SALISH SEA COWL

We lived in downtown Victoria for seven years, almost to the day. Winter winds can be fierce there, coming off the water, but not once did we ever lose power. I had a theory that they must have 'beefed up' the power grid in the downtown core so that businesses could stay open... oh, and there's not many trees to blow down downtown.

But here on Salt Spring? A different story. Yesterday afternoon a serious westerly came up and at about 3 pm, the power went out. That's two windstorms so far this year, and both times we've lost power. It may be a loooooooooooong winter...

Oh, well, I cooked chicken corn chowder on the propane stove on the bridge (usually reserved for when we're at anchor somewhere), kept the fire going in our little woodstove all evening, and knitted! I finished the Salish Sea cowl....
... and the power came on at about 10 pm, just as I was going to bed.

This morning I had to go into town for groceries, and when I came home there were whitecaps in the bay and the Wind Walker is rocking and rolling again. So we've 'hunkered down' for the evening .... there's lots of left-over chowder, lots of wood for the wood stove in case the power goes out again.... and I can cast on a new shawl.

Life is good. :)

(Edited to add the PHOTO OF THE DAY!):
Sunrise over Trial Island, off Clover Point in Victoria (Washington's Olympic Mountain Range in the background).

A NEW TUG IN TOWN .... and other odds 'n' sods

Seaspan has added to its fleet here in the harbour ... not sure if it's new, or just new to Seaspan, but it's a prettier boat than any I've seen so far!

I was knitting at Clover Point the other day when I heard a tap on my window -- it was my friend Bev from the Guild, and she and her hubby were in the very next car!


Marj and a few others have mentioned knitting at Clover Point, too --- maybe we'll start a summer knitting circle there! :-)

When I went there this morning, I was just in time to watch some sort of sailing regatta coming out of Enterprise Channel ...

It was a busy day on Juan de Fuca!

At 4:00 we drove Mischa to the ferry for Vancouver - she has a hair show to attend and then she's going to her sister Hailey's cabin in Whistler to 'chill out' for a few days. Yesterday was like a summer day, so after we dropped her off, Michael and I went to a local (Sidney) market, bought our 'dinner' and headed for the nearest beach...

... which had a view of the Anacortes Ferry dock, and across the channel, Sidney Spit -- lots of boats at anchor this weekend!


In knitterly news, I've FINISHED Sivia Harding's Moonshadow Stole, and I love it, love it, love it! I'll get some pics today if I can (unblocked ... that'll happen this week some time). Now I'm going to start on her River Rock Scarf (which may be for an exchange 'secret pal'-- I haven't decided yet) and get back to a blue shawl I started a month ago.

I'M OFF...

... to a knitting retreat on Quadra Island, hosted by Shelley, the owner of Fun Knits Yarn Shop there. My friend Bev is coming with me, and I'M LEARNING TO SPIN! As of yesterday, it was on again/off again/on again when we discovered that our van needs about $1500 worth of work and isn't safe on the highway, but we threw caution to the wind, rented a car, and we're going!

Yesterday the first cruise ship of the year came in and I was down at the breakwater/Ogden Point to welcome it at 6:30 a.m. ... now here's some trick photography for you...

Does that not look like the whole ship just landed on top of the breakwater?

It didn't - here it is coming in to the slip:

And there was my Knit'n'Cafe friend Esther and her friend Ray watching it come in, too!

And then I got REALLY close...

And then I drove over to Clover Point to watch the sun come up over Trial Island...


And now I'm off to finish packing for Quadra Island... talk you on Monday!

THE SWIFT

Even though I'm a knitter, the 'Swift' I'm referring to today is not a yarn swift!

Yesterday morning I got down to Clover Point (for my nearly-daily-knitting/meditation-time) just in time to see this...

This is one of Victoria's very own tall ships... the Pacific Swift, and it was just returning from four days in the Gulf Islands with childhood cancer
patients from BC Children’s Hospital, apparently.

The Swift is old and tired now and doesn't go very far, but its sister ship, the Pacific Grace, takes youth on adventures all around the world -- it's currently in Japan on a 'goodwill' mission of some sort, and you can read all about that here.

SALTS (Sail and Life Training Society) is an amazing organization that has over 1000 kids on a waiting list for its life-changing journeys, and it has recently released a 'Fresh Vision' to transform itself into a major presence here on our waterfront. If you want to read more about their plans for a heritage ship-building interpretive centre (and a new tall ship to be built!) go to http://www.salts.ca and click on "A Fresh Vision', bottom left.

In knitterly news, I've given up on Sivia's Moonshadow Stole for now, and taken it right off the needles. :-( After many, many trips to the frog pond and never getting past row 5 in the main body, I've decided to give it a rest. I'll try it again another time, but for now I'm just too frustrated with it. After the Secret of the Stole project and this Moonshadow attempt, this morning I cast on 3 stitches and will make a nice, SIMPLE 'dishcloth pattern' baby blanket!

ODDS 'n' SODS

I got an email from a film-maker in Qualicum Beach the other day -- he was researching the herring run, and found an old article I'd written about it several years ago. He sent me this wonderful video he created this year!

One of the surest signs of spring in Victoria is the 'paragliders' down on Dallas Road ... these dudes are crazy!

They get airborne by basically running and jumping off the edge of that cliff, and then the thermal currents carry them back and forth along the cliff (curving off to the left in the photo) for someimes hours. They can control their height (to an extent), their speed and their landing -- but they mostly just 'hang out' up there on the currents!

We had a few winter winds this week -- here's what it looked like right in the harbour...


But the other morning I was at Clover Point and it was flat calm ... I arrived just in time to see new BC Ferry #2 go by (en route from Germany, where it was built...)

...followed closely by our Canadian Coast Guard...


All of which is to distract you from the fact that I have no knitterly news. I'm on Clue #8 of the 'Secret of the Stole' KAL -- only one more week to go! -- and still struggling with the edging on Sivia Harding's Moonshadow Stole - I've made it as far as Row 17, but keep ending up with a wrong stitch count and having to rip it back. VERY frustrating ... but I'm not giving up!

GOING OUT TO PLAY

FINISHED! the Secret of the Stole "Hint" #7. Two more weeks to go on this baby, and I'm lovin' it, but I'll be glad when it's done, too!

I took it out to play this morning for a photoshoot... here's a close-up of the pattern:


And here it is swingin' in the spring-time breeze here in Beacon Hill Park (just up from Clover Point where I usually hang out), all seven feet of it! It's a beautiful warm sunny day here in Victoria ...


Now ... look back at that photo ... see the crest of the hill in the upper left-hand corner?

I'm going out to play for the rest of the day, somewhere over that hill.

STILL IN SHAWL MODE ...

Took myself down to Clover Point very early yesterday morning, and was delighted to discover that the sun was *just* coming up. It was lovely...



In knitterly news, I'm still in shawl mode.... in the Secret of the Stole KAL I'm on Clue #7 and slogging away. It's been a challenge, and fun to watch it 'unfold' as I knit, but ... remind me not to sign up again anytime soon, okay? 10 weeks of only knitting one thing, pretty much, is making me crazy! I do have a 'mindless' shawl on some other needles, but I haven't done much on it:

The picture doesn't really do the colors justice... it's all in really nice shades of primarily a 'wine' color.

And I still have Sivia Harding's Moon Shadow Stole in the queue -- well, the truth is, I've cast on and frogged it twice already, so now it's going to wait for awhile.
Oh, and I've cast on a new pale blue chunky weight sweater for Gibson... but again, haven't got very far. . .


Maybe this weekend things will shift, and I'll actually *accomplish* something!

THE VIEW FROM HERE

It's been a long day!

First thing this morning, I drove Michael and Rennie to the Pippin, which was already up 'on the hard' getting surveyed when we arrived...


I left them there because Wednesday is Guild day, and I had some serious knitting to do. :) On my way home I stopped at Clover Point and just as I parked, my cell phone rang - it was Rennie saying Pippin was back in the water, all well, and that they'd just cleared Enterprise Channel en route 'home' to the harbour. Sure enough, I looked up from my knitting and there they were, just off the lighthouse! I told Rennie to come close to the point so I could get a picture ... that's my husband waving from the bow!

By the time we all got back to the marina (them sailing, me driving) the sun was still out and the day young, so we decided to go for our first dinghy ride of 2008. The skipper was acting camera-shy...

But we cruised through the Inner Harbour to see the sights...



And just when we thought we'd seen it all, we saw this - tied up under the Ship's Point jetty:

Then we passed the Amy Usen -- a 90' fishboat built in 1966 -- and got back to the marina just before supper.

Ended the day by watching the eclipse .... beautiful! Here's a pic from the water of the very beginning of it (taken with my cell phone, not great quality):

Somewhere in all that fun, I managed to knit at least 6 rows on the Threads of Compassion shawl, AND 4 or 5 rows on the Secret of the Stole. All in all, a pretty productive day!

WIND, WIND and MORE WIND!

I picked River up after school (that's our usual Tuesday routine -- he has a 'sleepover' with Grandma and Papa) and we went down to Clover Point to do a little storm-watching, just for fun.

These characters came right over as soon as we parked... I think they were attracted to the warmth from the engine, it was REALLY cold out there!


It was blowing about 30 knots ...



River wanted to get out of the van, even though I warned him that this was a wind he could lean in to and not fall over, that it would probably take his breath away, and that it would be very cold... well, I think he lasted about 20 seconds out in it before he came running back to the van!




Me? I managed to get out long enough to snap these pics, and otherwise... it was toasty in the van with the heater on, and I finished another three whole rows on the Secret of the Stole!

DOWN TO THE WATER

Occasionally people have asked me, since I live on a boat, why I need to drive ‘down to the water’ so often.

Well, the answer is that even though our marina is located in the heart of downtown Victoria, and there’s often lots going on right here (and I love it!) – it’s not the same as looking out over the panorama of the Juan de Fuca Strait, which separates us from Washington State. It’s about 30 miles across to Port Angeles from here, and there’s always something going on – whether it’s great storm-watching, windsurfers, or this…

Sometimes several times a day freighters go by, en route to or from Asia (often China, Japan, the Phillipines...) and heading to or from the major port of Vancouver, BC. They all have to go right past the Victoria waterfront! Here’s a map of the shipping route from open Pacific to downtown Vancouver – the dotted line through the American San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands is actually the US/Canada border, but the shipping lanes are pretty much right alongside that:

As you can see, it’s a busy area with lots of tight corners and lots of boat traffic. By international maritime law, a ‘pilot’ – an experienced local mariner who becomes an ‘advisor to the ship’s captain -- is put aboard inbound ships (and outbound pilots from Vancouver get taken off the ships) right here, at Clover Point. Pilot boats, built to withstand heavy seas, are usually painted a bright yellow, orange or red, and they are used to transport pilots between land and the ships they are piloting. These boats literally come alongside 100,000-ton freighters and maintain a speed of 7 or 8 knots while the pilot transfers. The pilot has to be agile, too – he or she sometimes has to climb a swinging ‘Jacob’s ladder’ 40 or 50 feet up to the ship’s deck, in all kinds of conditions.

So when I sit and knit at Clover Point, I sometimes witness this event two or three times in an evening.

Yesterday Michael came with me, and he sat and read the paper while I knitted -- I had to frog almost 30 ROWS of the 'Secret of the Stole' so I am slowly re-knitting it now. Good thing I love knitting!

Oh, I promised a pic of the 'Kiri' Shawl that Annie in Taiwan sent me..


It's beautiful, and she says it was her first lace project ... I wonder how much frogging *she* had to do. :-)

WELL ENOUGH TO DRIVE

Finally, after several days home with a horrid cold/flu bug, I felt well enough to venture out this morning for a bit. It's cold but there's not a cloud in the sky and the sun is brilliant.

It was nice to be back down at Clover Point, and look! I took my knitting out to play...





This is "Hint #1" in the 'Secret of the Stole II" KAL (click the button on the sidebar to check out the details), and I LOVE it, love it, love it. I'm using a laceweight cotton in a powder blue color on a 5mm bamboo circular, and it's knitting up beautifully -- nice stitch definition, nice drape, nice everything! It's not my first lace project or my first wrap, but it is my first lace-weight wrap/shawl, and I'm definitely hooked!