knitting – Page 5

So Much Water over the Bridge!

April 25, 2014 | 1 Comment

Weeks have passed since my last post….a combination of rough weather and lots of sailing has prevented me from keeping up here. I cannot use my computer when I am seasick, and I’ve been seasick a lot!

But that is not to say that I haven’t had some wonderful times during the past couple of weeks. We have had some great times on shore!

Today we are back in Staniel Cay in order to meet our son Rob and his girlfriend Kandice when they fly here tomorrow afternoon. The weather is finally settled and promises to be springlike for the next few days! …Although at this very moment the dark skies to the southwest are rapidly approaching, and I think we will get quite a violent squall any minute now! During squalls like these we have sometimes seen water spouts….I hope we won’t experience one!

We have lots of plans for things to do with Rob and Kandice, starting with seeing the pigs on Big Major’s Spot and snorkeling in the local grotto, named after the old James Bond movie “Thunderball” where the filming took place. We have not seen Rob and Kandice since early January, so we are really excited for their arrival!

Yesterday we sailed about 50 miles from Rock Sound, Eleuthera, to Pipe Cay in the Exumas. (Perhaps I should mention that just a week earlier I also endured a 70 mile ocean run from Thompson Bay, Long Island, to Rock Sound Eleuthera….go me!) While we were getting under way, Bob heard on the Cruiseheimers net (on sideband radio) that someone caught a big tuna, so he could not resist the temptation to try catching something himself. He put out a line and within an hour or so he had a mahi mahi giving him a good fight. As he got it closer to the boat we could see it was a whopper!

That fish yielded us over 8 lbs of filets! We had our friends Maureen and Bill (from Kalunamoo) over for dinner last night, and we have at least four more meals waiting in the freezer. We will definitely have it for dinner one night while Rob and Kandice are here.

And what a wonderful time we had on Eleuthera! This was our first visit there. Easter weekend was lovely in Rock Sound. We decided to visit the Methodist Church for Easter service, while Bill and Maureen went to the Catholic church….there were numerous other choices as well. As luck would have it, just before the service started Nancy and George from Trumpeter (Nancy taught me to make Bahamian coiled baskets last winter) came and sat next to us. They have attended this church every Easter for several years. The service was very festive, with lots of music, a liturgical dancer and plenty of enthusiasm in the congregation. We estimated that there were over 100 people in the congregation, about 40% white and 60% black. This Methodist Church is one of the oldest churches on the island, and has already celebrated its bicentennial. The sanctuary is deceptively modern, with an elaborate sound system and a power point projector. It was a hoot!

On Easter afternoon we met Bill and Maureen at the local blue hole, right in the center of the town park in Rock Sound, for our Easter dinner picnic. Maureen had baked some of their own frozen mahi mahi for us, along with freshly baked beer bread! This blue hole is quite impressive since it is only a few feet shallower than Dean’s Blue Hole on Long Island, which is the deepest blue hole in the world. And Rock Sound’s blue hole sits in the middle of a lovely park where we could have our picnic right at the edge of the water, in the shade of a big tree. It was a perfect afternoon!

We also rented a car for two days and toured the rest of Eleuthera with Maureen and Bill. We visited the Glass Window on a mild day and were very impressed with the force of the ocean even in calm conditions. Our photo does not show how much force the calm waters have when they hit the tiny isthmus here. It was dramatic! I can only imagine what that surging bit of the Atlantic must have looked like the day it moved the bridge about 12 feet. Yikes!

We drove north to a spot called Preacher’s Cave, a place where some English settlers found refuge after their ship was wrecked on the Devil’s Backbone (back in the late 1600s) at the northeastern side of Eleuthera near what is now Harbour Island. The cave is impressively big, so it’s easy to understand that it provided a wonderful refuge for those weary and distraught settlers.

Along the way on our 90-mile drive north we also stopped at the Queen’s Baths, another spot where the mighty Atlantic surges against the coast into a cave creating lots of foam and bubbles. Can you see Maureen and me picking our way across the far side of the Queen’s Baths?

Walking along these craggy shores is a lot harder than it looks in this photo. Here’s a close up to give an idea of how rough going it is! The rocks are some kind of very sharp limestone….lots of small (and sometimes large!) craters have formed in these rocks so getting a flat purchase for walking is virtually impossible!

The shopping and restaurant options on Eleuthera were quite a bit more civilized than we’ve experienced in the Exumas! We had a lovely lunch two days in a row. The first day we visited Rainbow Inn and sat on their upper deck overlooking Exuma Sound, and the second day we stopped at Tippi’s and sat in an open air dining room that overlooked the pink sand beach and the Atlantic.

And here is a shot of the pink sand beach at Tippi’s.

Eleuthera was so much more civilized than the Exumas that they even have a ‘camauflaged” cell tower. All through the islands we recognize the distinctive red and white towers of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (Batelco) and anchor nearby these towers whenever we can so that we can have cellular internet, such as now! But Eleuthera has a cell tower camauflaged as palm tree!

So now I am in the final stages of my winter away. I’m not certain now much more work I’ll get done on my various projects. Perhaps my tapestry will not be finished when I leave….sigh… but I do have two pairs of socks finished (one of them being those fun ‘skewed’ socks!), a fair isle sweater knitted up to the armholes waiting for inspiration on how to proceed for the upper body shaping, several small table embroideries from decades back now finished!….and the last project: Boo Knits “Sweet Dreams” shawl that I just started yesterday. Shawl knitting is quite addictive… I often find that I knit the whole thing in one go. I’m into the final lace area already, so I guess I would say this project is hard to put down. I’m using Verdant Gryphon “Mithral” in the colorway “Bathsheba,” which has lovely woodland shades of bronze/evergreen/burgundy that reminds me of fairies! Queen Mab would love this shawl!

We’ll spend the next 10 days with our kids traveling north through the Exumas. We hope to take the kids to Compass Cay to swim with the sharks and see the beautiful beach there, then to Warderick Wells for more swimming and snorkeling in the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Bob has stumbled into a wonderful connection with the manager of Over Yonder Cay, where we may get a private tour ….if it works out I will definitely give details!

By the end of the first weekend in May we must be back in Nassau for the kids and I to meet our flight back to the US. I will stop in Baltimore with Rob and Kandice for a visit at their house and some time with my favorite dog, Bosun! Bob’s crew will arrive the day I fly out with the kids, so he will begin his journey back to the US the slow way.

I am so excited to be headed home for a beautiful spring on the Connecticut River! I hope some of my bulbs will still be blooming, and I hope I have some Danish flag poppies in bloom from the seeds I planted last fall! On my first day home (if I can get one of the cars started!) I will be heading out to my local weaving guild meeting! Lots to look forward to!

Dry Cleaning, Cruiser Style

April 2, 2014 | Leave a Comment

We have left the Exumas and headed east into the Atlantic to some of the islands we visited last year. We are currently on Long Island, a far cry from the island of the same name we are so familiar with!

Ocean Breeze resort is one of the places where cruisers flock to do their laundry. It’s a pristine little resort, and the laundry room is spotless. You can sit on a deck overlooking Thompson Bay drinking a cold beverage or even having lunch as you do laundry.

Last year, while I waited for my wash, I met Nancy from Trumpeter who took an hour or so to teach me how to make the local basket which is a tightly coiled technique using Silver Queen palm fronds. We have bumped into them again this year! Here! How serendipitous! Nancy makes about 100 baskets each season and delivers them to school children back in the US, when she and her husband George do a program on cultural differences. This year she has made a wedding present basket that is truly amazing. I hope to get a photo, but for now here is a photo from last year when Nancy was patiently instructing me.

So….back to laundry. This is one of those places I count on. Yesterday morning Bob had already taken the sheets off the bed when a little voice told me I should call Ocean Breeze on VHF radio, and when I did I learned that their water maker is not functioning so there is no laundry available! Oh no! That made me realize a few things: first, I have thought that water makers have made life on these islands so much easier. While people still do collect water in cisterns, mostly during the hurricane season, and ration water at all times whether from the water maker or from the cistern, I never thought how fragile it is to rely on these modern conveniences. When mechanical things break down out here it is not so simple to make repairs. So, Ocean Breeze is carefully rationing their water now.

So that brings me to dry cleaning. We have heard of this and have now we’ve experienced it! When cruisers cannot do real laundry they take their sheets and towels and hang them out in the breeze and the sunlight. I imagine that there is some benefit to this…. clean air and bright sunlight must have some cleaning properties. Anyway….this was our only option. Next hope of laundry is either Black Point in the Exumas or Rock Sound on Eluthera. Must get it done before next guests arrive!

When you visits places like this, you have to expect some inconveniences….like resorting to cruiser style dry cleaning.

We have had a little tragedy onboard Pandora. My wonderful little window box, full of very happy plants, fell overboard! You cannot imagine how sad I am about this. Whenever we move location we put the window box in a safe place, usually in the dinghy that is up in its davits. One day, last week we just moved from one side of Elizabeth harbor to the other and we didn’t even give my precious little gems a thought. I was at the wheel, and I didn’t even see them go over. My chives had somehow figured out it was spring and were bursting into bloom. I was looking forward to having the flowers on salads. The geranium was full of happy red flower heads, and the parsley had gotten quite full and delicious. We didn’t realize it had all gone overboard until about an hour after anchoring. Bob took off in the dinghy to see if by chance it was floating in the current. There was a pretty strong current taking it out to sea, and he only found the empty window box. The plants had fallen out and probably sank. I feel just miserable about this. All the islands and cays down here have such a desert climate that my little window box was quite a bright spot in my days. I am so sorry about its salty demise. I don’t even have a recent photo of it, but this is from a month ago or so…

Lastly, I dug out an old sock project that I brought on board. It is the “skew socks” from Knitty Winter 2009 by Lana Holden. I am having a great time finishing up this crazily fun design! The straight sections are basically diagonal knitting , and the shaping of the toe and heel is quite creative! I don’t even know how I would begin to envision this on my own, but I am certainly having a great time following the directions. The heel ended up being a flap that jutted out on only one side of the circular row. After knitting the entire heel flap (which looked nothing like any heel flap I’ve done before!) you put half of the flap on each of two dps and graft them together with a bit of spare yarn. The working yarn ends up just where you need it to be to continue knitting around minus the heel flap that just got grafted together. The graft ends up being a vertical line rather than the typical horizontal, and that is part of skewed-ness of the design.

Five years ago, I posted this photo from the instructions on knitty, and now I am even more smitten by the cute photo and the designer’s sense of humor and love of math!

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!