knitting – Page 5

Creative Outlets

March 22, 2014 | 1 Comment

Sometimes while we are hiding out from storms the waters are actually calm enough for me to work. It hasn’t been often! On good days, we tend to set off sight seeing and shell collecting, but on others I manage to get a bit of work done!

TAPESTRY

I started my tapestry idea (a shelf of spools) a few weeks ago by doing some sampling, and learned a lot by the time I unwove the whole thing. I’d done about eight spools at that point and had worked out that I wanted the circles to be all different sizes and different shapes, and the little cardboard tubes and empty space inside the tubes to be fairly (but not perfectly!) consistent.

This is the first tapestry I am making without a cartoon! …. it is very freeing! Archie Brennan is always talking about the ‘open journey,’ by which he means not making too many decisions ahead time, letting the work at hand determine what should come next, and this is my first attempt at that. I’m doing the same with color choice, choosing colors based on what has just been done. Naturally, I wish I had a lot more choices onboard with me, but so far I have not been disappointed to make do with what I have.

I am facing my blank warp and creating as I go. I do ink on a freehand circle or two before I weave, and each circle I draw is based on the circles that have come before them, and each color choice for the circles is based on the colors I’ve already used as well as the loose ‘plan’ of where I hope to go. This is really a fun journey…..I would call it a tapestry vacation! A little side trip along an untraveled road (for me) with lots of beautiful scenery! A playland!

KNITTING

My other big project onboard is a sweater that was posted on Pinterest with a link to Ravelry.

When you click on the floral sweater photo on Pinterest you get directed to this sweater on Ravelry.

The floral sweater is far more appealing to me than the little squares version! Finding the origin of this sweater was a bit challenging, but when I get focused on something I can be a bit maniacal.

The little squares pattern is by Ruth Sorenson, and her directions call for 480 grams of Kauni Effekt “Rainbow” (EQ). I had planned to use traditional Shetland Fair Isle construction for a loose fitting jacket with front opening, and I decided to increase the amount of yarn to 600 grams. With a little searching for the thistle pattern I found this designer, who used the thistle pattern for a shawl she calls “Mrs. Barrista,” which was available for purchase in English. Bingo! (I don’t know if she is also the designer of the sweater, but it’s not on her blog.)

After doing a gauge swatch and determining that I’d use 10 repeats of the thistle pattern for the body, I cast on for corrugated rib and steeked the front opening, and have just been zipping along up to the armholes. Now I am at the armhole openings and thought I’d better make a plan.

While traditional Fair Isle construction makes for such easy knitting, it is not the most flattering look on me. I look better in sweaters that have a bit of armhole shaping, and even more importantly I need sloped shoulders. These two issues that are quite important to me will necessitate some fiddly knitting. Here is my sketch.

I will bind off an inch or so of stitches at the beginning of the armscye and start the steeks. When I start the sleeves I will pick stitches along the armhole opening, and I will work back and forth (HORRORS!) until I fill in that 1” of bound off stitches, and then I can resume knitting in the round down to the sleeve cuff. It will only be fiddly for about a dozen rows or so…maybe less…

The other fiddly bit will be making my shoulder line sloped. I have not yet settled on a definite plan for that, but I think that may also require working back and forth for the last several rows at the top of the body. It shouldn’t be that bad! I’m forging ahead with the sweater since I don’t need to worry about the shoulders for a while. Maybe something else will occur to me by the time I get to there! I am thinking of making a short row plan…

If there are any knitters out there reading this, please weigh in on what you’d do if you were making this sweater! I could use some input!

COOKING

I wonder how many of us use cooking as a creative outlet, especially when we can’t do what we really want to do! I enjoy the challenge of cooking down here, where getting food is a hit or miss scavenger hunt. Thursday, I happened to hit the pink store in Staniel Cay as they were bringing in fresh produce from the mail boat. I got both fresh mushrooms and a head of cabbage on the same day! (Only someone traveling down here can appreciate the rarity of fresh mushrooms in the Bahamas!)

Cabbage, which I hardly ever eat at home, is quite a staple down here, and it always brings back great memories of cooking in college with my brand new edition of the Moosewood Cookbook. It had a catchy name I no longer remember, but I do remember that the Russian cabbage pie was one of my favorite meals from that book. Thank you, Molly Katzen! I’m sure I could have googled the recipe if only I had internet. Since that was not an option, I had to do the best I could on memory alone.

I remembered the pastry crust had cream cheese as well as butter. So I made a crust with 4 TB butter and 4 oz. of cream cheese. I made 4 hard cooked eggs, sautéed the mushrooms and set them aside to sautee the cabbage that had been salted and left to wilt for about 20 minutes. I seasoned everything liberally with dill and a little salt and pepper. I layered all this in my pie shell, along with the other 4oz of cream cheese left in the brick.

Since I do not have a pie dish onboard I made this dish in my 9” springform pan. It has come in very handily as a substitute for many other pans. I’m glad to have it with me!

Dinner was delicious! Who knows how far from the original I have strayed, but we enjoyed it just the same! It does take a bit of doing to make something like this on a boat in a galley that is smaller than a NY City apartment kitchen. If not for the space it takes to pre-cook all the separate parts of this dish, I would definitely say this would become a staple meal on Pandora. It may become a staple in spite of the space challenge!

We are in the Bahamas!

February 11, 2014 | 2 Comments

It was a long night making the crossing to the Bahamas. I’m very thankful that it was a LOT easier than last year, but there were still a couple of hours of boisterous wind and waves that I could have skipped. This is the dawn that greeted us after we’d been sailing on the banks for several hours.

This year we cleared in on a small cay in the Berries called Chub Cay. It doesn’t look at all like the Exumas, being much more lush….rather like the Abacos. Here is the little church at the main cross roads on the island.

And here is Pandora sitting at anchor while we visited the Chub Cay Club. Even on a second visit to these waters, I am stunned by how beautiful it is.

The water all around us is full of sea life: red starfish, ramoras, barricuda, sharks!….even little puffer fish. Here is a shark that was checking us out….I think he knew that Bob wanted to clean the hull of Pandora, and maybe he thought he might get lucky and snag a couple fingers or toes if he waited… (and there is nothing to get a sense of scale in this photo, so I’ll tell you this shark is about 8 feet long).

When Bob did clean the hull (and I stood on deck keeping watch for the sharks, with a big screw driver in my hand, ready to bang on the hull to give Bob a warning to get out of the water!), all the fish hung out all around him. The ramora stayed right by his side, and we’re thinking he was enjoying the little bits of stuff that Bob was scraping off the hull.

The second night we were here we saw the green flash!… and then there have been wonderful sunrises, sunsets, and even a rainbow and a water funnel.

Today we left the Berries and sailed for Nassau where we will meet Christopher in just a couple more days. While we wait I think I might take a look at the shops in Atlantis…. now there’s a thought! We are anchored right off some docks with a pretty restaurant called Luciano’s. Dinner there last night was quite memorable! We ate on the terrace, shown here, overlooking Atlantis across the harbor.

And I’m celebrating that I finished the first Oktoberfest sock! Go me! I know the photo is too dark. Sigh….it was getting late in the day. I am happy with the pattern. The barley stalks remind me of bubbles, and I love the frothy finish at the top! ….the color is quite reminiscent of a Blue Moon! I might not see one of those ’til I get home in May…

Warm and humid

February 3, 2014 | 3 Comments

It was actually too hot today. It doesn’t seem possible! We drove only moderate distances for four days and went from single digit temperatures in Connecticut to what feels like the heat of a sultry August day. I almost wilted today…

My little copper pipe loom is not completely assembled yet or I would have had the perfect opportunity to warp it up today…. in the shade of the pavillion next to the building with the laundry room. I did four HUGE loads of laundry today and got a fair amount of knitting accomplished on my first Oktoberfest sock (instead of weaving little circles!). I am almost ready to turn the heel.

A couple of manatees were in the harbor today and one of them visited our boat for a while! He is gigantic, isn’t he?!!

There was a large turtle near our boat, and Bob declared it a freshwater turtle, so the water in this harbor must be fairly brackish. We watched the ibises congregate in the mangroves for the night…. it is such an impressive sight. There are lots of pelicans here.

I also worked on a bit of embroidery, something I haven’t touched in about a decade. All in all, it has been a very relaxing day… culminating with watching Renee Fleming sing the national anthem at the Superbowl (the only part of the game I watched!). Tremendous!

Living Small in Big Way

February 1, 2014 | Leave a Comment

What a luxury being at a marina in for a few days in Ft. Pierce. We are staying at the Harbortown Marina, and there are several boats here that we remember from the Bahamas last winter. It’s a small world!

I always go through a bit of mourning when I come onboard. Everything is so small. Once again I’ve got too much stuff with me. This time around I think I will mail some clothing home. I can’t fit it all into my three small drawers! But this time around I have a 3rd set of bedsheets for when there is no laundry for weeks and weeks on end! This year I know that sheets are non-negotiable!

Last night we met some of our new/old friends at the little open air bar at the end of our dock. It was a slightly chilly evening so we sat at a large fire pit that had gas flames flickering up through a large bowl of colored glass fragments. Very hedonistic! Just off from our dock are a few large mangrove bushes, and as sunset passed a huge flock of ibises began landing in the mangroves for the night. They looked like large puffy white blossoms on the bushes. Intermingled with them were a few blue herons and pelicans, but it was mostly an amazing vision of fluffy white ‘blossoms’ on the deep green mangroves. I hope to get photo this evening!

To ease into boat life I had planned a very simple dinner with virutally no cooking. I made a large salad of greens and vegetables with goat cheese for a bit of protein. My mistake was that I’d recently had a delicious salad dressing at the Old City House Inn restaurant in St. Augustine, and I had just had to see if I could re-create it. It was a roasted shallot vinaigrette, so naturally I had to roast some shallots! And since I was doing that I figure why not roast a head of garlic as well which will surely get used in the near future. Well, imagine a slightly oily baking pan from the roasting, a messy miniature food processor from pureeing those shallots, a salad bowl, all the raiments from cutting the vegetables….in other words, I managed to make a HUGE mess in my tiny galley on an evening when I was just going to do something simple with no fuss. Ugh!

Today promises to be picture perfect! Blue skies, a gentle breeze, soft temperatures.

I have started my first “Tsock” pattern from the “Tsarina.” It is called “Octoberfest,” and I love the bright golden colorway, including a light frothy ‘head’ for the top of the sock. I enjoyed trying out her toe beginning. For my other toe-up sock, the “Skew” sock from Knitty, I started by wrapping and casting on to two needles held parallel. For Octoberfest you cast on half the number of stitches and work back and forth in short rows to create the toe. It was easy and somewhat mythical watching the toe emerge from this simple technique! Today, if there is time after the endless chores, I will knit the straight stockinette bit of the foot toward the heel.

Knitting is Catching Fire!

November 27, 2013 | 4 Comments

Oops! See note at end the end of this post for why this post is badly titled!

Bob and I went to the movies last night. It was an escape from the very sad and very stressful time we are going through, which involves a loved one’s serious health condition. Bob has been not-so-patiently awaiting the release of the second “Hunger Games” movie so we dashed out to see it last night on his return from the daily hospital visit. I was mildly intrigued, but definitely looking forward to an evening’s distraction…

No one warned me there would be KNITTING! The whole first segment of the movie held me captive, and I was craning forward in my theater seat to get a better look at the unusual knitted designs that Katniss wore! It was a visual feast! I swear there were three knitting garments, but I must be wrong…

….because these garments are already all over the internet, and there are only two:

This garment does not look knitted to me. It made me think of nalbinding or some other rather ancient technique that predates what we call knitting today. I’m intrigued! I’d love to see the real garment.

Then there was this lovely cowl in luscious shades of berries/trees/water. There is something really interesting going on in the stitch pattern. I tried to magnify this image to get a better look, but it just got a bit blurry! Hmmmmm….

Okay….enough about Katniss! Here are a few things I’ve been working on lately. Mostly, I have to say that I’ve been curled up in a fetal position for several weeks now….sleeping too much….

My English friend, Lesley, just finished this sweater in a deep garnet merino wool. I bet it is breathtaking! I was so intrigued that I had to have one too…. in medium blue cotton (Cascade’s Ultra Pima in color #3772). I have finished the cables around the neckline, and now I’ve put it aside…..it’s a lot of plain stockinette for the rest of the body….sigh…. I do love the way the longest cable comes down below the garter stitch area, which you can see on the right side in the photo. What a beautiful design!

And I’m spinning my first “Tsarina of Tsocks” kit called “Kitri.” The body of the sock is a lovely claret red merino/silk blend. I’m doing a test spin for a 4-ply by topping off a few bobbins with the tsarina fiber so I can ply just a short amount to check my knitting gauge.

A couple of weeks ago Bob set up my large Shannock tapestry loom. I’m ready to start two tapestries and need to decide which one comes first! The full size Flax Spinner or “Into the Night,” which is a new cartoon I recently made…

Isn’t she an impressive loom? Cartoons are draped on the treadle bar, including a really old cartoon that I never wove. In the foreground you can see an umbrella swift with a skein of silk draped on it. I just finished using that silk to make a warp for my next painted warp project. It will be a small wall hanging based on an image Bob took while we were in the Bahamas. If all goes well, maybe I will bring it with me in January and hang it on the wall of our main salon.

And speaking of making cartoons…. I borrowed an opaque projector from an old friend. It’s quite a relic from the 50s and makes quite a roar when I turned it on. In fact, it blew a fuse, so I haven’t actually gotten to use it yet. Here’s Bob setting it up for me.

So, I guess I’m doing more than just sleeping my days away, and I’m glad I wrote this. It helped me see that I am progressing on work….just at a snail’s pace… and that (in reality) is not much slower than I normally work.

NOTE: It has been 10 months since I posted this, and clearly interest in the Katniss fashions from “Catching Fire” is still running high! Many thanks to Kristin from dreamspunfiber.com who sent some links to the two designs I wrote about. It turns out neither one was knitted! They are both woven! …and the green cowl is a beauty in what looks like deflected double weave! Although that makes my post title inaccurate, I am quite thrilled to learn these garments were woven. You can take a closer look here and here.