My Day Job - Saturday

I find myself somewhat reluctant to blog about the specifics of my day job.  We have enough of a PR department that the office may well be watching, and as the bulk of my job involves fixing things that break, a list of my daily activities, when read from afar and without context, may well make it sound like the boat is in a constant state of breaking (which is sort of true, in the sense that to work on a boat is to be in a constant battle with entropy, but we are also a well maintained boat, and if something is not broken I do not generally get to interact with it, aside from an occasional quick to make sure that it is still not broken).  But my day job is also a bit unusual, so absent the ability to upload all of the photos I have been taking of late, I thought that I might try to capture what a week out here is actually like. 

Saturday was turn day in Colòn.  Guests depart in the morning and controlled chaos ensues.  Stores arrive, cabins are turned inside out to clean, decks are scrubbed down, I try to attend to engineering issues in that cannot be easily attended to with guests on board.  Each of these activities gets in the way of other activities and generally all of this happens at once.  On this particular Saturday my work-list included: fixing this dripping faucet in cabin 301, opening the collision compartment to check on the gear oil for the bow thruster (the annual oil change was done before I came back onboard, and we’re still working air out of the system, so the tank needs to be topped up from time to time) running the emergency generator to make sure that all was well with it, restarting the walk-in freezer after it had been secured by some refrigeration techs, helping to bunker lube oil and offload waste oil, and a number of other small projects that I have already forgotten.   New guests were supposed to arrive starting at 1645, but this being Panama, none of them did up 1715, when they all arrived at once.  We needed to be off the dock at 1800, but we were unable to start bunkering water under 1700 because the boat down the dock was using the hose, and then the valve on the dock could not be opened, and then there was a long conversation between the chief engineer and the guard on the dock and various tools were employed and it was decided that we probably had enough water on board already but it would be nice to top up the tank and because I wasn’t necessary to any part of this conversation I helped bring luggage to guest cabins.   And then in very quick succession, the water was turned on, the tanks were topped up, the pilot arrived, potable water hoses were disconnected and stowed, I fired up the main engines and the forward generator for the bow thruster, the deck crew lifted the gangway and we were off.   After that it was fairly quiet until we arrived at the first lock in the canal (Gatun Locks, heading south - because we all think of the canal as running east-west, but really because of the shape of Panama it runs more north-south).  Our bow thruster is powered by our forward generator and can only be engaged or secured in the engine room (once it’s running it is controlled by a switch in the bridge).  For various reasons it can’t be left to run too long, but we need it to get into the locks and then to move between locks, and so for me the canal involves standing by, waiting for the order to engage or secure the bow thruster.  The second mate is a knitter, and was also spending our lock time standing by, so I decided that I could stand by just as well whilst knitting, and we had a lovely evening of knitting punctuated by quick dashes to the engine room (me) and answering the occasional operational question (her).  

After we cleared the locks, and I was cleared from standby, I went about my normal evening routine of transferring fuel (we have a fuel centrifuge to clean the fuel before it goes into our day tank) running the Oily Water Separator, and attending to any small issues that cropped up, including a condensation drip in 304.  The guests in 304 turned out to be from very nearby Portland, Maine,  and as we chatted we discovered many other points of contact in common, so while I couldn’t fix the condensation drip that night (it involved taking down a ceiling panel) we had a really lovely visit. 

There was nothing else terribly pressing that evening, so I knocked off a little early and made use of the exercise bike on the sundeck. By this point we were at anchor amongst a field of tankers and freighters and massive container ships, and as I peddled away in the still night air I pondered their contents and nationality and where they might be going and global trade generally, as one does.  I failed to come to any conclusions on the subject, beyond the obvious wonder at how much stuff gets moved about the globe. 

And that was Saturday. 

Bound for Costa Rica

We are through the Panama Canal (for this week at least, we’ll be back through at the end of next week) and bound for the cooler climbs of Costa Rica. 

The canal is just as surreal this year as it was last year. On each side there are the famous locks, but in between are miles of very narrow waterway, punctuated by wider lakes which seem like they could be anyway in the tropical world, until two very large freighters come around the corner and find themselves in a passing situation in a channel less than a boat length wide.  (It is very hard to judge scale in this photo, but trust me, these ships are HUGE). 

The locks have two lanes.  Part of the fun of the canal is watching the traffic in the other lane, taking photos, waving to their crew, or just marveling at how big a “Panamax” ship really is, and how entirely a ship can fill a lock chamber and still move.  

I have yet to figure out how to properly photograph at night, and the lighting at the locks provides its own challenges, plus the scale of things is always impossible to convey, but this stack of shipping containers is actually the stern of our lock buddy, the Panamax freighter Tokyo Express.  In the photos one can just make out the row of lights to the left of the lock house and stacks upon stacks of shipping containers - that is the rest of the ship. 

I have found myself lost in the maw of end of year inventory, in which I count every spare part and random fastener and provide a list to the office, carefully organized by account code.  Between four engines (two mains, two generators) and a myriad of other equipment, never mind the whole hotel department, we have a lot of spare parts, and a lot of fasteners, and a lot of random plumbing bits.  The end is not yet in sight, but it is giving me a chance to organize things a bit more around shipyard. 

At some point I will decide that I don’t care that it is too hot to knit down here and go back to working on a pair of gloves that I am designing using my 5-Ply gansey yarn, but for the moment I am getting my knitting fix by reading knitting blogs and sighing at patterns on Ravelry.  Two of my favorite bloggers recently posted about Sanquhar knitting, Kate Davies here, and TomofHolland here.  I am not quite brave enough to try my hand at designing my own Sanquhar gloves yet, but I am incorporating the genius little finger gussets into my next gansey glove pattern.

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays. 

***Our satellite internet is currently declining to allow me to upload my photos.  For those of you who follow me on Instagram, this is why I have stopped posting of late - our internet does not generally move quickly enough to upload photos, no matter how small, but sometimes I catch it on a good day.  I will try again in a day or so. 

Back to my Boat

I am back to my “day job”.  I’ll be on board the National Geographic Sea Lion until the end of January.  (Yarn orders will be mailed in my absence by my wonderfully supportive mother, who very much wishes that I would stop working on boats).

My last rotation aboard ended in the Port of LA, at the Al Larson Boat Shop.  Every year the boat spends about a month in yard where we can do more extensive maintenance and also refurbish guest cabins and other projects (like installing new carpet) that take time and can’t take place with guests on board.  Last year I was aboard for the entire time we were in shipyard; this year I skipped out pretty much the moment we got in.  Most people have a love/hate relationship with yard.  On the one hand, we can do all kinds of work without worrying about the impact it will have on guests and address problems that have been bugging us all year, on the other hand shipyards are dirty and noisy and disruptive to our daily lives.  I happen to like yard.  It is also incredibly strange to come back to a boat after it has been through yard.  We have new stuff. All kinds of new stuff.  And some things that were supposed to happen didn’t because of lack of time or money or enthusiasm for the project, and other things that were not planned for became necessary due to other unexpected events.   So I have spent the last few days trying to catch up and get to know my boat again. 

I met the Sea Lion in Costa Rica.  We will spend the winter traveling between Herradura, Costa Rica and Colon Panama, taking a week to make our way between, stopping off at various points of interests along the way, and transiting the Panama Canal once a week.  It's too hot to knit down here, but I still dream about yarn.

Salt Bay Mittlet Kits!

I am very pleased to announce that I've put together kits for my Salt Bay Mittlet pattern! Kits contain 3 skeins of my 3 Ply Coopworth, pattern, and a mini kit of stitch markers from BlueDogWorkshop.  At the moment they are available in very limited number, but I had so much fun putting them together that I hope to create more kits in the future.

A Belated Thank You

Thank you to all the folks who made the Highlands on the Fly knitting retreat so much fun!  I had a truly lovely time meeting so many enthusiastic fiber folk.  This was my first fiber retreat, and I can't wait for my next one.

During my Friday indigo dyeing demonstration, Deb Cunningham managed to capture the magical moments of transformation, when lueco indigo becomes indigotin as yarn is removed from the dye bath and exposed to oxygen.  

The white skein comes out of the dye bath a weird yellow green.  Over the course of the next 30 seconds or so as the indigotin reforms it darkens to a sky blue. Photo Credit Deb Cunningham.

And on Saturday vendors set up shop.  

I realized, as I attempting to creatively display my many yarns, that I have never actually seen all of my yarns in one place before.  I come home, dye a variety of colors and yarns, tag skeins, carefully bundle them into bags when they are dry, and then disappear back to the boat.  Sometimes I get a glimpse of the range of colors I work with when yarn is drying on the rack, but that is nothing compared to seeing yarn carefully laid out for display. 

A rainbow of 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight.  I took this photo rather late in the day.  By this point I had sold out of at least four colors. 

I was very pleased to see how well my various colors work with each other.  It was truly wonderful to watch complete strangers poke through my yarn and play with color combinations.

I genuinely had a wonderful time!  Thank you. 

Also, at the behest of the far more socially savvy Sarah Hunt, Upton Yarns is now on Instagram (as Upton Yarns). d

Come See Upton Yarns (and many others) at Highlands on the Fly – October 24-25th

Upton Yarns will be hitting the road and heading up to the New England Outdoor Center in Millinocket, Maine on October 24th for the Highlands on the Fly knitting retreat, hosted by the wonderful Sarah Hunt of Fiber Trek (Swenstea on Ravelry).  In addition to vending, I will be doing a sort of rotating indigo dyeing demonstration, by which I mean that I will be working with my indigo pot for an hour or two, while hopefully having interesting conversations about indigo dyeing with anyone who stops by to watch (I get really excited about indigo).  It may end up blurring the line between “demonstration” and “performance art”, but then, what doesn’t?

In addition to my normal yarn inventory, I will be bringing along a number of never-before-offered-for-sale small batches of yarns, including:

Worsted weight Corriedale x Montedale

Fingering weight Corriedale

And swatched

And some of the mountain of Romney > Cotswold fingering weight yarn that I dyed the last time I was home.

It's somewhere in this mess of yarn...

For more information, check out the Highlands on the Fly website, or if you are on Ravelry (and if you are a knitter with a computer, why are aren’t you on Ravelry?) join the Highlands on the Fly group. 

And I Have Circumnavigated the Lindblad Year

On September 16, 2013 I boarded a plane for the west coast.  On September 18, 2013, after a mad whirl through the Seattle office to sort out paperwork and uniforms and a last minute US Coast Guard required drug test, I woke up in a hotel room in Clarkston, Washington, looked out my window, and saw the National Geographic Sea Lion in person for the first time.  One year later we are back on the Columbia River (we spent a little longer in Alaska this year) and I have officially completed a year with the Sea Lion.  Back in the day when a sailor circumnavigated the globe they tattooed a rope and knot around their waists (this is part of a separate rant, once upon a time sailor tattoos had actually meaning, so that you could read a sailor’s career by their tattoos).  I haven’t circumnavigated by any stretch, but my year with Lindblad has taken me from Clarkston, Washington to Colon, Panama to Glacier Bay Alaska, now back to Clarkston, which should be worth something.

My first view of the National Geographic Sea Lion, seen from my hotel room in Clarkston, Washington.  

I took lots of photos of water

In dry-dock. Not her most flattering angle.

The view from Terminal Island, California.

Panama Canal

I saw bats with striped faces who make their own tents. 

And pepper - a spice that arguably changed the world.

Hermit crab

on a beach in Panama

trying to pretend it was just a shell

before it scampered away

There are lagoons in Baja, Mexico, where gray whales go to have their calves.  They were hunted there until 1966, and yet now, for reasons no one understands, some mother and calf pairs will come right up to small boats and the baby will play with the boats and the humans inside.  This is the first calf to approach us.  (I am in the red bandana.  The company arranged for a boat so the crew could go pat baby gray whales too.  And I have patted a baby gray whale, because the baby gray whale was interested in me.  Several of the crew kissed the baby gray whale, but that seemed a bit forward). 

And up to Alaska:

South Sawyer Glacier

A humpback whale skeleton, Bartlett Cove, Alaska (she was hit by a cruise ship - a cause of death for many humpbacks, though still not as big of a problem as fishing gear).

Steller Sea Lions

Heading south again:

A memorial post from Sgang Gwaii depicting a supernatural being that is a combination of killer whale and a wolf.  After a year of being cared for by a shaman, the skeleton of a high status person was put in a cedar box at the top of a memorial pole.  Most Haida villages were surrounded by memorial poles,  with ancestors keeping watch.  

The same hotel I stayed in last year, this time photographed from the upper deck of the National Geographic Sea Lion.

The Sea Lion has become a second home.  The various crews have become my boat family (as they say here).

I am incredibly lucky in my day job.  Thank you for a great year.

New Yarns, New Dye-space, Back in Alaska

Once again I have been home (for a full six weeks no less – though the time passed so quickly that I’m not sure I believe it) and now I am back on the boat, in Southeast Alaska – Misty Fjords National Monument to be exact. 

Back in June Sam and I moved from Newcastle Maine down to the comparatively big city of Portland Maine.  Our move from a house to a small apartment meant that dyeing in the kitchen, and worse setting up yarn drying racks everywhere, was no longer an option.  Luckily Portland has a vibrant fiber scene, and even better, a whole maker space devoted entirely to textiles and textile arts.  So, the Upton Yarns workspace has moved from my kitchen to a lovely bench and common work space at A Gathering of Stitches.  (And for anyone in the Portland area, A Gathering a Stitches also hosts a variety of classes in everything from dyeing to dressmaking – I want to take all of them).   I do not miss dyeing out of my kitchen one bit.  Not only is in the community at A Gathering of Stitches lovely and supportive, but at the end of the day I can walk away from my workspace in whatever state it happens to be in, rather than tidying it all away so it can go back to being a kitchen. 

My bench, before the dyeing began.

And by the end of my time home I had literally dyed up a mess of yarn.

A litteral mess of yarn.

As per usual, I completely underestimated the amount of time it takes to turn a finished skein of yarn into something I can actually post for sale (tagging yarn always takes longer than I remember) so some of the yarn in the above photo won’t be officially available until October.  But, I also have a number of new yarns which are currently available.

Gansey yarn spun from 2014 Buckwheat Blossom Farm Coopworth Fleece is available in two colors, Pomegranate (dye lot of 20 skeins) and Frederick Sound (two nearly identical dye lots of 20 skein each).

5 - Ply Coopworth Gansey Yarn in Frederick Sound

5 Ply Coopworth Gansey Yarn in Pomegranate

3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight yarns in Pine green, Natural white, and Pomegranate are back in stock.

And I have a new base yarn.  There are four light gray Cotswold x Romney crosses at Liberty Wool farm.  I had their fleeces spun to the same fingering weight yarn as my other 3-Ply Cotwsold x Romney yarn, but due to the differences in exact cross, or just individual variation in sheep, this yarn is a little bit loftier and a little bit softer than my other 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney yarn.  When dyed, the darker grays in the yarn produce a slightly heathered effect.  I’m calling the yarn by the descriptive but clumsy “3-Ply Cotswold x Romney Silver Base: fingering weight”.  It is currently available in Granite (undyed), Garnet (red) and Dark Indigo (yup, dark blue).

Garnet

Granite

Dark Indigo

I am currently knitting up a pair of Beth Brown Reinsel’s Compass Rose Sanquhar gloves using Granite and Dark Indigo.  I could not be happier with the pattern or with the yarn.

Beth Brown Reinsel's Compass Rose Sanquhar gloves in 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney Silver Base fingering weight in Granite and Dark Indigo

And in other news, on my last rotation to Alaska I foolishly failed to pack my zoom lens.  Thankfully this rotation I remembered it.  A few days ago we were in Glacier Bay, just off the aptly named “Gloom Knob” spying on mountain goats. 

A mountain goat on Gloomy Knob

Scenes from Alaska

As it turns out (and I’m sure this will surprise no one) South East Alaska is beautiful beyond words.  I have never been to Alaska before, and had no real notions of what to expend beyond “kind of like Maine but bigger, and no lobsters”, which is fair, though a bit of an understatement.  South East Alaska is a temperate rainforest, with snow-capped mountains continuing to the waters edge.  And there are glaciers. And icebergs.  And sea otters - a group of which is properly called a “raft” and when they are not in a hurry their preferred mode of locomotion is to roll on their backs and paddle with their hind feet while they rest their front paws on their chests to better watch whatever they are twiddling away from.  Thanks to the sea otters, there are also giant kelp forests (because the sea otters eat sea urchin and sea stars, both of which are such aggressive eaters of sea weeds that without the sea otters to keep their population in check, they eat the sea floor clean).  The giant kelp occasionally breaks free of the bottom, floating free in giant rafts of its own, parts of which occasionally get sucked into our various sea water systems (for flushing the toilets, or cooling the engines) which means that I am cleaning sea strainers more often than I would like, so in a grand, ecologically connected way, the presence of sea otters is actually making my life a little more difficult, but I love them anyway.

Once a week we motor up into Glacier Bay to spy on mountain goats and glaciers.  Yesterday was Glacier Bay Day.  In the afternoon, whilst fixing a door handle, I was nearly overwhelmed by a perfect moment of really loving my day job.

I had all the parts I needed to fix the door (not always the case on a boat with a zillion different parts, potentially sourced from hardware stores in five countries).

And when I peered around the door, this was my view.

Now this is a lovely view, but it pails in comparison to where we had been earlier in the day.

After lunch we noodled up to Johns Hopkins Glacier.

In the ice fields at the base of the glacier we saw seals sunning themselves on the icebergs (in a stunning show of poor decision making, I failed to pack my zoom lens on this rotation – so you have to squint a bit, and trust me that those darker blobs are indeed a large number of seals).

Sea birds (I think these might be kittywakes) also took advantage of the icebergs.

And then closer to the glacier we had a stunning view of this fine mountain, sporting its own fine glacier.

And on a very silly note, last week the Stews (short for “stewards” or more often “stewardesses”, they wait tables and clean guest cabins, and in the absence of ships officers, are in charge of life rafts) had a girl night (invitation not exclusive to girls - basically the idea was mud mask, nail painting, and giggling over attractive members of one's preferred gender).  One of them painted my nails.  I think they came out quite well. 

Scenes from Two Days of Travel

I am roughly here at the moment, here being somewhere north of Sitka, Alaska.

I am huddling on the upper deck in the companionway between a couple of cabins because it is the only outdoor space that is currently dry enough for me to have a computer out.  We are anchored in a small bay, and when I look up I see a small spit of tree covered land, mostly lost in fog.  I can hear a bald eagle or two out there somewhere.  The fog is making our satellite internet connection unhappy, so by the time I post this, we will probably be elsewhere.

Many years ago I came across a proverb in a book about traveling in Afghanistan: “the soul can only move as fast as a camel walks”.  I have no idea what culture the proverb properly belongs to, but the sentiment fits my understanding of travel, and that weird numb feeling that comes from too much time on airplanes.

I left from Fort Meyers on Friday (we were on a family vacation).

And took a flight from there to Atlanta,

The inevitable sprint through the Atlanta airport due to a late arrival meant that I missed the chance for a photograph.

Then to Seattle

Then Juneau

Then finally into Sitka (by then is was actually mostly dark – we’re still far enough south and early enough in June that that the sun does set, but the glow never leaves the horizon) and the boat.  I meant to get a lovely photo of the boat alongside the dock, but was in enough of a rush here that I only got a photo of the fuel dock from the boat instead. 

This is really a more accurate view of my life aboard anyway.  I am trying to be better about it, but I very rarely leave the boat during my time working on it, so I actually very rarely get to see what she looks like from land. 

Leaving Sitka

And finally, last night.  We spotted a small pod of whales, and spent a lovely evening bobbing slowly about the bay trying to get a better view of them, but really just enjoying the view.  My soul, confused by the fast pace of the travel from Florida to Alaska, is slowly catching up now that we are moving at a more civilized ten knots, interspersed with long afternoons at anchor while the guests kayak.

Winter: A Sanquhar Glove Pattern

I was planning a cool, professional,  grown-up blog post in my head, but the thing is BETH BROWN REINSEL designed a glove patter using my yarn, and IT WAS PUBLISHED IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF KNITTING TRADITIONS MAGAZINE (sorry for the yelling - this is exciting).

Let me try again.

I always look forward to the latest issue of Knitting Traditions magazine, but this spring, in amongst the usual, interesting, assortment of articles about the kind of obscure  knitting traditions that fill my heart with geekish knitterly joy, and patterns that have me plotting new types of yarn that I will someday produce, there is a pattern designed by Beth Brown Reinsel using my yarn.  Beth designed a charming pair of Sanquhar gloves, complete with finger gussets, using my 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight yarn.

I was anxious to begin knitting my own pair, but I was unprepared for how addictive this pattern is.  I started knitting them during my last rotation on the Sea Lion, and during our positioning trip from Costa Rica to Baja (no guests) a co-worker (who crochets) and I decided that when other crew members took smoking breaks, we were entitled to take crafting breaks.  I knit most of the left glove in cigarette-break-length bursts, sometimes during rough weather.  There are a few mistakes (knitting on the sly does not encourage great care, never mind rough seas) but I am thrilled with the pattern and the gloves.  As always with Beth's patterns, the directions are clear and informative.

For those interested in learning Sanquhar knitting from a DVD, Beth has created a DVD available at her etsy shop here.  

Beth designed the pattern using pine green and white.   I happened to have had a couple off-length evergreen skeins saved for my own use, so I went ahead and used evergreen instead, and I quite like how they are turning out.   The effect is a bit more spruce trees in winter than white pines in winter, but I am already looking forward to wearing them next winter (a ridiculous thought, given that I'm not even sure that we've really had spring up here yet).

Fiber Trek

I have always been a fairly solitary person, and a fairly solitary knitter, so one of my favorite things about this whole “starting a yarn business” adventure is discovering the wider community of knitters, and the myriad of ways they engage with their craft. Sarah Hunt, in addition to starting and hosting a yarn retreat (at which I will be vending and perhaps even teaching this fall) is filming a travel show about the larger fiber community, showcasing every aspect of fiber production and use, from farmers to owners of small spinning mills to designers and knitters.  At the moment she is focusing on the fiber scene in Maine, though I suspect as her project grows she will branch out to other states (though the Maine fiber scene is large and varied, so it may take a while).  Check out her buzzreal here, and her blog here.  I am very much looking forward to getting back to the land of fast internet so that I can catch up on her latest posts!

The Knitting Museum

Marsha White of the Knitting Museum has listed Upton Yarns as a resource! My yarn is sharing the same page as un-spun Icelandic from Schoolhouse Press! Seriously, for a knitting geek in love with traditional and obscure forms of knitting, there is no higher honor.  I am giddy!  Marsha also put together a really nice page about my yarn. The Knitting Museum is a wonderful website devoted to traditional knitting in all its forms, including links to museum collections, designers, teachers, and others in the traditional knitting world.  If you have a few hours to spare (or days) it is very much worth poking around.  Marsha is doing a really great service for the traditional knitting world!

Yarn! Lots of New Yarn (and now I am back on a boat).

My time at home was lovely and cold and way too short.  It was also very productive (on the yarn front, though not on the blogging front…). I returned home to find the fleeces I sent off to the mill in the fall returned to me in the form of lovely yarn on cones.  A storm of dyeing ensued.  Yarn took over every available surface in the house, the bathtub was pressed into service for drip-drying, and a giant drying rack took up the prime space in front of the woodstove (much to Nell’s annoyance).

I experimented with new colors and dyed new lots of older colors (which sometimes resulted in new colors).

Above, “Light Butternut”, “Rosewood”, and “70% Cacao”.   70% Cacao is actually a fleece from one of Liberty Wool Farm’s Romney rams (he is or will be responsible for the “Romney” portion of the “Cotswold x Romney” yarn).  I had his fleece spun to the same weight as my other 3-Ply fingering weight yarn.

This is “Aspen”, a lovely, lively green, but not quite the “Cress” that I was aiming for. (Natural Dyeing is not an exact science).

I am back at my “day job” on the boat.  Last night we finished our transit of the Panama Canal and currently we are bound for Isla Iguana for a bit of snorkeling.  As my very slow internet connection allows I will be updating the “yarn” section of this site to reflect the work of the last few weeks.  In the meantime, if you would like to order any yarn, please email me at uptonyarns (at) gmail.com.  My internet connection is sometimes a bit spotty on the boat, but I can usually check it at least once a day.  Yarn is being shipped out in my absence.

Scenes from life aboard.

Christmas and New Years were working holidays for the crew of the Sea Lion.   Some of the stews tried to make things a little more festive around the crew spaces by making and hanging traditional Christmas decorations.  I wanted to hug them all for it, especially for the gem they hung outside the door to the engine room.

Just in case it isn't quite clear, they used paper from the office recycling bin to make paper snowflakes.  I think this is the perfect metaphor for our Christmas.

Not quite two weeks later we are just beginning our second round trip from Colón, Panama to Herradura, Costa Rica and return.  This is beginning to feel oddly similar to the ferries in Maine, with no cars and a strangely long run.

Two days ago we docked at a container dock in Colón.  Between Colón and the Port of LA where we spent our annual yard period I feel like I am becoming more acquainted with industrial marine infrastructure than I ever expected to be.

But it has not all been work.  Most mornings I have managed to spend a little time up on the sundeck with my first cup of coffee and my tahkli, much to the fascination/consternation of guests and crew.  I spend most of my free time immersed in the world of fiber arts/crafts, and I forget that the rest of the world does not do the same.

Eventually I arrived...

After a complicated series of connecting flights, and nearly getting lost in the Orlando Airport, I eventually arrived in Panama City, and a bit longer after that, at the boat I work on, which was docked in Colon. Our trip so far has taken us through the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific coast bound for Costa Rica.

I woke to find us here this morning.

The day before yesterday we were in the Panama Canal:

In between we were a useful platform from which boobies hunted fish.

Shearing.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that I am terrible at writing up event in a reasonable time frame.

Several Fridays ago (more Fridays than I am comfortable admitting- or even able to name without resorting to the weekly planner that now rules my life) the weather and the schedules of all concerned parties converged, and the sheep of Buckwheat Blossom Farm were shorn of their winter growth.

While Jeff sheared Amy, Amy's friend Jackie, and I skirted fleeces and plotted which would be bought by whom and turned into what. My workroom is now filled with gorgeous fleece and in between stints away working on assorted ferries (I have spent more of April working on the Vinalhaven, Islesboro and Swans Island ferries than I have at home) I find myself losing hours pondering which will be combined with which and spun how, and then, content that I have worked it all out and will send the fleeces out for spinning after my next hitch, return to find that I have changed my mind. The potential represented by those lovely, lovely fleeces is a bit overwhelming and I am terrible at making decisions. I am planning to have some of it spun up as gansey yarn, and some as sanquhar yarn (also suitable for socks) and a bit done up as a three ply sport weight. The question is which fleeces will work best as what, and, as they are colored fleeces, which are best grouped together. I go up to my work space for an entirely unrelated reason and find myself instead moving individual fleeces around the room grouping them together in different ways, patting them and studying individual locks, all the while muttering to myself. I suspect that I sound a bit too much like Gollum for comfort in these instances (no my precious, I shall not put you with that fleece, I shall put you with this fleece and make gansey yarn of you my precious...). I need to send them out to be spun, if only to get a bit of my sanity back.

On a related note, Sam and I had our own opportunity to shear last weekend during a class in beginning sheep shearing held through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Program at North Star Farm. Lessons learned: Jeff makes shearing sheep look easy, but it really really isn't.

After a bit of instruction about the shears themselves, we divided into smaller groups to work more closely with individual shearers. Jeff happened to be one of the instructors and so Sam and I found ourselves naturally in his group as he sheared a sheep very slowly, talking us through the bits we needed to be extra careful with and showing us the shearing pattern. And then it was our turn. Somehow, and I'm still not sure how this happened as generally I ascribe to the stand-at-the-back-until-enough-people-have-tried-something-that-the-novelty-has-worn-off-and-the-group-is-no-longer-paying-attention school of thought regarding activities that involve and audience, I ended up going first. North Star Farm raises Hampshires, which, from some brief googling should apparently weigh 200 pounds (the rams should weigh 275 pounds).  On the one hand, they were great beginning shearing sheep as their fleece is not particularly valuable, so if a bunch of utter novices butchered the shearing (which we did) we were not causing any real harm. On the other hand, shearing is awkward enough without also having to wrestle what Sam described as "the biggest g*d d*** sheep I ever saw".

The theory of shearing makes perfect sense: shear in a specific order, keeping the tips of the shears against the skin of the sheep, following the sheep's contours and doing your best not to cut a few very anatomically important bits. I went into the stall, grabbed the closest sheep, brought it to the cutting floor ( a large piece of plywood) wrestled it down so that it was sitting on its haunches on my feet, and then realized that the rest was far more complicated than I had suspected.

Confronted with an actual sheep with four inches of fleece I realized that I couldn't remember any part of the shearing pattern and I couldn't find its skin, let alone follow the contour of its body. I am generally very comfortable using a wide variety of hand and power tools, but the clippers were enormous and awkward in my hand (much like an angle grinder in terms of size and ease of handling) and the sheep was not entirely on board with the proceedings. Also, Jeff is very very tall (6'4"? 6'5'?) and I am not (5'5" when I am remembering to maintain good posture) so there were many instances in which Jeff comfortably straddled the sheep to cut a specific area and I found myself riding the sheep when trying to do the same. But in the end (much, much, later) I prevailed, and even managed to get a feel for when the clippers were following the curve of the sheep's body and when they were haring off too far into the fleece. While Jeff encouraged the sheep to stand and return to the stall, I stood up straight and focused on breathing, with what I suspect was a very dazed expression on my face. As the day progressed it became easy to tell who had sheared, and who was still waiting for a turn by the slightly loopy glazed look of those who had sheared, a mix of shock and exhaustion and triumph.

A bit later it was Sam's turn, and I managed to get photos.

Ganseys! or, reasons why they are even better than you think.

For many years I worked on traditionally rigged schooners (mostly the schooners used for experiential education programs, though I've also done tall ship festivals and dock tours) boats which, except for a few differences (electricity, refrigeration, engines, student crews) were constructed, rigged, and operated exactly as they would have been a hundred years ago.  Actually, several of the boats I worked on were build over a hundred years ago, and while they move students and passengers these days rather than fish and sand, the sailing is the same.  I started knitting my gansey (the second gansey I knit, the first was for my husband, knit years before I was to find boats) while living aboard the Ship Wavertree (built in 1885, now docked in the East River at what used to be Pier 15) and working aboard the Schooner Pioneer (also build in 1885, and now taking passengers on two hour sails around New York Harbor – look her up if you find yourself with a spare summer evening in NYC).  I continued to knit my gansey while working on Highlander Sea, ex Pilot (built in 1924 for the Boston Pilots Association) tearing out and re-knitting sleeves now a bit too tight, and I finally finished it while sailing north from Belize on the Harvey Gamage, three months into a four month semester at sea program for high school students.

I have since worn that gansey while doing a thousand things that would be utterly familiar to most men who wore them back in the day, furling sails, hauling lines, flaking out anchor chain, climbing aloft far too early in the morning (swearing all the while) to unfrig a fouled topsail sheet, scraping sanding and painting some bit of the boat for the nth time, carrying heavy things onto the boat, carrying heavy things off of the boat, standing at the helm at two in the morning steering by a star, fixing a bilge pump worn out from overuse for the nth time, and curled up in my bunk fully dressed and soaking wet.  At times schooner life is impossibly, romantically amazing, but more often it is cold and wet and kind of gross.

I am one of what I suspect is a small number of people currently alive who have extensively worn a gansey knit from gansey yarn in the work environment for which they were created (except for the fishing bit) and I have reached a few conclusions that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere.

Firstly, the armpit gusset really is genius: they really do give a lovely freedom of movement.  I can work with my arms above my head (a frequent occurrence on boats, especially given that I am not tall) without my gansey rutching up.  And the gussets also have a practical effect on the longevity of the gansey: every other sweater that I have worn for work ultimately tears at the underarm.  When I reach above my head most of the weight of the sweater rests on the seam where the front and back of the sweater meet the sleeve, and those few stitches will inevitably give way.  A gansey, being constructed in one piece, distributes the weight of itself far more evenly across a far greater number of stitches, and the gusset removed the weak point at the underarm entirely.

Secondly, one of the things that I have seen commonly written about ganseys, that they are “knit so tightly as to be wind and water proof” is just silly.  I knit incredibly tightly, even when I am trying to do the opposite, and my gansey is neither wind nor waterproof, even after I have dipped it in a solution of wool fat, but being wind and waterproof is not all that important: wind and waterproofness is the purview of foully jackets, these day usually coated vinyl (oilskins back in the day) but what they do do is far more important: ganseys hold their shape when wet (which on a boat is most of the time).  They neither sag, nor bag, or impede movement; wearing a sopping wet gansey is not that different from wearing a dry gansey.  Before you dismiss this, think of your favorite sweater or sweatshirt. Now think about how it bags and hangs and sticks to you weirdly and snags on everything once it gets wet. Now imagine climbing a very narrow ladder that is moving erratically, and at the top wriggling yourself through an opening barely larger than yourself, and all this just to get to the place you need to be so you can start your real work (which is generally much scarier than the climb itself).  Even modern fleece is unpleasant in this situation (actually, I’m biased, I dislike modern fleece in any situation) but I’ve done something very similar in my gansey on many occasions, and have never had cause to note that my gansey was in any way making the situation more difficult – which may seem like faint praise, but it really really isn’t.

And finally, knitting the sleeves from the top down is brilliant.  Not only does is prevent the heartbreaking moment when you realize that because of gauge differences the shoulder on your sleeve does not match the shoulder on the body of the sweater, but when the cuffs wear through, which they will, it make the repairs the work of a lazy evening.  I have re-knit the last few inches of both sleeve several times with no fuss or annoyance.

In Which Winter Came and Went and Many Things Happened

Or: I didn't get around to blogging this winter, and now I must sum up because spring is here and shearing is around the corner (possibly even this Friday!) and like the Icelandic Sagas, I feel that blogs should be kept in relatively chronological order.

Yarnish things happened:  I began another gansey (this one for myself) to be blogged about more fully in the future, and I knit these whimsically awesome mittens for my sister-in-law (and business buddy - for those of you trying to navigate the world of baby equipment who may be looking for gear that one can actually live with, check how her blog at citybabyliving.com).

I also did something I have been meaning to do for well over a year now and joined Maine Fiberarts, a group which promotes fiberarts in their many, many forms.  Not incidentally, it was at their Fiber Friday last year that I first told someone other than my husband about my hopes to start a yarn business focusing on local, small flock, single breed fibers, and the encouragement I received from that group of knitters made me think that maybe I could actually do this.  As one might expect from such a group, they take Fiberarts seriously, and though it pains me to admit it as a good feminist well versed in the many ways that traditional women's skills are undervalued, the idea that someone might take needlepoint or knitting seriously enough to put on gallery shows devoted to either craft was completely unexpected.   I am incredibly grateful for their existence.

Victory! and Patterns Posted!

Dumb persistence has paid off! Thumbnails link to pages like they should, thus enabling this whole enterprise to look a little more grown-up, and now that I"ve crossed most web site improvements off of my list, allowing me to stop blogging about the behind the scenes nonsense and move on to the bits that are actually of interest, like: I have finally posted my two mittlet patterns!  They are both fun and simple to knit, designed for use with my 3-Ply Coopworth, and depending on your color choice, the Basic Ribbed Mittlets make you look like you might be a super hero in your spare time. Which in my opinion helps to combat late winter blahs.  Patterns are free with yarn purchase.