This is an Evelyn Clark shawl design called “Flower Basket” that was first seen in Interweave Knits, Fall 2004.  I’m using Mini Mochi in colorway “Seaview” that is so much subtler than the colors shown here.  The colors are soft blues and aquas on pale sand, just like a summer day at the beach! I wanted to finish this shawl before we leave so I could block it at home. (It is for a friend who has spent her life on the water.) No such luck!  I will be trying to block on our bunk on the boat, without the benefit of my blocking wires!

Departure date: Tomorrow!

 

A rainy Saturday

And the first tomato from my garden….yes, I did eat it on my homemade bread with pesto from the basil in the garden, topped with parmesan….it was a very comforting lunch.

Here is the progress made on my boundweave wall hanging.  Aside from the tree, which is not my design anyway, I am not happy with my images.  Drat!  That second figure is supposed to a coleus plant.  Are you laughing?  (I’m not.)  And the next figure is a lady slipper.  I think others may wonder if it’s some kind of bug, or a really bad rendition of a person standing on her head.  Dear Bob says these are things that mean something to us, so I shouldn’t worry what other people see in them.  I’m trying to convince myself of that!

This is a lady slipper, this is a lady slipper, this is a lady slipper…..I still don’t believe it….

Some boundweave hints:  many years ago when I did a Christmas wall hanging on 4 shafts, I remember reading about how the weft will slant up or down according to the direction of the treadling, because it is a twill afterall.

So, if you wanted eyes or hair (or in the case above, the lower petals on the orchid) to slant in a particular direction, you have to consider that in your treadling.

So the tree and the coleus were woven by treadling from left to right across my tie up.  But the petals on the orchid did not look right done that way, so I switched to treadling ‘backward,’ or right to left.  I could have changed direction in the middle of the orchid so that the individual picks up the upper petals would have slanted upwards.  My experience with the coleus plant was that treadling either direction didn’t quite give me what I wanted, so I decided not to change direction.  The source of this information is Clotilde Barrett’s book Boundweave, Chapter 7, page 60.

The other thing that I’ve found very helpful this time around is graph paper.  On the previous project I used square graph paper and had to figure out how many rotations of the treadling sequence it took to make my weaving square.  Now I discovered on  Weavolution that Karen in the Woods is using a flattened type of graph paper, where the height of each space is shorter than the length, making squat rectangles instead of squares. I went looking for graph paper like that.  I found it at incompetech.com (clever name). Click on ‘Grid/Graph Paper.’ I chose this one, and it is pretty close to being on square per pick.  And by ‘pick’ I mean a full rotation of the treadling series, which you’ll understand if you’ve done boundweave.

I hope my next few figures are better.  I’m going to start weaving a loom now, and it’s not my design either, so I feel it’s bound (could I have picked a different word here?) to turn out better.  I’m not feeling overly confident about any of my designs, and yet 20 years ago when I did my last boundweave project, all the designs were mine and I think those figures turned out very well.

Elves and Reindeer

Santa

Santa Lucia

Onward…..

On Saturday I will travel to St. Paul to go to my first bobbin lace convention!  This is the IOLI, the International Old Lacers, Inc…..a rather dowdy name for such a talented group of women keeping these amazing techniques going.

I’ve been thinking that if lace makers are like weavers, most of the attendees will want to wear a little something that they’ve made.  I’ve had a good length of lace edging laying around for a couple years, slated to be used as an edging for some handwoven linen hand towels.  But I have not even got that warp on my radar yet….  what I do have is a lovely, old linen blouse that I suddenly realized might look very charming with a lace border at the neckline.  Hmmm….. this blouse is probably more than a decade old now.  I sure hope it has plenty of life left in it since I now love the touch of lace at the neckline!

Gosh, I hope someone notices!