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).

THE 2008 VICTORIA FIBREFEST

The 2008 Victoria FibreFest will take place this year from June 20th - 22nd, and it's shaping up to be a fabulous event once again.

Quadra Island's FUN KNITS YARN SHOP is on board again as this year's major sponsor, and I'm really excited about working with Shelley Mackie and her team again to make this year's event lots of fun for all of us!

My special guest this year will be Vancouver-based designer extra-ordinaire SIVIA HARDING, and I'm also really excited about that! I had admired Sivia's work for some time when I finally got to meet her at a Victoria Knitter's Guild workshop a few years ago, and I've been watching her career blossom, all over the globe, ever since! Sivia will have some of her work in the Friday night fashion show, she'll teach a class on Saturday afternoon, be our guest speaker on Saturday night, and then be with us all day at the Market and Knit-Out in Saxe Point Park on Sunday. You can read more about Sivia, and check out her amazing designs, at SiviaHarding.com.

Many details are yet to be worked out, but this year's format will be similar to last year's: a dinner and fashion show on Friday night, classes and a 'Yarn Crawl' on Saturday during the day, our guest speaker in the evening, and the Saxe Point 'grand finale' on Sunday. For more information, and to find out how you can participate (or sponsor the event), check out communityknitters.com .

Mark the dates on your calender now, and please forward this message or pass it on to anyone you think might be interested in the 2008 Victoria FibreFest -- thanks!

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!

SATURDAY SAMPLER

Spent the day mostly working on the new Victoria FibreFest website, hoping to have it up by Tuesday morning... I had a wonderful picture of the Yarn Harlot and I from last year's event, and do you think I could find it?? Spent two hours going through my files, and it's completely disappeared -- I'm so bummed!

Oh, well, the sun came out a bit this afternoon, and I didn't even have to go for my daily drive to catch some harbour action today. Our marina is right across from the Point Hope Shipyard, the oldest working (130-plus years!) shipyard in BC, and there are often interesting vessels coming or going from the 'ways' there. Today's offering was one of the biggest tugboats I've ever seen in here...


In the knitterly news department, I finished a brown feather-and-fan shawl for the local Threads of Compassion program, and delivered it along with one I'd finished before Christmas and two that my Knit'n'Cafe friends donated.


Speaking of Knit'n'Cafe, JANET brought in several goodies for the local Extreme Outreach project. Last year, in AUGUST, CommunityKnitters.com, my charity knitting umbrella, was contacted to knit 300 total scarves and toques for their Christmas baskets. We did it, and we'll do it again this year, but this year we're starting to knit NOW so we can spread it out over the year instead of being pressured in the fall.

I've already started another Threads of Compassion shawl (they need 8 - 10 a month here, apparently) and I started a sweater for Gibson, today, as well. Finished Clue #4 of the Secret of the Stole ... I'll take it out to play, and get pics tomorrow for sure!

Michael and I capped the evening by taking ourselves out for dinner to a restaurant I'm hoping will host the FibreFest Fashion Show for us this year. More about that in a few days!

HARBOUR HAPPENINGS

The 'Greater Victoria Harbour Authority' hosts hundreds of cruise ships every year through the summer months, but it has now figured out that a deep-sea port can be a money-maker all year -- this is from the GVHA website:

Services available without the need to deviate from major shipping lanes include:

*Bonded warehousing
*Environmental services
*Canada Coast Guard
*Customs & Immigration
*Fresh potable water
*Medical facilities
*Pacific Pilotage Authority
*Tugs
*Waste disposal

So this beast must have taken them up on it, because I've never seen a freighter this size in the harbour before!

The Babitonga is a Brazilian-registered 'dry bulk carrier' vessel that's almost 800 feet long, 90 feet wide, and there's 40' of ship under the water -- that's freakin' huge!

I'll be checking out the Ogden Point docks regularly now that I know we're going to be hosting these babies regularly -- this one was here for 3 days, but was gone this morning when I drove by. I'll let you know if I can find out what it was doing here...

THE OGDEN POINT BREAKWATER

The breakwater at Ogden Point, which marks the entrance to the Victoria Harbour, was built around 1900 and named after one of the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. Almost half a mile long, it is located at 199 Dallas Road, right next to the cruise ship dock. (The walk that starts here meanders all along the edge of the Juan de Fuca Strait and ends at the eastern end of the Ross Bay Cemetery, a few miles away). Work on this project included over one million tons of rock, ten thousand granite blocks, fifty three concrete caissons and over one million cubic yards of dredged fill, and it took 3 years to complete.

Local resident Ron McLean has created a great pictorial of Ogden Point scenes, some historical, here and here.

Yesterday our brand new BC ferry docked at the breakwater to host public tours before it goes into service in March. It was a great day for a walk along the breakwater - a sailing regatta was underway, several freighters were going by keeping the pilot boat busy, and of course, the new ferry ....







I had no desire to go aboard (especially after I saw the line-ups!) because I wanted to take my Secret of the Stole out to play, since I FINALLY got Clue #3 done...


I'm really hoping to cast one Sivia's Moonshadow Stole (AGAIN) today, but I also need to work on launching the new Victoria FibreFest website this weekend!

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. :-)

ALL ABOUT BLANKETS

The last two days have been all about Blankets for Canada, a national organization that is the Canadian equivalent of Warm Up America. As the Victoria coordinator it's my job to collect blanket squares from knitters (or knit them if need be, but that's not a problem here!), arrange to have them sewn or crocheted together, and then distributed to the homeless shelters here. This is what they look like when they're done:

So a few of us sometimes meet on Thursday afternoons here for a 'joining party' and this week we got one blanket almost finished. Yesterday I took it to our Friday Knit'n'Cafe and got it finished, so I was able to deliver that one and two others I'd finished over the holidays to Sandi Merriman House, the local homeless shelter for Women.

PHOTO OF THE DAY:

This is our trusty little (well, it's 13') dinghy pulled up in Midden Bay on Newcastle Island in Nanaimo. If the sun comes out at all in the next three days (our 'days off' from looking after Gibson and River), we'll be IN it going for our first little jaunt around the harbour of 2008. And if it stays rainy and gray like it is right now, I'll be curled up on the couch casting on and knitting either the Sivia Harding Moonshadow stole or the 'Secret of the Stole II'. Can't decide which one to start with!

AM I OUT OF MY MIND?

Yesterday, being Friday, was my Knit'n'Cafe day, an event I look forward to with an unreasonable amount of pleasure every week. We are anywhere from 6 - 10 women, some of whom are also local Guild members, who get together more informally on Friday afternoons. Let me clarify 'more informally' -- it's a hoot! We eat, we laugh, we share stories of our lives, solutions to all manner of problems (not just of the craft variety, but often that) and photos of grandbabies ... and we also knit.

I had to drive out to the ferry to pick up my friend Monica, who had a doctor's appointment, first. Monica lives on Mayne Island, and we visited her this past summer when I met my navigational challenge of cruising -- both ways -- through Active Pass. See? That's our inflatable following us dutifully through the Pass. (This pass has freighter and ferry traffic 24/7, and currents that can run up to 9 knts at certain tides). Monica lives near a little community in the middle of the Pass called Miner's Bay (if you've ever taken the ferry to Vancouver from Victoria, you pass it on your right side)... ... and when we went to visit her there, we had lunch at the historic Mayne Inn... ... which is apparently closed for renovations at the moment.

But I digress ... (really? me? who'd-a thunk it?)

So Monica and I went together to Knit'n'Cafe, and after much eating and talking (and a little knitting) we then went to a Chinese food buffet for supper and more eating and talking (but no knitting).

Some time between driving out to pick Monica up yesterday, and this morning, I've managed to complete two swatches, both of which are for lace shawl knit-alongs (KALs, for future reference).



Am I out of my mind? The small one is a Sivia Harding design called Moon Shadow, and the larger one (which is stunning ... the photo doesn't do it justice) is for a 'Secret of the Stole' KAL that terrifies me -- the swatch pattern was a full page long (that's 40 rows you're looking at on 2mm needles!) and the pattern, including charts, is almost 40 pages.

I'm definitely up for Sivia's design -- I'll probably cast on today -- but the other one might need a bit more ruminating first. Like several months worth....

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.