SailingKnitter

Jonesy performed his magic on the broken windlass gear after the parts arrived and we are now mobile again! Whoo hooooo! Plans are to leave here this Sunday and sail north to Chamela Bay, then onward to the Sea of Cortez.

In the meantime, we took a the 10 peso ($1 US) bus ride over to the small beach town of La Manzanilla on the south shore of Tenacatita Bay. We could always see this little town from our boat whenever we anchored on the north shore and had always wanted to visit.

After gawking at the crocodiles - giant crocodiles - we walked along a dirt road between the mangrove swamp and the beach. Look verrry carefully at the photo, let your eyes follow the shoreline of the lagoon from the front of the photo back. See the croc? Those are logs in the background. Note the walking path right in front of the croc's eyes...nope, we detoured, but we saw 2 other couples walk right by. Yikes!

This several-miles-long stretch of beach is lined with mostly motorhome/trailer lots with Canadians basking in the sun with a mangrove swamp on the inland side. Along the way we saw a beautiful Roseate Spoonbill bird - pink and large almost like a flamingo with a wide scoop bill. 2 seconds later, we spotted an Ibis with it's long curved bill.

Along the road, we were startled by the most beautiful little bird we've ever seen in the wild - or anywhere for that matter! The back of the bird was deep blue and teal and glistened like jewels, the front and belly were bright yellow! We think it was a Orange-Breasted Bunting.

The beach is wide and flat so we took a looooong walk and just enjoyed the warmth of the sun and the cooler-than-normal air temperatures (in the low 70s). How cool is it? Well, those of you with black dogs will recognize that if the dog is sleeping in the sun rather than the shade, it is not hot outside.

The local fishermen were mending their nets along the shore as we returned from our walk. This bridge is the ONLY paved road in this dusty little beach town - and you can see that it is not in very good shape...kinda sags in the middle. Oh well, that's Mexico.

In town, we checked out the church bells - circa 1981 - gotta start sometime, and the local nursery which had plenty of customers. I used to be such an avid gardener and still like to look. No plants on this boat.

Many small stores - tiendas line the one main road, guarded by sleepy shopdogs who usually don't even bother to raise their heads to look at you. These photos show the entire width of these little stores. That's it. Yet, within these few square feet of space is almost everything you really need.



On the Needles: In an effort to reduce the quantity (physical size) of my yarn stash, I have been knitting thick, warm wool socks for the Akkol orphanage kids in Kahzastan. And, as a challenge from the Socknitters group, we are all trying to learn a different (new-to-me) heel shaping method. I choose the "Afterthought" heel a la Elizabeth Zimmermann.

Here are the socks that I knit holding 1 strand of sport weight and 1 strand of self-patterning sock yarn together. Where's the heel? Not yet! Now I cut a thread at the place of the heel, pick up 2/3rd of the stitches, and knit another "toe"!

So cool! The only issue I had was that I misjudged where the heel should start and ended up with a GIANT foot measurement. Crudolas. So I had to adjust the foot length. Ah, live and learn.

Also on the knitting needles were the extended sleeves for the Nordic Sweater. I used some of the 2-color patterning from the yoke. After adding about 25 more rows, I grafted the cuff back to the sleeve. Voila! Got longer sleeves.

Sure was a lot of grafting - but I use my knitting needles, not my yarn needle, as I unvented last year. This whole sleeve surgery took a lot of different knitting tools. Jonesy thought that the plastic stitch holders looked like the old hair curlers that his older sisters used to wear.




And speaking of tools...Jonesy used one of my Crystal Palace bamboo size 1 sock needles to unclog the drain on the dinghy yesterday! Eeewwwww...but it worked and it was all we had with us at the moment. See, if he thinks of all this knitting stuff as "tools" then he won't mind so much of it being on the boat!