SailingKnitter

Yes! I've been nominated for a 2007 Bobby Award on the knitting website Ravelry in the Most Unusual Project catagory for my Theatre Popcorn Box Hooter Heaters! What an honor! Here's a photo of just how becoming these babies can be when worn by the appropriate model. So if you're a Ravelry member - go vote! and vote often!

More Afghan Squares
Well you can see what I've been knitting lately - more designs for 7x7" squares for my guild's charity program. I've had a great time exploring slip-stitch patterns in my stitch dictionaries. All of the 2-color squares you see here are knit with 1 color of yarn at a time. Very, very easy.

The hardest part is to establish the pattern and border to get to a 7" square measurement, and I'm doing it in 2 different gauges to accomodate the wide variety of supposedly worsted weight yarns available and knitters' tensions.

My favorite so far is the charcoal and cream striped pattern (photo to the left). Jonesy's favorite is the red and cream ladders pattern (photo to the right). I thought it took 12 squares to make a laprobe, but I was just informed that it takes 20 - heck, that's just more designing fun for me.

Other than that, I've been steadily working on my "Land and Sea" Gansey sweater and my latest Socks for Soldiers leisure socks.

With all of the passage-making/cruising we have done this past week I have had plenty of time to knit. I even knit at night during my "watch" at the helm with the help of an LED headlamp. See? Here's a photo of the Land and Sea sleeve. Yep, it was really dark out at sea this time...no moon, no stars because it was slightly overcast.



The Passage South
We had a great little trip from Barra de Navidad to Santiago Bay where we walked/bus rode into town to do some reprovisioning. In Santiago, we picked up another couple of boats for the longer, overnight trip farther south.

And so it was, the 3 sailing vessels hoisted anchor, raised the sails, started their massive engines and set off to sea. No, not the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, but the Niki Wiki, Baraka, and Enchantress. The sun rose over the coal-burning power plant in nearby Manzanillo as the passage makers headed around the point. Dodging the heavy freighter commercial traffic of the Manzanillo port (see photo off of our stern below), we encountered cool temperatures - 67 degrees and enough wind to fill the sails.

As the rag tag fleet buddy boats sailed on we were joined by more vessels: The Merry Rowe's, Cyrno, and La Sierna. At sunset, we two front runners, encountered a Mexican Navy vessel, and, once again, we (and the Merry Rowe's family) were boarded for a "routine inspection". Enchantress sailed by us during our inspection - taking the lead - sneaky, very sneaky.

The night was was boring, boring, boring. Nothing to see at all. Because Niki Wiki was out in front of the pack and I had the radar set to forward-looking, the screen was totally devoid of any blips; no pangas, no freigters...nothing. And the chart plotter, which looks a lot like a video game, was pretty boring too with just straight, deserted, coastline. I even took pictures of the chart plotter and the instruments I have to watch - yep, it was that much of a non-event which is actually a good thing.

What I did do is smell all sorts of odd stuff - cows at pasture, coffee roasting, and wet dog. Whatever was going on along the coast sure put out some strange odors.

So I knit. As I came across little pieces of vegetative matter (VM) or grass in the rustic yarn I was using (Cottage Craft) I would pick them out with my tweezers and throw them out to sea. Or so I thought. In the morning I discovered that these bits of grass & red yarn lint had simply gone back over my shoulder and floated down into the rear hatch and into our berth! Jonesy said he had dreams of it raining grass, yeah right.

Our next anchoring stop was scenic Isla Grande where we snorkeled for a couple of days with our buddy boating friends and then headed over here to Zihuatanejo Bay. Check out this photo we took in Santiago on Playa Miramar - do you think the Corona Beer distributor has a lot of influence here??