knitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, it is a rainy Monday, our first rain since leaving the US way back in January.

It has rained non-stop all day today, and it’s been very lovely here in Man O’ War Cay.  The locals told us that April can be quite wet, just like New England.  No wonder it is so lush here.

We wandered through the town, along wide paved walkways just wide enough for golf carts to pass.  Lots of those here, and very few cars.  The cars that are here are models we don’t see in the US….cute miniature vehicles.

We saw a border of amaryllis planted along a fence.  They were in various stages from spent to full open and still in bud.  They were a bright, single red….just like we force at Christmas back at home.  There are lots of things that we’d call houseplants, growing as perennial foundation plants here:  Kalenchoe, “Wandering Jew,” coleus, vinca.  We even saw the biggest poinsettia we’ve ever seen!

But there are also things we cannot identify.  Some vines with huge purple trumpet like flowers, some lily-like flowers, and a huge tree covered with bright yellow flowers! I really wanted to grab a seed pod off the yellow flowering tree!…but I refrained.

Bob enjoyed visiting the Albury Boat Works that have made so many of the small powerboats we’ve seen throughout the islands, as well as many of the traditional wooden sailing dinghies used in the regattas, and most of the small inter-island ferries.

I have been looking forward to visiting Sallie’s Gift Shop ever since I learned that it is well stocked with Androsia fabrics and finished garments. Androsia is a local company (on Andros Island) where women make traditional batik on various weights of fabric.  There is light weight garment cotton, heavy canvas for making bags or upholstery, and some mid-weight cotton for household linens.  The batik motifs are all Bahamian: shells, turtles, hibicus, sharks….  It was hard to stay on task, but I think I did a good job of getting some fabrics to make presents and some small presents for my nieces!  A little something for me too!

Then there was the Albury Sail Shop, where women from the Albury family make duffel bags and every other kind of imaginable bag.  There were more bags than you can possibly imagine under one roof!  The Alburys have been making bags for three generations now.  Again, what a hard choice for me!  But I did pick a good one!

The woman on the left is the Albury who now runs this shop.  Her grandmother started the shop 60 years ago.

So what to do on a rainy Monday afternoon?  Dig out some more of my stash and start another knitting project!  I skeined this mystery yarn, rigging up a hank holder between two portholes in the galley.  I know it is merino but the tag is long gone, so I don’t know who dyed it.

I just downloaded Romi Hill’s “7 Small Shawls,” which are named after the stars in the Pleides.  I will start with “Celaeno”….very feminine and pretty.  It will be a gift.  The directions for this shawl call for over 900 size 6 beads, but I have decided to omit this since I think the shawl will be uncomfortable heavy with so many beads.  On the other hand it sure would sparkle like the night sky with beads knitted into it…