SailingKnitter

3 qts Wild (invasive and delicious) Blackberries

Eradication by Mastication - that certainly is a mouthful isn't it?

What it means is to work at getting rid of invasive species of plants and animals by eating (chewing) them! I did it and I'm still alive and didn't get sick. See, if suddenly everyone wants to eat delicious dandelions from their neighbors' yards then this weed would disappear from the suburbs. Anyway, that was the idea behind a fun fundraising event I attended in Oregon which was organized by the Institute for Applied Ecology.

Yep. In a lovely outdoor setting, we were served a Greek Spanakopita made with phyllo dough and cheese, but with dandelion greens instead of the usual spinach, wild boar sausages, braised wild turkey, potato salad with frog's legs, crayfish appetizers, and a yummy Himalayan blackberry cobbler for dessert - all invasive in the Oregon environment. Hmmm...there were blackberries growing along my friend's driveway so a few days later I grabbed a couple of containers and started picking (and eating) and freezing the bounty to do my part. Of course there was a lot of mastication of berries topped by greek yogurt going on in the days that followed. Here's a link to a short video of the event (the party, not me picking or eating blackberries) that was on the Wall Street Journal website.

FLAK sweater

While I performed ecologically correct eating in Oregon, back in the jungles of Guatemala Jonesy supervised the

• replacement of our entire cockpit enclosure system
• installation of a new shade cover over the stern deck
• a new wood interior door to hide the watermaker equipment on the boat,

Zipper closure on FLAK

After many years of hibernation and sporatic knitting, my Follow the Leader Aran Knitalong (FLAK) cabled sweater is done! I wasn't real happy with the zipper until a fiber friend came over and gave me the great advice to sew an additional line of stitching closer to the placket edging. Voila! The placket hugged the zipper and the inside has a much more finished appearance. My goal was to make this a unisex style sweater so that it would be acceptable to either a boy or girl which is why I modifed my original plan for a cardigan into this zipper/placket combination.

For this project I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (100% peruvian wool) in the "rain" color (color discontinued). This sweater, along with all of the sock and mitten knitting that I've done and have collected from the other sailboat cruising knitters Jackie, Celine, and Jan has all been mailed to the Motherless Child Foundation. This November the founder of the organization will be personally transporting and delivering these and literally hundreds of other items to the orphanages in Kazakhstan. So if you happen to spot a misplaced cable twist or other error in the photos don't tell me! It's gone and there's nothing I can do about it now!