knitting – Page 7

Georgetown, Exumas

February 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment

We are anchored near the town of Georgetown, awaiting the arrival of Rob, Chris and Kandice sometime tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, the northeast is getting one of the biggest snowstorms on record, so who knows if the kids’ flight will actually leave, or if Chris’ bus to Baltimore will arrive before the flight. Our little town in Connecticut is expected to get between 16″- 20″. Whoa!

Arriving in Georgetown feels more like reaching a goal than crossing over from Florida to Nassau did. I can’t explain why… crossing the Gulf Stream was certainly the bigger challenge, so I don’t know why I feel this way. Arriving here , I feel that we have attained such a big goal. The rest of our trip, which is still another 3 months of sailing, will all be ‘frosting on the cake’ now that we’ve come this far!

Remember these? Naturally, it is out of service….but what a hoot to see a phone booth on a sandy beach with palm trees!

Bob is reeling in a mahi mahi on our run from Lee Stocking to Georgetown! It took him about 20 minutes of struggle with this feisty fish, and wouldn’t you know just as Bob was about to gaff him, the fish jumped right off the line!

A walk along the ocean side beach at Lee Stocking, with a picnic lunch.

I am on the final stretch of a simple ‘shadow knit’ sweater that I designed myself. Although it’s quite simple, I think I will write it up as a free download on Ravelry, as a little thank you for all the great resources I’ve benefitted from on that site! I’m on the sleeves and holding my breath that there is enough yarn! If not, it will be a vest….

Pandora at anchor off the dock at Little Farmer’s Cay.

Busy Beautiful Days

January 14, 2013 | 4 Comments

We’ve been back on board Pandora for five days already, and it’s been a very busy cup of tea here. We thought we’d be crossing to the Bahamas on Wednesday this week, so there was a lot to accomplish!…. food provisions, engine maintenance, propellor cleaning, boat bottom cleaning…. various other small, but very important chores….not to mention getting ourselves further south so that the angle of crossing would be more favorable. And as weather often does, it has changed so that Wednesday is no longer our departure day. We are now cautiously aiming for Thursday… or Friday….

We left Ft. Pierce on Saturday morning and stopped in a lovely spot called Manatee Pocket that evening. Great name for the location where I did see my first manatee! No kidding, these creatures are unbelievably ungainly and touchingly sweet. I now fully understand why they are at the mercy of fast traveling power boats. They move very slowly and cannot possibly get out of the way of a speeding boat. When I saw my first manatee it had just started to descend back into the water, so its back looked like a giant black mooring ball!

There is so much beautiful bird life here … egrets, herons, osprey, kingfishers…. my favorite are the ibises. They are so delicate….almost ephemeral.

During our evening walk along the shore of Manatee Pocket (looking for the perfect restaurant), I found a weaving studio! Can you believe it??? Unfortunately for me, it was closed.

Who wouldn’t love spending time here??? That is a chenille warp on her loom.

Yesterday we motored 57 miles and went under 20 bascule bridges….surely a phenomenal logistical feat for any sailboat! We deserve a prize! I saw The Breakers from the waterway…. where I once spent a decadent long weekend with Bob about a million years ago! I thought I might want to jump ship and stow away in a luxurious resort suite….but oddly, I didn’t! At the moment I’m quite happy in my less than luxurious accomodations on Pandora!

The houses along the canals are getting more and more impressive. It’s more Mediterranean here than the Mediterranean with all the stucco and terracotta roof tiles….and porticos! The houses are huge, and are so close together. It would seem to me if you have a house with a full acre of square footage, you wouldn’t want to be looking right in the windows of your next door neighbors! To each his own…

On the knitting front, I cast on for a small Fair Isle purse at the airport in Connecticut. It’s Beth Brown-Reinsel’s design from Interweave Knits Fall 2004 issue. I’m making a number of changes to the pattern; the most significant change is that I could not stomach the idea of knitting this purse flat. I know Beth must have had good reasons for her design, but since I’m pretty stubborn about stranding in the round, that’s what I’m doing! I’ve got plans to make this a small tote bag, so I’ll be making a somewhat rigid insert for the bag when I return home next spring, along with a lining and leather handles instead of a drawstring.

I raided my J&S shetland and AS Scottish Campion stashes for these yarns (two large comforter-size storage bags stuffed full of yarn!), and I was quite surprised to find that I had absolutely no brown! So I solved that dilemma with a quick trip to Yarns Down Under the evening before my flight. Everyone needs a LYS who is willing to open shop for emergency travel knitting! My LYS is the best enabler!

We are leaving shortly for Middle River, Ft. Lauderdale.

January 6, 2013 | Leave a Comment

The best made plans…. I’ve looked forward to being home so much for so long, yet I’ve spent almost the entire month at home sick! And I’ve had one rather big disappointment in a tapestry project…..

….but the upside is that in spite of being sick, my kids spent most of the month with us. It was beyond wonderful to have time with them! And I’ve gotten some weaving and some knitting done. We’ve had some awesome meals, and I guess I will credit being sick with what has kept me from gaining weight (always the silver lining, right?)….

So, with not much to show for myself, I’ll share a couple of good cartoons I stumbled on recently….

From the New Yorker

and from ecards:

I did my bit on fiber purchases. I have a wonderful LYS called Yarns Down Under, in Deep River. During my visit I learned that Filature di Crosa’s “127 Print” is being discontinued (sigh) so I bought two colors to make a cardigan. I bought the black and the periwinkle blue, and I plan to use them in a vertically striped cardigan based on “Designs by Judith” pattern called “Buenos Aires” that called for Manos del Uraguay.

So this takes a bit of imagination…. I am knitting not quite random vertical stripes in my two colorways instead of the two-color stitch pattern used in Judith’s design. I just love the shaping of this sweater and hope it will turn out well in a striped stockinette stitch. Although the gauge is the same, my fabric will be considerably softer since it is not a texture stitch. Wish me luck!

And while licking my wounds about my weaving disappointments, I found this in my inbox today:

“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” –Dalai Lama

A Lovely Day in Cocoa

December 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment

I continue to marvel at how lovely the Christmas season can be in the tropics! Bob and I took a walk together through the more historic residential area of Cocoa, the major style being bungalow from the early 20th century…..my favorite!

Nice modern addition to this classic bungalow, although I do wonder how hot that glass enclosure gets in the summer!

There were also quite a few more traditional looking Spanish inspired houses. Most of these houses had historic plaques.

Palm trees and Christmas decorations….it does work!

I wonder if this lovely shade of blue was chosen to match the flowering vine on their arbor.

Christmas with orange trees, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and lots of little lizards skittering across our path wherever we walked!

I capped off the day by visiting Knit and Stitch again to sit with the other knitters and work on my Ann Jacket. What a lovely spot! On top of being in a community of knitters, I learned that one of the women who works in the shop, Barbara, is an avid weaver and reps Schacht products for the store. One of the other shop women, Ann, seems to have done some weaving herself, so I felt that I had found some wonderful connections here. Thank you!

As if this wasn’t enough of a perfect day, we spent the evening on board Meltemi (a Catalina 42′) with Jeff and Susan, while they taught us a popular Bahamian cruisers’ domino game called “Mexican Train.” (I shudder at how un-PC this name is!) I never knew there are dominoes with 12 spots on them! I was terrible at understanding all the little dots on these tiles!

Today we are headed to Melbourne….not Australia. Before this trip I didn’t know there was a Melbourne in Florida. It seems that wherever the English went they used place names from home. Makes for a very confusing world!

Day 86, December 5: Cocoa to Melbourne

This is Bliss….

December 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment

The recipe for a perfect day:
Warm Sun
Gentle Breeze
Coffee
Knitting
A place to recline while enjoying all of the above….

It just doesn’t get any better! Today feels like June in New England. It is quite reminiscent of rare, lazy mornings on the front porch in either my old house in New Jersey, or my new Connecticut house. I could become a little homesick, but I’ll just remind myself that it’s December and there is no sitting on porches there right now!

I haven’t mentioned the “Ann Jacket” in about a week, have I? Well, it couldn’t be going any slower ….. it’s like I just learned how to knit yesterday! It took me over a week to knit one sleeve, and it was some of the most frustrating knitting.

In the end it comes down to having good tools. I’ve always known that. But in this case I didn’t plan ahead to make sure I’d have the best tools on hand. My options were to knit the sleeve flat, and this would have been my fastest option since I had the perfect needles for doing that….the very needles I used for the entire sweater. But I didn’t want to sew at the end of project, especially this project which was so cleverly designed with no sewing. I opted to pick up stitches around the armscye and knit circularly.

Now you know where I’m going with this… I either have to use double points, two circulars, or one long circular as a magic loop. I tried the double points first since I have them. Ugh. With the entire weight of the sweater hanging on those small double points (no matter how carefully I tried to keep the weight of the sweater balanced in my lap) at least one of those needles was always falling out. Big time burner, constantly picking up the stitches from the needles that wouldn’t stay in the knitting!

Next big idea: two circulars. Maybe this is being a tad particular, but I find it quite frustrating to zip along on my best needle and then have to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n for the second half of the row on the less than best needle. Ugh. I gave that a go for quite a while before deciding that I was just getting too angry. I can’t let knitting make me angry!

Third attempt: magic loop. Well, this works best with a really long circular needle. My favorite fast #3 circular is only 24″ long. I had a lot of stitches on that needle, and there was just barely enough cable left to force that magic loop. More frustration and a bit more angry knitting. Not acceptable.

Compromise: I went back to two needles and finished the first sleeve this way. More than a week for one sleeve! Sheesh! I knit an entire body panel in multiple colors and multiple directions faster than one simple sleeve. Maybe I should have worked flat and sewn….

So yesterday I visited the Knit and Stitch in Cocoa (and it was as good as promised!) to buy myself a better second needle, hoping there wouldn’t be such a disparity in speed and ease between them. Everyone swears by Addi Turbos as being the fastest needles, and I do have a small battalion of them in my stash. But there’s another brand of needles that I bought decades ago at Patternworks, when they were in Poughkeepsie, and I love them more. They are some kind of “plastic” covered metal, in a stone grey color, and they had a German name. I love them.

So now I’m only slightly limping along between my fast needle and my new Addi Turbo. I’m sure I’ll have a warm sweater jacket to wear home next week! But I won’t be very far along at all on my ruffled cardigan. I guess I will bring it along to knit on the plane!

Knit and Stitch is a great store. It was Monday afternoon, and there was a crowd of women sitting at the central table, working on different projects. Two employees were sitting helping the knitters, one more was behind the counter helping me. There was lots of lively conversation and friendly atmosphere. The shelves were full to brimming with yarns, although it was hard to get to some of them due to all the knitters! Not a bad thing! And true to their website, there is coffee, tea, chocolate, and wine! It wasn’t long before the woman behind the counter offered for me to sit down and get to my knitting while she poured me coffee…or wine, and “please help yourself to some chocolate.” I might go back there today and indulge!

I bought the pattern and background yarn for this fun project! It requires lots of small bits of contrasting yarns, and I figure I have plenty of that. The yarn I bought is Noro’s cotton/wool/silk/nylon called “Taiyo Sock Yarn.” Check out Knitting At Noon Designs.

So I haven’t said a word about how quaint Cocoa is….the shops are lovely, and there are great choices for restaurants. Bob has done a great job with that! I know I can be somewhat knitting possessed. I’ve got a strange ache in my right upper arm, which I’ve never had before. Must stop knitting angry and spend more time with the recipe for bliss!