Tag Archives: knitting

Disconnected

Every year Bob and I are promised better connectivity in the islands, with promotions from various internet providers. I think I have finally given up hope! This year takes the cake! Moments after getting onboard my iPhone got the ‘black screen of death.’ I googled how to solve this, but without being able to back up my 10,000+ photos and various other things, I decided to leave that job to a professional…and that means waiting until we return home.

So we bought the least expensive android we could find at the Digicel store in Ste. Rosa, Guadeloupe. We were promised that a certain Digicel plan would give us 70 gigs of data for about $40 (US) a month. We could add more, 10 gigs at a time for about $10, and we could pay by automatic payment. The service would work in all the islands from Antigua to Grenada. Sounds good, doesn’t it? We fell for it! So it came as quite a surprise when the phone turned itself off about a month later. In the settings it showed that we paid for the next month, so we didn’t think it was a payment issue. After that we saw the payment on our Visa account. For the next month the phone did not work. We had no hotspot, and Bob’s google fi phone did not have enough data to use for a hotspot. We eventually went to a large marina in St. Lucia where wifi is included with dockage, but of course the service did not reach a single boat on any of the docks, except before 7am. What fun!

Are you thinking we should be less tied to our electronics? Well, sure. But when you live onboard you need more connectivity than if we were just on a two-week vacation. We want to talk to our kids and grandkids, we want to read the news, we want to write blogposts. Bob has managed to keep up his blog because he can take his computer ashore and use wifi there. My computer is now old enough that it needs to be plugged in at all times to work, and I can’t do that ashore on any island except Antigua due to the type of electrical outlets. We left there in January! When we were on the dock in Marigot, St. Lucia, I had electricity onboard, but no wifi. Now we are in Rodney Bay Marina, St. Lucia, and I have both electricity and wifi. At long last!

I’ll stop whining now and move on. We’ve met new friends this year, cruisers who are on their first Caribbean journey. I can tell already that some of these newbies will become long term friends. There are still no weavers who’ve crossed my path, but I have been able to keep in touch with some of my weaving friends at home. In reality I’ve been able to keep in touch more this year than previous years, so some of my ranting above is not fair!

SEA MONSTERS

When we sailed from Martinique to St. Lucia, earlier in March, it was a ‘sporty’ sail. I was seasick and unable to move from my spot on the leeward side of the cockpit. We passed an ancient piton at the southern tip of Martinique that sent my brain to thoughts Scylla and Charybdis from Homer’s Odyssey. The piton we passed is quite small compared to others in this area, well worn and likely much older. As we passed it I was able to see three sides of the rock, and on each side of that rock there was what looked like a fearsome face etched into it. I could not possibly get up from my perch to get good photos, so I got out my cheap phone and did my best through the glass of our protective windows in the cockpit. This is the third side, as we were passing our last view of this piton. I was too sick to make sure the horizon was straight, and since I took this on an android, when all my other ‘toys’ are apple products, I don’t know how to edit this image to straighten that horizon. At any rate, maybe it’s better crooked, since it evokes my extreme state of off-balance!

Can’t you feel the fear some long ago sailors must have experienced as they passed this piton in a gale with angry seas and black skies and wind all around them? It brought these ancient sea-monster stories to life for me. I was so happy to tuck into Marigot Bay after this rather short, but sickening sail. And I’ve been thinking about sea-monster stories since this day.

RESORT LIFE ON ST. LUCIA

While in Marigot we were visited daily by a little Lesser Antillean Bullfinch. He was a cheeky little bird, very used to people and boats. He had no fear of flying down below through our small companion way, and he was not easily shooed out of our cabin! He seemed to know which boats had bananas, so Bob started leaving a half bananasfor him out in the cockpit each day. It was not a good idea because he became a constant pest. If there wasn’t a banana waiting for him outside he’d come below and take a look around.

While trying to chase him out of our cabin he ducked into our ‘stateroom’, aka bedroom. I wish he’d given me time to make the bed before I took this photo!

St. Lucia is a gorgeous island, known for its lushness, its high volcanic mountains, and two striking pitons down in the southern part of the island. Pitons are the leftover cones from ancient volcanos. Here is a view of the two famous pitons (Petite Piton on the front and the larger Gross Piton in the back–I know! The one in the back looks smaller from this vantage point) with the sprawling capitol city of Soufriere just to the north.

Stopping along the roadside to capture shots of the pitons. The roads seems greatly repaired since our last visit pre-pandemic. We were locked down in St. Lucia when the pandemic started, in March of 2020, but we were confined to Pandora, so we did not visit this area that year.

You cannot visit this area with a snap of yourself with pitons in the background!

On each of our visits to this part of St. Lucia we stop for lunch at a beautiful resort called Ladera. It’s at a high elevation with terrific views of the pitons right at eye level. The food and wine is just perfect in this setting!

There is a new game in town, which is a thrill for me. The Rabot Estate that grows cocoa for export, including to supply Hotel Chocolate in the UK, has opened a showroom and bar/restaurant facilities, just down the road from Ladera. They opened two years ago, just as all the islands of the West Indies locked down. Lucikly, now business is taking off, and luckily we were able to participate in their growing success! If you’ve never had Hotel Chocolate, you should! There are some shops in the US (look online). My dear friend Leslie sent me my first taste for Christmas last year. I’m hooked!

Here are just a few temptations on display!

These displays were inside 40′ shipping containers lined up inside a giant tent. It was sleek–very modern. There was a full container of beauty products made with cocoa butter. Here is my favorite purchase from the day.

We almost opened this bottle last night, but decided it would be great share with Chris and Melody over Easter.

This is the resort at Marigot where we’ve spent the past two weeks indulging in pool time, great food and time with friends. I even visited the spa–twice.

Being tied to a dock for two weeks gave us the ability to run our air conditioning, which allowed me to knit my wool vest and work on my tapestry in cool comfort. This “Con Alma” vest is now much further along, above the arm scythes.

One day I tried weaving at the pool, but it was challenging! The wind is always blowing, and at this stage of life, my eyes struggle to see when the back light is so intense!

I finished my Nantucket basket vase! Well, the base and the top rim need sanding and then the whole thing can be varnished. That will happen at home, in Bob’s woodworking shop. (And hopefully, he’ll do those jobs for me.)

After spending so much time in French islands where there are many boulangeries serving up baguettes, I have finally mixed up some sourdough starter. I made the batch with a new friend, Oana, from a giant catamaran that is currently docked in Marigot, and will soon head back to Portugal. Oana found it interesting to be delving into sourdough at this stage of life (a few years younger than I am), when during her childhood in Poland, sourdough bread was the only bread available. What goes around comes around.

There will be a sourdough boule later today, just in time for our overnight voyage back to Antigua starting tomorrow morning.

I’m very glad to be connected to the world today. Life needn’t revolve around connectivity, but sometimes it’s good to be in touch. I’ll be home 14 days from today. New England spring is calling to me!

Do You Need a Sweater?

Bob asks me this almost every day during the winter when we are in the Caribbean. I answer that I always need a sweater, but that it’s too hot! He is teasing me about all the knitting I do while onboard. I finished my Purl Soho “Cuff to Cuff” sweater about a week ago and have been waiting for milder temperatures in the evenings in order to put the sweater on to take some photos. The almost perfect evening came about two days ago.

I don’t have a desire to wear this sweater again until I am home! It is comfortable, although not so much in 80+ degrees. I think I will enjoy it in the milder April weather at home in Connecticut. I looked at the little thumbnails on our camera and declared that we were done with photos. When I saw the images afterward I realized that there are still a number of locking stitch markers pinned to various places where I was noting the shaping. Ugh! Just my luck! It’s just too hot to retake the photos!

Here is a detail of the side shaping I did. It starts with side slits, then the side seam tapers up to the armhole through the use of short rows. You see the stitche marker I used to keep track of the center underarm. Oh well!

I have been thinking about a collar, but for the moment I’m just going to move on to other projects. I will have the option to add a collar, but in my experience, once I start wearing something I rarely continue to tweak at the design. I brought along a vest pattern and yarn from Kate Davies Designs. The pattern is “Con Alma.” I love the color she knitted for the images on her website–a happy orange that reminds me of the center of a daffodil! I will add a different kind of side shaping for this design. The yarn has wonderful bits of other bright colors, in its tweediness. The yarn is “Milarrochy” which makes me think “Milarkey,” so that is what I call it. The color is ‘Asphodel.” It is knit in the round from the bottom up. Instead of steeking, the pattern is knit back and forth from the armholes upward to the neck. I am enjoying knitting the lace details on the center front.

We are in a small ‘anse’ which means ‘cove’ in French, or perhaps in French creole. I need to check on that (French). The small village is called Grande Anse d’Arlet, and it is somewhat south of Fort de France. There is no hint of Carnivale here, just what we hoped! There are no ferries to rock the harbor every half hour, no drumming, no parades. There is a long beach to walk and some beach cafes. The mountains in the background are dramatic, but not so high as Mt. Pelee, so we don’t get constant rain showers as we did in St. Pierre. We are anchored somewhat to the right of that pier coming out from the beach, although we are not in this image that I got off the internet!

Grande Anse d’Arlet is the blue dot on this map, although the village is name is missing. As you can see, we have moved directly south of the festivities in Fort de France.

I’ve been drawing designs for my next small tapestry. That’s a bit of a challenge–always is. I dread drawing and then after several false attempts I begin to enjoy it, as I get closer to something almost worthwhile. I wish I’d brought some colored pencils, just to get a sense of color and depth. There’s always something missing onboard.

I am ready to weave, but no definite image yet. I want this finished so I can bring it home in my suitcase as a small textile, not as a cumbersome copper loom! So time is short. If my drawing skills were better I’d be weaving already. Meanwhile, in only a month I might be able to wear sweaters again! With luck, I’ll have two new choices in my wardrobe.

In the Background

There’s a background to every part of our lives, isn’t there? We’re focused on things, but plenty of other stuff is whirling outside of our field of focus. I am on the final rows of my Purl Soho “Cuff to Cuff” sweater in a shade of Mediterranean blue that I love. It conjures up memories of my time in Greece from almost 50 years ago, and it also is the shade of many shutters and trim on Caribbean houses. I wanted to change the silhouette of the design by adding shape to the side seams. My first attempt was a failure!–although I thought it was so clever. I picked up and knitted stitches all around the front and back side seams, and then did double decreases (sl1, k2tog, psso) at the center stitch of the underarm. I did this for 30 rows, and it did not do what I expected. So much knitting, and then I tried it on and sighed. Not good at all! I needed to sleep on that small debacle for a night, then luckily the next morning I woke up ready to get down to another possibility. I ripped it out quickly, and the 2nd idea went much more speedily and looks much better. I did short rows that tapered up to the point of the underarm. It only took about 22 rows, and because of the short rows the number of stitches overall was less than the first attempt. I tried it on and liked the look!

This is the background in which I’ve been knitting. At the point of this photo Bob and I were leaving the tiny villages sprinkled throughout Les Saintes and heading for St. Pierre, Martinique, the home of the infamous volcano Mt. Pelee.

A few more days down the road (uh…sea) finds us now anchored in Fort de France, the capitol of Martinique since Mt. Pelee erupted in 1902, and destroyed St. Pierre (we spent almost a week there). Fort de France is both historic and modern. We are anchored right near the 17th fort of St. Louis. It was started in 1683, and finished in 1710. Bob and friends keep quoting the French from “Mounty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail.” Hmmm….

When we go ashore to the dinghy dock we are in a large park where people gather with their children to use the playground equipment, or they gather at the beach–that tiny strip of sand in the far left foreground– for swimming.

There is a gazebo in the park where drummers gather in a drumming circle every day. We can hear the percussion onboard Pandora, all evening and into the wee hours in our sleep. I think these sessions are practice for Carnivale that starts tomorrow.

I have mixed emotions about being here during Carnivale. Two years ago, this is where we were were, amidst thousands of revelers, when we learned that the world was about to shut down. We sailed south to St. Lucia when all the Windward and Leeward islands closed their borders. If we’d known this would happen, we would have sailed north to Antigua. But we couldn’t know. It took us about a month to get north to Antigua, when the border there opened for a brief 3 days, and then another two months or so to get to the USVI and then to Florida. These are not good memories for me, so being here gives me a certain level of angst. In spite of French curfews here of 11pm, newly extended from 8pm in mid-February, it seems like Carnivale will be just as crowded and chaotic as past years. Will the revelry go on until about 4am, as in past years? I’d rather get out of here to some of the remote coastal villages.

Down here we live with scattered rain showers, especially if we are near islands with rainforest, and showers always mean rainbows. Bob has about a thousand photos of rainbows, just from this year.

Our friends on Hero, Stephanie and Jim, took a photo of a rainbow encircling Pandora. You’d think that might bring us a bit luck, but if that’s true, what we got was a bit of bad luck. Bob lost his wallet in the big city of Fort de France. We don’t know if he lost it on land which could be very bad…. or if it possibly fell out of his pocket while we were in the dinghy. If it’s lying at the bottom of the harbor we are not so worried.

And we thought for certain that this photo, also taken by our Hero friends, with the end of the rainbow right on Pandora, would bring us luck finding Bob’s wallet or a pot of gold. We’d take either. No luck for us! Note the double rainbow which is also a frequent occurrence everywhere in the Caribbean.

So we lurch ahead. Bob has no driver’s license now, no credit cards, no ATM card, and no medical cards. We lost the cash we had, about $200 in euros and a little US cash. It’s inconvenient for sure. Yesterday Bob asked at a hotel if we could have a small package sent by DHL, but the concierge emphatically said, “NO!”–even wagging her finger at him and looking angry at the suggestion. These are trying times for being a stranger in a strange land. I don’t fault the hotel at all for not wanting mail from anyone not staying there. The banks here are only ATMs, with no actual human employees. We’re not in Kansas anymore. My ATM card and credit cards are all the same accounts as Bob’s, so it’s still a dicey situation, but we are going to use them until we can’t. Bob checks our visa account every day to see if there are any charges not made by us. I guess we’ll be holding our breath until May, when he gets home. Although I’ll get home in April, I can’t cancel cards that he needs to use!

That’s all the news from here that’s fit to print, with a bit of background beauty thrown in for fun. It’s a beautiful backdrop to my many concerns and worries at the moment.

Reality Check

For the past couple of weeks I have been consumed with hearing from folks who’ve just received copies of Archie Brennan’s autobiography/memoir. I’ve been holding my breath on the copies sent to far away places, like Australia, and also following those in the US who pre-ordered the book at Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon. All is going well. It seems like a lot of people have ordered. I sure hope the publisher thinks sales are going well.

Meanwhile, real life continues. Bob and I are spending the winter onboard our sailboat Pandora, after an 18 month hiatus due to the pandemic. This year we will not visit quite as many places in the Eastern Caribbean due to rising cases on some islands. In spite of our best efforts to stay safe, we have been in Guadeloupe now for a week and learned that this island’s Covid cases have been rising dramatically. We first landed in Guadeloupe at a small village on the northeastern coast called Deshaies (pronounced DEH’ eh, or DAY’ A for those who love diphthongs!). I wasn’t particularly worried there because the village is so small. There is an 8pm curfew all over the island these days, so restaurants close up around 7:45 so everyone can get home. We ate a few lunches out because of that, and we did some touring in the area during the daytime.

One day we took a shuttle bus to the nearby botanical gardens that we visit every time we are Deshaies. Luckily the shuttle bus was empty except for the driver and us. One of the highlights of the gardens is their restaurant. Our friend Tom, aboard Rally Point, joined us for the day.

Of course, the main highlight of the gardens are the gardens!…and the birds! They have a wonderful array of parrots in the gardens, both in an aviary well are out in the open (perhaps their wings are clipped). There is also a fenced in area of flamingos. This year the flamingos have great color.

We are staying more connected to our cruising friends this winter, traveling together to different ports. Is this because we all missed each other last year? I’m not sure, but so far we have stayed in a traveling clump. Since the evening curfew makes dinner a bit challenging we have enjoyed a few lunches with our friends. I love this spot in Deshaies called La Mahina. It’s painted white with Mediterranean blue trim and has such lovely views out the unglazed windows!

A few days ago we sailed to Pointe de Pitre, the capitol of Guadeloupe. We’ve never been to this port before for two reasons. It’s a huge port, and it’s industrial. On one side of Pandora we look at a lovely shoreline with only one dwelling and a mountain in the background; to the other side we see a busy port with cranes and containers and ships loading and unloading. The city of Pointe de Pitre is quite large. It’s not our best choice, but we are trying to be careful!

The highlight of Pointe de Pitre is the river that divides the two islands that make up the island nation of Guadeloupe. It’s a navigable river for most smaller vessels, but the two bridges that span the river are no longer operable as draw bridges, so that has closed off travel on this river. The chart below shows the Riviere Salle is in the middle of the two wings of the butterfly that make up Guadeloupe. There is a red triangle showing the entrance to the river where we began our journey.

Cruising sailors can still take their dinghies along this river, along with paddle boarders, kayakers, and small power boats. Luckily the local coast guard patrols these waters to keep speeds down. During our visit up the river, the coast guard stopped two jet skis who were speeding past us.

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We made a day of exploring Riviere Salee with couples from three other boats in our group. The river and the small canals and byways along this river reminded us of so many places. Traveling through mangroves we remembered our winter in Cuba, yet some of the byways actually looked like lakes in the Adirondacks on a summer day. It’s a beautiful area.


As we explored a number of small byways, I was intrigued with the sky and mountains in the distance. It was a wonderful experience! In the middle of the day, we stopped in a larger open space to tie all our dinghies together at the bows, which made sort of a 4-petaled sunflower raft-up. We opened our picnic lunches and relaxed and talked.

It’s quite a contrast to explore these little tributaries off the river and yet be anchored in such a big industrial harbor. Getting back to our boats in the large harbor during the afternoon strong winds was no simple feat. That’s the thing about living the simple life–there is always a price to pay for the good times. Sometimes that price is pretty high.

I’ve been trying to turn my attention to projects. I’m on the last leg (no, really the last arm) of a sweater I’m excited to finish. It’s quite a simple design, from Purl Soho, that is knit from cuff to cuff. In past sweaters of this design I have knit the entire sweater in one piece, but this design is knit in two pieces: a front that is cuff to cuff, and a back cuff to cuff. The two pieces get put together by picking up stitches along the selvedges and doing a 3-needle bind off. Doing this 3-needle bind off gives a smart edge to the seams which you can see in the photo below. I am going to add a long gusset to the side seams, using a technique from one of Vivan Hoxbro’s designs from years back. I don’t remember the name of that knitted jacket, but I enjoyed the clever way she joined the center back. I will pick up stitches at the side seams and do a double decrease at the underarm every other row until I get the A-line shape I want. This has been a slow project because it’s all just garter stitch…ad infinitum. But the finishing details could make it a quite a lovely design. I hope so!

End To End Pullover | Purl Soho

The color I’m using is a slightly different blue than shown here. It’s more blue, less green, but still a warm sort of barely turquoise. I’m almost to the last sleeve which should go quickly.

I’ve made progress on the basket, but it’s still not done. I probably have two more sessions of weaving to finish it. I’m saving that indulgence for a perfect day. It’s so enjoyable to weave a basket!

If I don’t make a plan for a small tapestry soon I’ll be lugging my frame loom home empty! I don’t want to do that! It was hard to get all my supplies onboard this year because I didn’t do it before Bob left to sail to Antigua. I didn’t want to decide what to bring so long before I’d actually be here. But packing two large suitcases of supplies, and schlepping them through JFK twice (due to flight cancellation) was SO not fun. I need to make good use of the supplies I lugged all the way here and with such inconvenience! Wish me luck.

This is my reality right now: living in a tropical paradise, with a good dose of hard work. Today I am doing laundry which will hang out on our clothes line in the cockpit. I know I’m lucky to have a washing machine onboard. Without that, laundry is quite a big chore that I might enjoy describing someday…but not today. I will knit and try to conjure something for dinner on our tiny stove that is now having problems. Bob worries that if I cook too long our last solenoid on our propane tank will melt, making cooking even harder to do. He installed the last spare solenoid a couple of weeks ago, and hasn’t been able to buy more spare solenoids in any of the chandleries along our route this winter. He’s hoping for luck in Martinique, or we may be relegated to cold meals! Fingers crossed. It’s time to hang out the laundry.

Life at my Kitchen Table

The biggest news I am compelled to share–a real book! Something I can hold in my hands!

What a thrill it was to find a package from Schiffer in the kitchen yesterday when I returned from a day out at the Wadsworth Atheneum! I thought the museum exhibit was exciting, but I had no idea what further excitement lay in store! The book is a pre-release copy. Only a few were shipped by air to Schiffer for promotional purposes. The rest of the books will arrive by ship whenever that is possible. No one can guess that anymore. The original release date was Sept. Then it got moved to early December. Now it will be sometime in the new year…with luck.

The book is bigger than I expected. I knew it was over 300 pages, with lots of photos, but I didn’t expect it to be this big.

The Schiffer team, headed by senior editor Sandra Korinchak, worked hard to get the colors as close as possible on the photos. I’m sure they were sick of my phone calls and worries, and they had to work with some considerably old slides that have changed color over the decades. Remember Kodochrome and ektochrome? Yep, those were the good old days of film.

I lost a lot of sleep over the images for the book. I am thrilled that they are quite good. The Schiffer art folks had a lot of work to do without ever getting to see the actual tapestries. There was a lot of sleuthing, and although I’m tempted to go on and on about that, for now I’ll spare you. Shortly after I took a quick look through the images, I weighed the book. I was just that enthralled with how heavy it feels. It’s 5 pounds.

It’s strange to be taking photos of the real book. It has only existed in my mind and then in pdfs from my editor. Now a real book is on my kitchen table, where so much of my life takes place. My son calls our dining table “Mom’s studio: the sequel.” A lot of straightening up goes on before we eat dinner here most nights. Now I’ve even placed a couple of small side tables near my chair so I can just move my stuff from the dining table to the little tables. This is what often happens. On this day I happened to be in an online bobbin lace class to study and sample making Ipswich lace, led by Karen Thompson. It was a bit difficult to move this when dinner was ready.

Most days for the past year+ the table has been cluttered with stuff pertaining to Archie’s book. I’m thrilled that those days are past. I got this pre-release copy almost two years to the day after Archie passed away. I could never have imagined how long a process this would be.

Those sweaters I mentioned in my last post have not been touched yet. The pattern for the autumn leaves in Rauma wool is definitely awol. What a shame. It’s going to take some effort to develop my own pattern based on what I’ve already knitted with no records! I did find the stitch pattern, so it could be worse. It’s only a bit of math. I just have to do it.

I should be talking about tapestry, shouldn’t I? I’m just still not ready. It’s like the feeling when you finish a good book or a good movie, and you just can’t start a new one right away. I need a bit of time to process that Archie’s book is a reality before I can focus on my own tapestries. I thought I’d dive right in, but that’s not how I feel right now.

Instead, I’m focused on knitted sweaters, and an unfinished basket, and bobbin lace. I’ve gone down a few deep rabbit holes. Today I saw this sweater on facebook–a sweater that depicts bobbin lace. It doesn’t get better than that!

The pattern is free, so if you’re a knitter go get it! Here is the lace that inspired the sweater (also from facebook).

And now that I’m getting quite off topic from the book, I’ll show you my lace from Karen Thompson’s Ipswich class. Ipswich is traditionally done with black silk — not my favorite look by a long shot. And it’s hard to see. But this class has been a good experience, learning about the first documented lace from the new United States, circa 1789, based on samples in the Library of Congress. Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the Treasury of this fledgling country) kept records of the various manufactured items in the 13 new states, and his records, including samples of about 20+ laces made in Ispwich, Massachusetts, are in the Library of Congress. In spite of the current connotation of the word “manufacture,” remember these laces were made by hand, usually in the home of the lace maker.

Back on track–tomorrow will be the 2nd anniversary of Archie’s passing. I miss him on a daily basis, as you’d expect since I’ve spent so much time reading his words and looking at his tapestries. This year I’d like to think that there’s a little silver lining, that now there is a way for weavers to see so many of his works and his creative thought processes collected in one place. But I can’t predict the future. This is what I wanted for him, a way to connect with all the weavers he taught and befriended over the many decades of his career, and a way for those who never met him to get to know him. That’s my wish. I hope it comes true.

Life after Archie’s Book

For those of you who got here early you may now see that I’ve changed the title. I thought better of my choice of words almost immediately! Archie Brennan and I started down a path more than a decade ago to create a book chronicling his fascinating life, and that path has reached its destination. Based on what little I knew about him in 2002, when I joined the Wednesday Group, I thought he had lived quite an exciting life. I saw him as someone who took chances, loved adventures. As he hand-wrote his memoirs and gave them to me to transcribe, I realized how limited my idea of adventure was. He led a most adventurous life!

A love of adventure and the unknown is probably a good ingredient for living an examined life. Examining life is a good ingredient for having an open mind while also developing strong opinions about what works in your own life. This is exactly how I view Archie. He was easy to talk to because he was genuinely interested in others, not just artists, not just tapestry weavers. He was fascinated to learn about whatever motivated another person to live the life they lived. Since he felt that his chosen profession was no different, and certianly no less important, than being a farmer or a mason or anyone else who worked with their hands, he was able to listen to others and know them on a level that most people just don’t ever reach.

My journey with Archie to produce his book is coming to an end. In terms of the actual, physical book, it’s done. It went to the printer in late August. The publisher expects it to be available in December. I don’t know what the future may hold. Of course I hope to talk about the book in any setting that might occur. There are over 300 images in the book and wonderful stories. I always knew that this book had to be an autobiography; no one could tell Archie’s story as well as he could. Along with being such a great visual artist that man could tell a good story. He was Scottish, after all.

Now my own future is wide open. I have neglected my own tapestry weaving, along with the fabric woven projects, spinning projects, and countless knitting ideas, braiding ideas and other handwork projects that have defined my adult life. While Archie’s book progressed and stalled over the years, I could not focus on my own work. Today I will sit at my spinning wheel with some natural black Shetland that I’ve wanted to spin toward a sweater that has lived in my mind for too many years.

There are three sweaters taking hold of my imagination, and memory. Two are about 10 years old and are neglected “works in progress.” I began both of them with the idea of celebrating my knitting jubilee. Now I’ve been knitting for another 10 years since then–60 years. It’s time to make those celebratory sweaters. They were featured here in my blog almost 10 years ago.

This is Alice Starmore’s Tudor Rose design. In my own project, I am just above the armholes.

This next sweater is the one that is calling to me to finish first. It’s based on a design by Ruth Sorensen, but I no longer know who might have tweaked the version I was knitting…maybe Ruth herself. It’s been 10 years, and the pattern is now gone from my Ravelry library and gone from my computer files. I’m a bit stumped at how that happened. The pattern is no longer available, so I can’t just buy it again. It’s a dilemma.

I bought Danish yarn called “Kauni Effekt” to use for this design. The brilliance of getting these amazing colors together is buying handpainted yarn and then using it as yarn A and yarn B. I just needed to make sure that each skein started in a different part of the color sequence. No need to change colors every two rows, as in a standard Fair Isle design. The yarn does all the work, and I just knit. I sure hope I can recover the pattern somewhere in my files. There is a slim chance that I printed it, but it is not with the sweater materials. I will have to excavate my knitting notebooks, and that is no small feat.

The third sweater is a new pattern from Sunday Knits called Tia Teva. I really splurged and bought the yarn for it as well. Go me! My sweater will be a medium and light grey/blue.

This is SO totally clever! Don’t you agree? Stripes that undulate to allow for stranded work insertions. Carol Sunday is so creative! I hope I can finish the other sweaters before I start this one.

Oddly, that brings me back to Archie. He had so many ideas in his head at all times, yet he never worked on multiple tapestries at once. He might be drawing sketches for several ideas he wanted to pursue, but he didn’t warp up a new tapestry until the current one had been cut off the loom. I need to do that. I really do. Thinking about that reminded me of a question someone once asked him after a presentation he’d given. The person asked what was the most difficult tapestry he had ever woven. He replied, “It’s always the one on the loom right now.”

I’m excited for this book to become a reality–at long last. I’m also excited to now have time for my own work, with Archie’s wise words scrolling through my head after years of reading and re-reading them, arranging them and rearranging them into chapters. I cannot count how many times I’ve read the manuscript, but his words have continued to remain as fresh as the first time I transcribed them. Now I am free to implement his wisdom into my own work.

Let Me Get Out My Soapbox

Oh, boy! Last night I got quite riled up about people’s attitude toward wool. Bob sent me this article from the Times of London. It’s called “Shear Waste,” and it covers the dire situation of sheep farmers across the UK. This year many farmers burned their fleeces or added them to their compost. For years I’ve heard that farmers expend more energy and money in caring for sheep than they get when they sell the fleeces at market. This year the new low was 33p per kilo, which I learned does not even cover the expense of shearing. This is heartbreaking. Seriously, I am crestfallen by this situation.

From the Times of London, Fleeces being composted at Stuart Fletcher’s Sussex farm

I went looking for more information, and I started with the Campaign for Wool. I had no idea this endeavor is now 10 years old. Time flies. How have things gotten worse instead of better? It seems that many people in the UK feel that wool is only useful for rugs these days. Whoa! I have had the pleasure of spinning some wonderfully soft wools from the UK, and nothing–absolutely nothing!–gives me more pleasure than knitting or spinning Wensleydale or Shetland wool. Am I mistakenly under the impression that everyone in the UK knits? …at least for a few years as a child? Don’t they need fresh supplies of wool and the ability to try the many breeds that are grown all around them? Aren’t designers, especially of men’s suiting, always in need of wool?

A few months ago I read the book Wild Dress: Clothing and the Natural World, by Kate Fletcher. The author is Professor of Sustainability and Fashion at the University of the Arts London. She has written other books, but in this one her writings are autobiographical. She explores the relationship between garments and our human connection to nature. The chapters read like essays to me, and in one she marvels at people who spend time in nature by hiking through the landscape. She notes that nowadays, you have to dress the part of someone who spends times in nature by wearing the most unnatural clothing. If you aren’t wearing a polyester fleece made from recycled plastic bottles and elastane-nylon pants, you must not be a serious outdoorsman. Kate Fletcher writes, “As garments go, there are few pieces less natural than a polyester fleece pullover. Nor are there many pieces that act to distance the world outside more than those made from filaments of hydrocarbon with their high resistance to micro-organisms, poor heat isolation and low water absorbency. The things we are wearing to arrive in nature do not, cannot, let nature in… We keep her at arm’s length, or more literally at sleeve’s length, with hydrophobic fibres, an impervious fabric membrane and garments so durable they will outlive us all.”

Wool has so many uses. It can keep you warm and is fairly water resistant. Through millennia of sheep breeding wool can be soft enough for undergarments and tough enough for weatherproof yurts. It can insulate houses, hang on the wall as a beautiful way to keep out drafts. It can become stunning clothing and household items when knitted or woven or felted. I thought there were many millions of people clambering to have excellent sources of wool. So how can these farmers be in dire straits right now? I am worried that they will soon give up sheep farming and turn to something else. What will I do? I can’t possibly be the only one who fears this.

I own exactly one polyester fleece pullover which I bought at least 30 years ago to support a non-profit group I had joined. I still have it, and I wear it only occasionally, although never out in public. I have a wardrobe of sweaters I knit myself that I love to wear out in public. Most of my friends and acquaintances also love the sweaters and other garments that they have woven or knitted. Even if you yourself do not knit or weave, I bet you know at least a handful of people who do. We are everywhere.

About a decade ago I joined the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers in the UK. Ten months of each year there are online workshops to take. One month we focused on breeds of sheep that are not well known. Each participant got a small amount of fleece directly from the farmer to comb or card and then spin. I got some Ronaldsay fleece from the Orkney Islands off Scotland. I got some Bowmont-Merino fleece from Leslie Prior’s farm in Devon. That was an amazing bit of fleece to spin. She has the only Bowmont sheep farm in the world, and at one point there were only 28 sheep at her farm. I felt so lucky to get a bit of this wonderful fiber to spin. Since then I believe she has prospered with this breed. She has an outlet for getting the yarn spun in the UK, and made into garments and household items that are manufactured in the UK.

When we had the fleece workshop through the UK Guild, those of us outside the UK did not know for certain if we’d ever receive our fleece samples, or how long it might take to receive them. The ones I chose all arrived at my house, and I think the longest delivery time was only three weeks, which is fast considering these packages had to go through the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. The inspectors have the right to send back anything they deem unsafe. After playing with various fleeces from the around the UK, I ordered a kilo of Ronaldsay from Orkney. I washed the wool, combed it and spun it before knitting it into a sweater for my younger son Chris. I’d love to spin some more Bowmont now!

This is my long winded way of saying that I hope there is some way to save the wool industry in the UK. I read that half the wool stays in the UK, but the other half gets exported throughout the world. One quarter of the wool goes to China, and this year, due to the pandemic, no wool could be sent there. In the article I linked at the beginning, I also learned that British wool is used in carpets on airplanes and cruise ships, and those industries are certainly suffering at this point in time. To me, wool can be such a luxury item that we should all cherish it. I don’t want to lose that. What can I do?

I’ll end this with some stunning wool products and some links.

This is the story of a student design project for Campaign for Wool to create new designs for Holland and Sherry, a well known Saville Row shop known for their use of high end wool fabrics.

The Campaign for Wool is making a good argument for using wool to insulate dwellings.

And no post about British wool from me would be complete without a mention of the wools grown and spun and woven on the Hebrides Islands for Harris Tweeds.

Stay well, pick up some wool, and get busy knitting….or weaving….or felting…or spinning.

Departure

The time has finally come! While I haven’t had nearly as much experience with long passages as Bob has, this is what I always encounter: We provision and wait for the weather window. Our provisions grow low in the waiting so we provision again. We wait again. On and on. Inevitably, we get the word to “GO!” now, right when we need to provision again! The waiting is a killer. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for ages, and feeling anxious. By the time we really do ‘GO!,’ I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted now. So, naturally, it’s time to go. And wouldn’t you know, we need fuel in our extra jerry cans and we are a little low on fresh food.

I put a scopolamine patch on last night hoping to stave off any seasickness ahead of time. Fingers crossed. It should take us about 7 days to get to the Lake Worth inlet on mid-coast Florida. We could not get a marina reservation in Fort Pierce because they are already full. But some of those boats will be heading north as soon as mild spring weather arrives in the North Atlantic, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.

The closer I get to home, the more excited I’m getting for projects. Temptations arrive in my inbox daily. This winter I stumbled on KDD designs, a site with so many interesting facets–poetry and writing, knitwear design, even yarn from local sheep (in Scotland), where that yarn is also spun and dyed locally. It’s not local to me, but it’s in my DNA to need and want textile-y things from Scotland.

I’m in love with this amazing color of orange! I’ve loved the color orange for years, although I do not have a favorite color. The color of this yarn, with the little bits of other colors in it, is a show stopper for me. The teal is wonderful too, but that orange! Oh my!

I’m ready to start knitting this vest, also designed by Kate Davies (of KDD)! It’s called “Con Alma,” after the Dizzy Gillespie recording from the early 60s. Temptations are wonderful things, aren’t they? I put a kit for the project in my shopping cart, without giving it more than two seconds’ thought. Sadly, this yarn is already sold out. Sigh…. I hope I can order it soon, so that it will be winging its to me as I wing (hopefully) my way home.

I’m enjoying the possibility of what other sea creatures will work their way up the warp on my current tapestry. Sea turtles and rays for certain. Maybe a couple more ‘post card’ moments. I have to start drawing soon because the next creature will get added before the octopus is finished. Adding any more ‘post card’ images might involve weaving buildings again. The church tower in Deshaies, Guadeloupe (pronounced Day/A) is such an iconic landmark. Tempted for sure, but I should know better.

So, it’s time to leave, and here I sit. Am I stalling? Probably. Bob has taken the dinghy into the nearest town to fill the last couple of our jerry cans so we can have enough fuel to add to our tanks as the trip wears on. Supposedly there will be so little wind between here and Florida that we’ll have to motor a good deal of the time. As long the seas are flat, I’ll be very happy to motor, thank you!

So to pass the time ’til Bob returns, I will forge ahead on my Wrist to Wrist sweater from Purl Soho. Great color, isn’t it? But it’s not orange.

I hope I can knit during our passage home. I have a couple of audio books to listen to when I stand watch in the middle of the night. I am praying I can do that this time. It’s all Bob requires of help, so he can get a little sleep. A week without sleep is a long time. Off we go! Shortly I hope I’ll walk through the side door on our porch, and have a good cry of joy to be back. Welcome home!

Plan C, D, E…etc.

All we do these days is make plans for getting home before the hurricane season starts down here. I was going to write about these plans, but they are mutating too fast for me, faster than shifting sand trickling through my fingers. We’ve now gone well beyond Plan C, D, and E. I started this while we were still in Antigua, but now nothing from that post is relevant. Lots has changed, but nothing really has.

We left Antigua last week, on Thursday, to sail through the night to St. John, in the USVI. We arrived on Friday afternoon. My medications are waiting for me in Red Hook, and Bob is taking the ferry there now to get them, as I write this. We tried to make landfall there on Friday afternoon, but it was so rough in the harbor that I did not think I could handle Pandora while Bob picked up the mooring lines. We have been in Caneel Bay on St. John since then.

I was frightfully sick on the passage here, and that has given me quite a concern about making the much longer passage home. People love to tell me that everyone gets better after three days at sea. I’m sure that’s true most of the time. But what about those three days? How is Bob supposed to get through three long days without help? The 2-night trip to Antigua in early March was a terrible burden on him. He had no help from me at any point on that trip. And it happened again on the way here. I’ve been sailing with him for 45 years now. We’ve made some long passages and we’ve covered a lot of ground between Maine and Florida on the east coast of the US, and on to the Bahamas. I don’t just get mildly sick; I get incapacitated-ly sick. It’s a risk to have me onboard. That is weighing pretty heavily on me. (I have a huge stock of different seasickness meds, trust me!)

The day we sailed to St. John, capital of Antigua,–not the island where we are now– to clear out, we saw this ship carrier in the harbor. You cannot imagine how much I wanted this to be our plan! Just take Pandora to Newport, and let us go! The cost of $20,000 to take her was a bit sobering. Still, I was tempted. Bob was not.

Here you can see boats lining up to wait their turn in the crane. Too bad Pandora couldn’t get on line.

The stress of worrying about this is taking its toll. I feel I am burden onboard, but no one else can get down here to help Bob. What to do? We talk to our weather router off an on over the months we are down here. Last week when Bob told him how sick I was with the following seas on our way here, he suggested that we consider the ‘northern route’ home, which would take us far out to sea, east of the Bahamas to make a straight shot to the Carolinas or even all the way to Connecticut. This route has more easterly winds and would put the wind and sea state coming across the middle of our boat, which is called a beam reach. This is the route Bob always takes each year. But that terrifies me. It’s so far from anything. Once again this morning we called the Venerable Chris Weather Router to ask if there was a way to get home in flat seas. This may be a possibility. The ‘southern route’ would take us north of Hispaniola (DR and Haiti) and into the Old Bahamas Channel. The winds and waves would be from behind, my least favorite direction, but if we pick a window when there is very little wind, the sea state should be flat. We’d have to motor most of the way to Florida. Horrors to real sailors like Bob, but that sounds pretty nice to me. Bob is in favor of doing whatever makes me less fearful. He is on a hunt for some diesel cans so we can carry extra fuel. Wouldn’t you know that all those sailors who sheltered here before we arrived bought up all the diesel cans at every store within walking distance in both Red Hook and St. John. I’m amazed that any of these chandleries are still open. (But that is another story)

In my distress over how I’m going to get home, I have returned to some of my projects that were so boring to me weeks ago. Now I relish anything that will take my mind off what lays ahead. On my small tapestry I have finally made it past the pillars in English Harbor. Really, I have no business weaving buildings. I need to imprint that on all my bobbins–No Architecture!! Now I’ve started the octopus that wraps around the little postcard scene of Nelson’s Dockyard, so I’m having considerably more fun.

I’ve joined in a couple of Rebecca Mezoff’s “Change the Shed” get togethers on youtube through live streaming. It’s been one of the best diversions I’ve been able to find. I weave my own tapestry while she weaves and talks to the weavers who send her questions or comments through live text messages. It’s fun. Lately I haven’t had enough connectivity to do it, and I miss it!

St John has some nice distractions too. There are lots of turtles here, and they are not nearly as shy as most sea turtles. One of them checks us out throughout each day. We must be sitting on top of his favorite patch of turtle grass. In fact, in Caneel Bay you may not anchor because anchors and chain tear up the grass that is so necessary to the turtles. There are moorings here, and now that the island is a bet less crowded, we were lucky to get one.

Our mooring is just off the beach of a derelict resort that was started by the Rockefeller family back in the 50s. It made it through all those decades and then was destroyed in 2017, by Hurricane Irma. Now, only 2 1/2 years later, it looks like it’s been out of commission for many years, not just a few. A local resident told us that the property’s 99-year lease will be up in two more years. There’s a rumor that a big resort company has bought the resort and will rebuild when the lease runs out.

The view from Pandora right now is quite spectacular. It’s hard to imagine that you can have tough decisions ahead and a hard trip home while sitting in such a place.

It took me a full day to get over the trip here, but as you can see, I am relaxing while I can, before we have to head out again.

I am working on a sweater design that Purl Soho offers on their website, called End to End Pullover. The yarn is also theirs, called Linen Quill. It is a blend of merino, alpaca, and linen. It is about the weight and grist of Shetland jumper weight, but so luscious due to the alpaca, and heathery, due to the linen. I’m enjoying the feel of it, and the Caribbean blue, even though the knitting has grown boring. I am almost half done.

I’m not sure that I use my nostepinne correctly, but I wanted to knit from a center pull ball. I have to drape the skein on our navigation chair, which is a bit too small. Of course at home I make balls with a ball winder and it goes at least 10 times faster.

My balls always turn out like eggs!

And I am baking and cooking, like everyone else on the planet right now. Even though I have a pound of yeast in the freezer onboard, I miss making sourdough. I thought I’d find out what wild yeast in the Caribbean would be like. It’s very healthy! It must love the salt air and warm temperatures. Playing with sourdough also has been a little ray of contentment during my worrisome days.

And the best balm for my fearful days has been the connection with friends who are checking on me daily. It’s been so therapeutic for me to know that friends are thinking of me. Somehow that is always such a sweet surprise! –to hear that people take the time to think about me when their own lives have a full share of worries. I feel wrapped in the love of people who are routing for Bob and me to have a safe trip home. Thank you immensely!

From Antigua to Orkney

The weather has been wild in this part of the world, not unlike many places these days. We are having multiple squalls a day (and night), with high winds and torrents of horizontal rain to go with it. At night we open and shut our hatches so many times, first to get a bit of a breeze in order to sleep, then to shut things down so our cabin doesn’t get drenched. We both lose track of how many times we get up in the night, and at this point we are both suffering from sleep deprivation. So, when I found this recent article from the BBC online, I could not help but notice the similarities, even a world away from here.

The article is about Ronaldsay sheep on Orkney Island just off the northern coast of Scotland. Another article called Orkney “a freckle off the north coast of Scotland.” How true. Ronaldsay are small, hardy sheep who’ve managed to live on a seaweed diet for quite some time now, ever since the sheep owners cut the sheep off from pasture.

Ronaldsay sheep on Orkney. photo from BBC

Cute sheep, isn’t she? About a decade ago I ordered a kilo of white Ronaldsay fleece from Elizabeth Lovick on Orkney. She has a venture called Northern Lace, and she teaches and designs knitting patterns in traditional Orkney lace work. It took a long time for my fleece to arrive. When she mailed it, she mentioned that I might never get it, if US customs should deem it unsafe. Well, it did arrive, and I enjoyed the process of washing and combing it before spinning it. When at last I had a medium weight, 3-ply yarn, I knitted it into a fisherman’s gansey for my younger son Chris. No, it’s not traditional. The yarn was, but I made up the sweater pattern myself, attempting to satisfy Chris’ needs and style. At the time he was an undergrad student in Rochester, NY. Later he took the sweater, along with several pairs of wool socks that I also knit for him, to Manhattan while he continued his studies there and then worked for a few years. At one point, he lived in an unheated hallway in Chinatown (yes, he paid rent for this dwelling; yes, it was illegal). That sweater came in handy for a few years. Now he lives in the Bay Area has no need for such a garment!

Pretty low resolution back in 2007.
wow! Small photo, low res. He’s so young!

But back to the sheep. Close to 200 years ago, the sheep farmers built a stone wall around the entire perimeter of the island to keep the sheep on the beach so that other livestock could feed on the pasture. The sheep have become accustomed to, and have actually thrived on, their seaweed-only diet. Occasionally a sheep will get through a broken or weak part of the stone wall, and you know if one sheep gets out it’s not long before they are all out.

The sheep on the proper side of the wall. Photo from orkney.com

The article is about the new sheep dyke warden/shepherdess who’s been hired to maintain that wall and keep an eye on the sheep, as well as what scientists are learning about a seaweed diet. It turns out the seaweed-eating sheep do not emit methane when they belch. It turns out that methane gas is 30 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Think of all the ruminant livestock throughout the world, adding so much methane to the environment. While it’s certainly not a cure-all for our problems, it could be one of many efforts to ease things. These diminutive sheep have led scientists to research the possible benefits of adding seaweed into more livestock diets. The North Ronaldsay Trust began looking for someone to fill the position of sheep dyke warden during the past summer, 2019. Sian Tarrant who is from East Sussex, and has a degree in marine biology from St. Andrews, seems to fit the bill. She wanted the job, and the island folk wanted her. She has already worked on a number of National Trust projects, recently studying seals on one of the uninhabited islands in the Orkneys as well as in the sub antarctic off the coast of South Georgia. Want to read more about this interesting woman? Here you go!

All this makes me want to comb and spin some Ronaldsay again. This time, I’d go for the darkest brown fleece. Maybe I would use it for tapestry. So many ideas, so little time! Meanwhile, the wind is howling here on this Sunday afternoon. We won’t get frostbite from it, or die of hypothermia, but it is still pretty extreme weather.