Impressions
knitting
Famous Knitter or just Famous?
Each year at some point in our Maine sailing adventures we go out to Allen Island, a lovely getaway for the well known Wyeth family where they have very nicely placed a few moorings for visiting boaters to enjoy. Last year I was thrilled when Betsy Wyeth arrived at the island and waved to me from her launch. But this year’s visit topped even that. Betsy sat outside her house with a basket of knitting; I sat aboard Pandora with my knitting. We each sat knitting and watching the other knitting.
So, Where in the world were my Signature Arts knitting needles? At Allen Island, a rather private place only accessible to those with means of traveling on the water, where they rubbed shoulders with Betsy Wyeth’s needles!
And, by the way, there are about 100 sheep on Allen Island….and it is the spot where George Waymouth landed with his ship Archangel in 1605.
And that was the day I finished my “Garden Tank” by Deborah Newton. Deborah’s designs are extremely attractive and wearable for many body shapes which makes her one of my favorite knitwear designers!
What I love about this design: the simple lace pattern that does not overwhelm the sweater, the flattering boat neck, the A-line ‘swing’ shape, the armhole shaping, the way the lace creates a scalloped edge at the hem!
In Interweave Knits the sweater was knitted with Manos del Uruguay “Serena” (60% alpaca, 40% cotton). Now maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t alpaca one of the warmest fibers? So even with the addition of 40% cotton, wouldn’t this be too warm for a summer tank top? I decided to use raw silk, and since this yarn has virtually no elasticity I made the top with zero ease. I’m very happy with the fit!
Wild Kingdom!
I spent most of yesterday watching the bird life around Snow Island. There are several ospreys in the area, more than I’ve seen in one place before, and they all seem intent on ridding themselves of the eagles in the area. The ospreys worked together to dive bomb the eagles, and I’m not sure if they were just claiming their hunting territory of if the eagles pose some additional threat. I know some birds steal the nests of others. Clearly, for reasons I may not fully understand, the ospreys do not wish to cohabitate with eagles!
This eagle sat calmly in the tree while a group of ospreys hurled themselves and dived down on her/him! Right nearby was the eagle’s nest complete with adolescent eaglet.
Well, I know this eaglet is hard to see even if you ‘bigify’ the photo…nest is near the center of the image. I marveled at the parent eagle bringing food to this baby whose sharp beak and claws surely must make parenting difficult!
Yesterday was one of those Maine days that is so clear everything appears super-focused. I took photos of water and sky, and I hope someday they will be useful to developing a cartoon for a tapestry.
And I finished one of my summer books….
Summer reading:
This is a fascinating history of New York before the English, when it was the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. The author gives vivid images of life in this colony through the written records and correspondence of that period and shows that the Dutch culture has lived on to the present time in current New York culture. His premise is that New York is still more Dutch than English, and that the Dutch culture of the 17th century is the core of American culture. He does a great job!
Amazing book!…too moving to describe. I highly recommend it! I bought it for reading on board, but I finished it the day I took sneak peak at home….
I just finished this yesterday, while watching the bird life here. A wonderful story written from the point of view of three different women during the year before American involvement in WWII, during the blitzkrieg of London and the rounding of up Jews throughout Europe. I put this near the top of very few books that I will always treasure!
Just started this yesterday, and I’m hooked. I don’t normally stumble on so many good books all at once! I feel incredibly lucky….
And I’m looking forward to Water for Elephants that is on my phone. I can’t see the movie until I read (or listen to!) the book!
The day will end with a dinner of fresh local veggies and local cheese from the this quaint farm stand in Five Islands Habor….oh, and a bouquet of dark red dahlias, feverfew, and love in a mist!
Inspiration in Maine
Typically Maine, the weather changed every couple of hours yesterday, and the sights made me think about trying to capture the essence of a place in imagery…..which made me think of Joan Baxter’s tapestries. She has mastered conveying a sense of place for Scotland, with tapestries that are full of mists and myth and mystery. After 15 summers in Maine maybe I am getting a sense of this place….also a place of mists as well as brilliant sun and sharply focused views.
As we sailed out of the Basin and Cundy’s Harbor yesterday, the sky behind us grew very dark, and shortly into our trip we were overtaken by a squall. Twenty minutes later the shoreline and islands glowed in the fresh new light and sparkled from the rain. We were headed to Snow Island, and just as we approached we saw an eagle soaring overhead! He (she?) landed on a rock right nearby to dry his wings.
In the trees just to the left in this photo was another eagle! We could not get the two birds together in one photo!
After anchoring another quadrant of the sky darkened, and another squall passed through. The quality of light is decidedly Maine to me, and something I’d like to capture in a future tapestry.
- Approaching Squall
Can you see the eagle in the lone tree just right of center in the photograph? All in all, we saw three eagles at Snow Island.
Before heading to Snow Island I spent a good part of the day working on another sweater…. Deborah Newton’s “Greenhouse Tank” which is in the current issue of Interweave Knits.
Deborah Newton is one of my favorite knitting designers. Her designs are lovely and fit beautifully! I am really hoping this will be more flattering than my Plymouth “Kudo” sweater!
I am working this sweater in raw silk from Tess Designer Yarns in a colorway called Bahama Bay.
- Deborah Newton’s “Greenhouse Tank” knitted in Tess Designer Yarns “Bahama Bay” raw silk
More about this sweater in another post…..
Coastal Living
I’ve been living on the water for one week now. The weather has been beautiful, the coastline of Maine stunning! On the trip up Bob saw a whale and a big basking shark. Together we’ve seen seals, and lots of shore birds: egrets, herons, ospreys, storm petrels. Yesterday I saw eider ducks for the first time!
During the first few days on board I finished this sweater which is a monstrous failure!
So, what went wrong? Well, maybe the yarn is just too bright for horizontal stripes? …especially in larger sizes! Although it was a very quick project to knit, no knitting project goes quickly enough not to feel a sharp pang of anxiety when it proves to be a failure!
Also, here is the photo on the pattern:
My biggest gripe is the look of the sleeves in the cover photo. They are clearly 3/4 sleeves. The pattern knits up as short sleeves. The pattern does say that if you want shorter or longer sleeves you must adjust your stitch number to achieve this. The pattern says that the stitches called for in the instructions will result in elbow length sleeves, but it does not say whether that includes the seed stitch border. To me the sleeves in the cover are elbow length before the seed stitch border was added, so I presumed that the pattern photo showed the sweater knitted to the specifications in the basic pattern. Wrong. The finsihed sweater looks decidedly dumpy with the short sleeves. I tried the seed stitch border and didn’t like it. So I ripped it out and tried a crocheted scallop, also dumpy, as the photo shows! I cannot just do the sleeves over, making them longer, since the entire sweater is knit in one piece, from the bottom of the front all the way to the bottom of the back, increasing for the sleeves and working the neck as you go. This would basically mean knitting the sweater again from almost the beginning. A little note in the instructions saying that the sleeves in the photo had been lengthened would have helped immensely! But still, I don’t know if I could carry off those bright horizontal stripes, so I’m not too enthusiastic about doing this sweater again anyway!
On a more positive note…. we went to a party on Bailey’s Island, as guests of guests. Our host Paul built a mud oven shaped like a fish with its mouth wide open to accept his culinary creations. He made 32 pizzas that day! Delightful combinations like pear and gorgonzola, eggplant and green salsa….even a couple of dessert pizzas with chocolate chunks, marmallows and strawberries! I think there will be a mud oven in our future at home!
This bridge is built Lincoln Log style out of granite pieces that are resting on each other, no pins or cement of any kind. Amazing! It was originally in 1927-28 and a recent rebuild was just finished this year. According to local knowledge, there was only one other bridge like it in existence in the 20th century, and that was in Scotland. That bridge was dismantled during WWII so currently the only cribstone bridge is this one on Bailey’s Island. We were anchored right on the East side of it!
- “Pandora” from our host’s gardens on Bailey’s Island
- Lunch is ready!
As I write this we are leaving Cundy’s Harbor where we visited good friends with a lovely house and garden right on the harbor. Their neighbor, a seasoned lobsterman, motored over to us in his boat Life After... while we were headed to the well known “Basin,” and he passed us four lobsters in a bucket! We will feast tonight!