It’s no surprise that living on board a boat has its challenges….some things are just so easy at home and so hard on the water. I have gone for months and years at home with no major equipment failures…..heat, water, appliances. At home we expect these things to go on working for decades…. On board they break all the time. You cannot get through a single sailing season without constant repair to major things….. why is that???
So, I won’t go through the laundry list of things that have gone kaput on Pandora. It’s too long and technical for a weaving blog anyway. But I will say that these problems fall heavily on Bob, so he has been under strain to find the source of our engine problems and our failed heating system. We have been freezing the past few days as the temperatures have been unseasonably cold in Virginia and North Carolina.
I finished my niece’s sweater and have plenty of yarn leftover to make her a matching hat….I could almost make a second sweater! (Polly Macc’s Brother/Sister pattern)
But I have been SO cold that I decided to take out a bigger unfinished project so I could wrap myself in it as I knit. It’s the fun Vivian Hoxbro wrap called “Zig Zag.”
As I began to take a close look at where I left off and how to get back into the zen of this pattern I began to realize that’s it’s been a really long time since I put this away. I bought this kit when I met Vivian at a workshop at a friend’s house….we were able to arrange this workshop because the friend offered to meet Vivian at the airport on her very first knitting workshop tour of the US, which meant that we became her very first group of students on her US tour. Ours was not a scheduled workshop, but something that my savvy friend was able to put together since she was housing Vivian on the first leg of her US tour.
So….how many years ago was that?? Vivian’s book Domino Knitting was new in the US, and she had copies with her to sell. It was autumn, and I knitted my Zig Zag through that season and on into winter. I remember specific knitting times when I was waiting in a physical therapy office, happily knitting, while my younger son was getting therapy for some long distance running injuries. Yesterday I asked Christopher what year that might have been, and he thinks it was either his sophomore or junior year of high school. That was a long time ago…..2002 or 2003. And since I met Vivian a few months earlier in the fall of the previous year, I’m pretty certain that I started this pattern in fall of 2002. Eleven years ago…..
What surprises me about how long it’s been since I set this project aside is that I have thought of this fun pattern every few months, planning to get back to it. For over a decade I have told myself that I would pick up my Zig Zag right after I finish this or that other project…..and it’s now been 11 autumns. Where does the time go??
