MY EASTER WEEKEND

Well, I ate too much (including the chocolate), the company's all gone home now (my sister Julie from Qualicum Beach and daughter Hailey from Whistler -- grandson Joshua is still here!), and I'm exhausted!

First of all, Anne's having a contest that's worth checking out!

Here's the new shawl I'm no longer screwing up ... the yarn is Elann's laceweight Alpaca/Merino blend, doubled, in a gorgeous medium blue ...

... and I can't decide if I'll keep it or give it to my new International Scarf Exchange pal -- good thing I don't have to decide right now.

Down at the water, watched this tug come in to the harbour...


And then I watched this dude feeding the pigeons (see the one feeding right out of his hand?)


And then I came home just in time to see Vancouver billionaire Jimmy Patterson's "Nova Spirit" coming up out of the water at Point Hope Shipyard ...

My daughter was so excited to see this yacht because it was in the news last fall - Oprah was a guest aboard the Nova Spirit here around the Island, for a few weeks.

The Nova Spirit is a 150' Trinity Yacht, aluminum-hulled, built for Jim-boy in 1999. You can read more about it here if you're interested.

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!

PLAYING 'HOOKEY'

That's what skipping school was called when I was young, and the expression came to mean 'goofing off' from whatever responsibilities one 'should' have been taking care of.

Confession: yesterday I played hookey. Warning: long post ahead, and you can click on any of the images to see them bigger and better!

It all started when my sister sent me a photo she'd taken day before yesterday...

If you've been reading my blog at all, you'd know that this is a photo of the herring season roe fishery that takes place every year at this time, about a 2-3 hour drive north of here, up-Island.

For the *facts* about the fishery, you can read this and here, which includes a bit about the controversy around the sheer size of the take.

Here's a photo of a herring school that passed right under our boat last year when we were anchored in Albert Head...


Facts aside, the *experience* of being in the midst of the herring roe fishery is, for me, one of the highlights of my life here on Vancouver Island. The feeling in the air during herring season is nothing short of 'magical' ... it's the beginning of spring! The herring schools bring with them seagulls, eagles, seals and sea lions ... sometimes even orca .... all of which can gorge themselves on the feed. The water near the beaches turns a tropical turquoise from the spawn, and the whole area is ALIVE with activity.

So I played hookey and drove straight north to Buckley Bay. The short story is that I never did catch up to the fleet -- I think they might have been out of sight in Lambert Channel between Denman and Hornby Islands -- but I sure had a great day!

Re-live it with me...

Here is a lookout over Baynes Sound, which runs between Vancouver Island and Denman Island -- a common place for the fleet to gather, but they weren't here. That's the Denman Island ferry just coming in in the background.

So then I drove south to a little community in the Sound called Fanny Bay, where there was lots of activity, but no herring fleet.
There's lots of oyster farms in this area, and so there is constant loading/unloading of oysters here...



Those are sea lions on the log boom, by the way ... hundreds of them, barking, and... well... smelling.

Southeast winds blow up Baynes Sound relentlessly in the winter months, and this is sometimes the result...


And just before I left Fanny Bay, I had a look at this poor old hulk...

... which, for years, was a well-known landmark restaurant called the 'Brico.' The owners got old and tired about 8 years ago and couldn't sell the place because it needed a lot of work -- so they just closed the doors one day and never came back.

Anyway, I carried on south in my quest to find the herring fleet. I found some of it, as I knew I would, in Deep Bay. Deep Bay is the reason I know about the herring fishery -- it's really the hub of the whole operation, and we lived there for nearly 4 years in the late '90s.

The first sign of spring in Deep Bay is when two tugboats bring this monster in...

It's the Canadian Fish Company's (CanFisCo) floating ice plant and fishery headquarters, on a barge, and it comes here all the way from the Fraser River every year at this time.

The boats in the bay are either ... waiting for herring season to open, finished their quota and resting before they leave the area, or waiting for crew or boat parts, or... ? You'll see everything from state-of-the-art aluminum computerized vessels like this one (see the big drum on the back that holds the net?)...

... to ancient classics like this one, that come back year after year:

But even more interesting, to me, is the beach. I took these photos on the south end of Baynes Sound looking out toward the Chrome Island lighthouse (where we used to do charter tours... but that's another story):




It just doesn't get much more beautiful that that!
I finally tore myself away and drove south to Qualicum Beach, where I had lunch and watched one lonely herring boat in the bay. If you click on this photo to see the bigger image, the 'blue line' of the spawn is clearly visible.


I managed to knit a few rows of the Secret of the Stole here, too!

I drove slowly south from Qualicum through Parksville and Nanoose in the (fading) hope of seeing the fleet, but no luck. Met my sister Julie for supper in the Nanaimo Harbour, and then drove back home to Victoria, after dark.

I better get some work done today to make up for my WONDERFUL 'herring run' yesterday!

SAME GREAT LIFE, DIFFERENT BEACHES

Our trip to Parksville was lovely ... we really enjoy these little road trips. We always meander our way up the Island ... stop for gas just south of Duncan (because it's usually about 5 cents a litre cheaper than here in Victoria), stop at the veggie market, and in addition to much veggies, we often pick up deli items to have a picnic at Transfer Beach in Ladysmith ...

The view to the left...

The view to the right over the amphitheatre and the 'logger sports' pole...

Then we checked out a couple of our favorite second-hand shops between Ladysmith and Qualicum Beach, and ended up at one of our favorite beach-watching spots, right beside the Tourist Info place in Qualicum. To our left, that's Denman and Hornby Islands in the distance...

And right across the Strait of Georgia and to our right is Lasqueti Island (and beyond that is Texada) ...

We spent the night at our friends (and got soundly trounced in euchre, as always, lol) and then took the beach blanket to my sister Julie. It looks great as a cover for her daybed!

Sunday we meandered our way back down the Island to Victoria, and caught this beautiful sunset from Saxe Point Park before we drove home to the marina. . .


Much knitting took place, as always, and I don't have a thing to show for it -- I'll post pics of the two shawls I'm working on soon, I swear!

IMPOSSIBLE

This 'Secret of the Stole' that I'm knitting (see sidebar for more info) is now 152 stitches wide, with about a kazillion yarn-overs and knit-2-togethers and slip-slip-knits on each row. I've taken to counting the stitches before I start the row, stitch-marking every 12 stitches or so (basically after every repeat), and then re-counting the stitches again at the end of each row. This makes each and every row very tedious and slow, but very, v-e-r-y accurate.

How is it possible, then, that I discover a row with only 151 stitches in it, after all that? And then I tink it back, only to discover that the row BEFORE that row isn't right, either, so I tink THAT row back, too. Only to discover that THREE rows back I MISSED a yarn-over ... right after the 7th stitch at the beginning of the row. It doesn't seem possible -- and it's happened twice this week. Aaarrgggghhhh..... the joys of lace knitting!

Oh, well, I'll take it along on a little road trip today. We are going up-Island (to the Parksville-Qualicum Beach area, about a 2-hour drive) to deliver my 'beach blanket' to its new home with my sister, and then to Susan and Sri's ...


... to celebrate Michael's soon-to-be birthday with dinner and an evening of euchre (during which the'battle-of-the-sexes' card game generally ends in complete humiliation for us women..d'ya think the guys cheat?)

I'm looking forward to all of it!

ROCKIN' and ROLLIN'

It's 8:45 a.m. as I write this, and the wind hasn't let up all night. It's been blowing about 40 kts, and even though we're fairly protected in the harbour, I still woke up to it once or twice in the night. Here's a shot from the Dallas Road webcam this morning looking south-west(which is the direction the wind is coming from) toward Race Rocks:

This webcam, along with several others, is maintained by a local windsurfer dude, and you can check it out (and all of his cams) any time at BigWaveDave.ca.

Today is almost the last of the Holiday festivities in our world ... we'll go over to Mischa's for a 'brunch' this morning because Hailey has to go back to Whistler this afternoon, and our oldest grandson, Joshua, may go home tomorrow -- and we haven't had a 'family' get-together since he got here.

Tomorrow I'll pick my sister Julie up at the airport on her return from Christmas with her daughter (our niece Doneen) in Calgary. We don't 'do' New Year's Eve so we'll take care of the boys so Mischa can go out, and then on New Year's Day we'll take Julie home to Qualicum Beach, and spend the night with our friends Susan and Sri up there.

And by the time we come home late Wednesday, that'll be 'enough' of the 'Festive Season' for us!

ON THE NEEDLES: diamonds for River's blanket.

... and I'll die of boredom long before I'm done these, so I'll have to get back to the purple shawl, or start a new project pretty quick. Whadda shame...

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I've had a wonderful Christmas season ... all three of our children and all three of our grandsons have been here, and much eating and merriment has taken place! We spent much of Christmas Day at my daughter Mischa's house, since that's where the two youngest grandson's are -- there's no better fun than watching an 18-month-old on Christmas morning! Having said that, it was his Dad who took all the pictures all morning, so I'll have to wait until he sends them to me to post them.

Michael and I almost always go for awhile on Christmas Day to a place called the Alano Club -- a 'clean and sober' environment where they serve dinner to about 300 folks, and we like to volunteer some time there. Then back to Mischa's for our own dinner -- a 22-lb turkey and all the traditional trimmings.

Boxing Day we spent quietly at home, but went back to our daughter's for leftover-turkey dinner and to spend a bit more time with the boys. This evening we'll have another little family dinner at my son Jason's because tomorrow morning his son Joshua and our older daughter Hailey will go home ... Joshua up-Island to Qualicum Beach and Hailey back to Whistler. Here's pics (my faves from earlier this year, mostly)... Jason and Joshua:
Hailey and Mischa:
River and Gibson:

And here's a local view during most of the Christmas season... a little bit of snow, a little bit of rain, and a lot of fog:
Afterthought: I finished all my Christmas knitting, and have started a 'Building Blocks' blanket in red/black/white/gray for River's 9th birthday, next week. Pics to follow!

All the best of the season, from our 'house' to yours...

BUT AREN'T YOU COLD?

We've always enjoyed chatting with 'dockies' (dockies are folks who enjoy wandering on the docks, for all you landlubbers) and I especially enjoy sharing about the lifestyle with children.

So last night when our friend Susan from Qualicum Beach turned up with her relatives from Ontario, I knew it would be fun to show the Wind Walker to the two children, who were 8 and 5 years old. The number one question adults ask when they hear that we live aboard is 'But aren't you cold?' (The answer to which is 'no colder than anyone is in their houses in the middle of winter' -- we have two electric heaters that work just great, an additional ceramic we can plug in if we need it, AND the wood/pellet stove we installed just this year! And keep in mind that we only have to heat about 300 sq feet...

But children ask more interesting questions, usually, and in this case the question was, 'But where do you have your couch?' I guess it's not part of childhood consciousness that it's possible to live without a couch ...

We've often said that if we ever won 'the big one,' we WOULD buy a boat big enough to house a couch, but in the meantime, we are indeed couch-less, and none the worse for wear as a result.

These two kids were also interested in the fact that we have a woodstove on the boat -- I resisted the idea of a woodstove for a lot of years simply because it meant having to cut a hole in the cabin roof to accommodate it, but this fall, just before we left on our annual Sept cruise holiday, I knew it was time! And we do love it ... it can burn small pieces of wood, wood pellets, and even bark off the beach. It's a Newport Dickinson marine adaptation, and it's especially wonderful when it's really stormy outside. See?

(And no, that's not a real Christmas tree ... but it's a pretty good fake.)

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

Just when I thought I'd be blogging every day again, we left the dock for the weekend! However, we left for a good reason -- it was the annual Lighted Boat parade in the harbour.

So, first of all, Christmas decorating happened...

There were apparently 28 boats, and it was great fun, as always! We had our friends Susan and Sri from Qualicum Beach aboard, along with their son Rennie and friend Kaisch, and a local pal, David.

It sure wasn't our best year, as Michael and I are both getting over crappy coldy-fluey bugs, but it's always a fun gig, sponsored each year by the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority. Part of the deal is two nights free moorage in front of the Empress Hotel, which is like being in a giant Christmas card, so we paid for an extra night just to chill out a bit.

So knitting happened ...

A baby blanket for Afghanistan was a quick knit in a gorgeous dark green Lopi, and I threw in some intarsia stripes to keep it interesting ...

Here's a close-up of the striped bit ...














I also completed one of my favorite knits this year ... a hat, which will be a Christmas present, from a pattern in the new Pattern-a-Day 2008 Calendar. I love it, love it, love it -- and it was my first foray into adding beads with a crochet hook, as I was taught by Sivia Harding, too. I'll definitely make more of these!

And here's a close-up of the stitch pattern, which also shows the beads ... they were delightful 'pre-made' tiny little flowers, which I found in a package in a local second-hand store.



PHOTO OF THE DAY: This is a picture of Bull Passage, between Lasqueti and Jedediah, at dawn. We were cruising to our favorite anchorage (White Rock Bay) on Jedediah at the time.