SailingKnitter

Terry's workspace on Niki Wiki

Today is Halloween so I thought that I'd share a couple of the Monster Socks on the needles this week. Halloween isn't a big deal here in Guatemala, but tomorrow is Day of the Dead and that is the holiday in Latin America.

Monster socks are knit using whatever leftover yarns are available. Sometimes we monster knitters (a class of creative and thrifty individuals) just randomly pick up small balls from the basket and knit with what we get. But other times we like to make them look as beautiful as possible. I've been reading a couple of group forums on Ravelry lately, Monstersocks and Restend to pick up some ideas for combining my own odd little bits of sock yarn. Remember, my fellow knitting retreat campers donated a pile of sock yarn a few months ago and I'm challenging myself to knit-it-up!

Child size with a little bit of Fair Isle work

So, I've been working as you can see from my studio cramped work space here on the boat. There are actually 3 different socks in progress in this pile of yarns. These blue/green socks have a touch of fair isle stranded color knitting in them. That keeps me happy and challenged and makes the socks a little more special for the kids.

Then, I felt like doing a larger sized sock (Men's Medium) using more subdued colors. These next ones are worked in 10 rounds of 5 different sock yarns "shnivels" as Lee Ann from camp labeled them on her donation bag.  You can see that I knit both socks of a pair at the same time. That let's me know how much yarn I have left so I can make a matchy-match pair (and so I can remember what int he world I did on the first sock).

10 rounds each 5x1 ribbing, let the yarn talk

The town of Rio Dulce was a busy place this week. So busy in fact, that Jonesy got hit in the shoulder by the rear-view mirror of a truck while walking down the street. No big injuries, except to our sense of well-being. When drivers illegally park their vehicles on the side of the road, even for a minute, then the 2 way traffic has to creep around them taking turns to pass. Everyone is in a hurry. At the same time, pedestrians are trying to navigate this same narrow stretch of pavement. Both sides of the road are crowded with tiny stores, street food vendors, shoe shine boys, women with baskets of veggies, cheese, tortillas, you name it.

Rio Dulce traffic

So we were walking around a parked van with a truck coming towards us. As we passed the van, the truck swerved towards us and the van and clipped Jonesy. We were both shaken up, but are fine. The mirror didn't hit me as I walked behind Jonesy because the force of the impact bent the mirror into the truck (they are made to do that).  We still walked our 2+ miles, shopped, then went back to the safety of the boat.

Here's a shirt that we spotted on this young fellow selling dried white, red, and black beans on the side of the road. "WWCD? What would Ceepak do?" is what the printing says. John Ceepak is a fictional character in a popular series of mystery novels by Chris Grabenstein written in English. Like a lot of the discarded clothing in the USA, this shirt found it's way down here to Guatemala. Guatever.

NEWS!  This blog, with our sailing and my knitting aboard in remote places lifestyle was featured on Kelley Petkun's Knit Picks Podcast #200! You can listen to it here.

Remember, today is the final day of October and tomorrow is the first of November. Members of the Holiday Mystery Gifts Yahoo Group know that this means that today is the last day to download the free knitting and crochet patterns before they disappear. Tomorrow there will be a whole new batch of free patterns to enjoy!