December's Crafty Round-Up

Due to some fairly major life changes over the last few months, knitting has taken a bit of a back seat. My uncle very kindly helped me build a knitting swift though, using instructions from Crafty Diversions.

It only took a morning, and is being demonstrated here by my grandmother who was rather taken with it! Next time I will have to use it in secret so that I get a chance to have a go!

Move over Delia!

Today, in a fit of domesticity, I made the following:

• pumpkin soup (enough to feed a small army),
• red onion marmalade (not enough to feed a small Daddy, according to Daddy),
• a banana and date loaf cake,
• macaroni cheese, with pumpkin, tomatoes and red onions,
• mince pies (home-made mincemeat, pastry courtesy of Mr Tesco).

I chopped up 13 onions, and had a worrying moment when I sliced the cake, as it looked like there were red oniony bits in it. Turns out dates go purpley-red when cooked in a banana cake!

p.s. I'm home! I'll update the last days of Antarctica and the trip home at a later date...

October's Crafty Round-Up

Or, Socktoberfest!

I began Socktoberfest by signing up for Knit Love Club 2011. Knit Love is a sock yarn club which delivers exclusive patterns and yarn to your door every two months for your knitting enjoyment. I decided to join this year, because it means when I get back to the UK there will be exciting new yarn waiting to keep me occupied until my boxes arrive back from here.

The sock-related mending pile wasn't really photogenic, but it was fast. Mending holes, darning soles and sewing buttons only ended up taking one afternoon, which was a pleasant surprise after having procrastinated for several months. The pile reduced faster still when I asked Geek-Boy to try on his slipper socks and tell me what he wanted changing. He said they were fine and he couldn't remember why he wanted alterations on them!

My blue lacy Pomatomas socks took about a week to finish. I had wanted to re-engineer the pattern so that Sock 2 was a mirror of Sock 1 rather than identical, but in the end simplicity won over symmetry. They are a bit big though, and I can see them having a hot date with the tumble dryer soon to test how well 'shrink to fit' works.

The two blue toes are my summer field season project. The yarn was a present from a friend who had a yarn-shopping trip in Canada and is quite cottony. It feels different to my usual wool blends, but slides through my fingers nicely. I'm not totally sold on the two-socks-on-two-circs method and will carry emergency DPNs just in case.

Having raced through most of my planned knitting for the month I decided it was time I knitted a pair of Frankensocks, modelled next to our pumpkin. In the absence of any real pumpkins to carve, the Doc and I wrestled a redundant weather balloon into roughly the right shape and got busy with the paper-mache!

I think my favourite part of Socktoberfest turned out to not be sock-related at all though! My four Itty Bitty Penguins are an adaptation of Emily Ivey's Itty Bitty Birdies. They take about 3 hours and each one seems to have its own character - no two are the same!

Next month I plan to knit Arisaig for NaKniSweMo. Not sure if I'll manage a whole cardigan in a month, but I won't know if I don't try!

End of Winter First Firsts

It finally happened, our six months of peace and quiet, from when the USAP ship Nathaniel B. Palmer left us on 12th April, to the arrival of the first Kenn Borek Air planes today, is over. 

First Fruit

I started hourly met obs for the pilots at 05:30 on Sunday morning, for them to cancel for the day a few hours later. Rinse and repeat for Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday morning, just when I was nearing a sense of humour failure, one of the pilots rang the Iridium phone saying, 'We'll be airborne in 30 mins'!. Our usual motto is 'hurry up and wait', but in this case it seemed more like 'wait... hurry up!'. I passed the message on to the mechs, who started clearing last night's snow off the runway, and to Geek-Boy who went to man the radios in the tower. Hourly met obs continued, the runway lights were put out, the search and rescue boat was launched and diggers drove up and down the runway removing snow and spraying grit - base was quite the hive of activity.

The called PNR (Point of No Return) about an hour away from base, at which point everyone has to be off the runway, and this gave us time to gather cameras and find a good view point. I was up in the tower doing a met ob when I saw the first plane over Stokes Peaks, and stayed there to photograph it on its way in.

First Face

The main excitement isn't of course the planes themselves, but the things they bring with them, e.g. freshies and people. They delivered a good haul of apples, oranges, onions and carrots for the chef, as well as a Toblerone and Coke for Geek-Boy and a stash of Pringles for the bar. As this flight came from South America rather than the Falkland Islands it didn't have any mail on it, and we're currently estimating 6th November for that excitment. The handsome chap on the right was the first new face I had seen in six months; if he looks a little frightened, it is probably because some random girl he'd never met wanted to take his photo, when all he wanted to do was to sit down and eat his dinner in peace after a 5 hour flight. I'm afraid in all the excitement his name escaped me, but he is an engineer for one of the Basler planes and will be spending the Austral summer with the plane in Antarctica, servicing it and fixing it as required.

First Flight

Baby Seals and Stripy Bergs

As summer gets closer, more wildlife is returning to our shores. The number and variety of birds has been increasing for a couple of months, but over the last couple of weeks the Weddell seals have returned to the sea ice around base, and have had pups! I've been waiting for since their arrival for a good day to take photographs, and was rewarded this morning on my way back from launching the early morning weather balloon. The pups are unbelievably cute, and I took so many photos that it was hard to chose which to post. This little chap (or chapess) was asleep when I first walked past, but woke up as I was on my way back and seemed to be posing for the camera!

We've also had some cool striped icebergs hanging around, and some invisible penguins!

Cuddles with Mummy Seal

Where's my hat?

Two Big Icebergs With Striping

September's Crafty Round-Up

Or, Blanketblanketblanket!

It had always been my intention to knit my blanket* as a winter project, to be started as the ship sailed away and to be completed before the arrival of the planes.

At the start of the month I had 37 squares to go, and was still aiming for completion by the return of our planes, around 16th October; however, I made good progress on our winter trip, and began thinking that I could not only have it done before our own planes came back, but maybe before any of the transiting aircraft came through as well; 'Finishing Fever' quickly set in, and I started wondering I could have it finished by the end of September instead. It was all going promisingly, and then, with a week of Night-watch ahead, I decided that there was nothing quite like imposing additional pressure on myself, and started wondering if I could have it finished by 27th - six months to the day after the ship left us for the winter - and I could.

Vital Stats:

234,000 stitches, knitted

7128 stitches, swiss darned

250 hours

117 squares

116 beads

39 balls of yarn

17 buttons

One pair of very tired hands

There is so much I could say about it, but it is so freshly off the needles that I think I need to just snuggle under it for a while and get to know it as a blanket, rather than a series of strips with knitting and darning needles poking out of it.

Chickens Beware!

Having finished the blanket I needed a 'warm down' project and finally finished Fantastic Mr Fox (Outfoxed on Ravelry), who I was test-knitting for Emily Ivey. I did the pattern-testing and knitting of the parts a while ago, but after few rubbish attempts at sewing him together he took a back seat while I worked on the blanket. In the end I frogged his body and re-knitted it, knitting the legs, tail and arms in as I went along. He is another great pattern from Emily, designer of the previously-starred chickens and other awesome small toys. Her patterns make me wish I had more children in my life - while I'm sure Sister-Girl's babies (a semi-feral cat and Springer Spaniel puppy) would appreciate them, I am not sure I could stand to see my knitting ripped to shreds!

Geek-Boy's 30th Birthday was a good excuse to down knitting and head to the chippy shop for a couple of evenings. I'd like to claim it as all my own work, but in reality one of the other girls made the mount for me and the carpenter did the bits of the frame that involved using restricted machinery - we can call it a team effort! The picture inside was supposed to be replaced by Geek-Boy's photo of choice, but he's decided that he likes my stick-man interpretation of base life and plans to keep it. I just hope he doesn't display it anywhere that visitors will see it!

As all knitters worth their DPNs know, next month is Socktoberfest, and with this in mind my projects are all foot-related:

• finish knitting Pomatomus socks, started back in June;
• sew up holes in favourite tights;
• darn work socks (four pairs!)
• darn soles of Twinkletoes slippers, featured in this photo, and attach soles;
• sew soles onto Geek-Boy's slipper-socks;
• mend old slippers, so I can wear them when the current pair need mending; and
• swatch and knit the toes of a pair of socks which I will take into the field with me in the summer.

It is a fairly boring list really, but the way of life down here is such that stuff has to be mended rather than replaced, as replacements are hard to come by!

*From Debbie Abraham's book Blankets and Throws to Knit (Amazon link). The pattern is Lithograph (Ravelry link).

Yarrr!

Capt'n Geek-Boy

As I be sure ye all be knowin', Septembaaarrr 19th be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. It also be the day on which Captain Geek-Boy be getting a year closer to Davey Jones' locker.

Bein' as not a right lot happens down here in the Great South Seas, it be a good excuse to splice the mainbrace, shiver some timbers and keelhaul the land-lubbers.
Captain Geek-Boy made good haul of bounty with a picture frame, writin' stick and catapult for keepin' maraudin' scoundrels at bay. The Good Ship 'Cake' sailed by an' was captured by by lurkin' buccaneers who razed it to the waterline.
It should probably be known, me hearties, that the smoke from 30 candles be enough to set the fire alarms off...!

Pirates Of The Adelaide Island

The Good Ship 'Cake'

Winter-Trippin'

Caboose Sunrise

During the winter everybody leaves base for two one-week winter skills training trips. It means we have the opportunity to be trained in any number of winter skills, including skidoo travel, ice climbing, ski mountaineering and crevasse rescue. On my last trip I went over to the other side of the island, visited the Chilean base, Carvajal, and did some ice climbing. I might get round to blogging about it as a back-dated post one day...

This time Geek-Boy and I were scheduled to go together, and having been to the other side of the island last time we decided to keep it local and just stay in the Caboose, which is about 4km away from base.

The first day was spent taking kit up to the Caboose and getting Geek-Boy's amateur radio antenna set up. We attempted to get a kite up so we could try kite skiing, but the weather turned quite suddenly and the rest of the afternoon was spent drinking tea and untangling the kite's ropes!

Looking Back Along Ridge To Pict

There was a lovely sunrise the following morning, and we set out with our GAs for some a line of hills at the northern end of the Fuchs Ice Piedmont. Team Geek-Boy parked at the Western end, while Team Miss Adventure set out from the Eastern end. We skinned up the hill, and not seeing any sign of the others at the far end of the ridge, had a quick climb up to the top of Pict to admire the view over the Shambles Glacier and up towards The Gullet. When we got back down we still couldn't see the others, so decided to ski back down to our skidoos, where my GA would then run me back to the top on a doo, before skinning back up himself. The ski back down was an amazing long run of fresh snow but over too quickly. In the mean-time Team Geek-Boy had appeared along the ridge and we met up for hot Ribena and chocolate before we set off along where they had come and back down to their skidoos.

The highlight of the week was our day exploring a crevasse near Trident. We set up ropes and abseiled down into the main chamber for a look around, before abseiling down two more levels until we reached bedrock. The light inside was amazing, but hard to photograph. Fortunately I had taken my mini tripod with me and used it to get some longer exposure shots, which seemed to bring out the colour.

Having abseiled in with the assistance of gravity, we then had to jumar back out, which was not so easy, but at least waiting around for each other to get back up gave us ample time to admire the icicles!

Crevassing near Trident

Fishy Business

Tide gauge

The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) maintain a network of sensors around the UK and the South Atlantic to monitor tidal elevation. Rothera's well house (built as the intake for our reverse osmosis plant which provides our drinking water) is an ideal site for a tide sensor as it is directly connected to the sea by an underground pipe, so the level is the well is always the same as the current sea level.

As part of my job, I carry out calibration water level dips for POL so that they can check that their automated equipment is doing what it should be. In summer this involves walking to the well house, jumping up onto the roof (it is about waist-high), lifting the lid and climbing down the ladder inside. After six months of winter it is a slightly different game, as first I have to spend half an hour digging through the snow to find the lid, clearing enough snow to be able to lift the lid and give myself somewhere to stand so that I can open it, and then try to climb into it safely.

Once inside it is not too unpleasant though, as there is a heater which stops the damp affecting the electrics used to run the monitoring equipment, and it is out of the wind and snow.

I use a tape measure on a reel which has a sensor on the end (a 'dipper') to measure from a datum point on the grating inside the well house down to the surface of the water. When the sensor touches the water it beeps, and I read the tape measure. I take one dip every five minutes, for around an hour each side of low and high tide. Audio books and knitting help to fill in the intervening four minutes between dips! We aim to do 30 calibrations per year, at a mix of high and low tides, and try to select tides which have at least 1m (3ft) difference between the high and the low. As Rothera has a strange double-tide, sometimes there is only 30cm (1ft) difference between the highs and lows; this can mean dipping at unsociable hours to get a useful tide! The folks at POL are very appreciative of our work though, as it helps to improve their tide modelling and prediction systems for the whole of the Atlantic. It has also helped other organisations with tsunami modelling, as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was detected by the tide sensor at Rothera, and earlier this year the recent earthquake in Chile caused a 20cm jump in the tide trace, and we could see that it took several days for the tide to settle back to normal. For those interested, Rothera's live tidal information can be seen here.

Mr Fish

As barely a fortnight can pass between birthdays, and on the theme of the sea, I present to you Mr Fish, the latest in a long line of creative birthday cakes. Mr Fish is for one of our GAs who, in the real world, is a keen fly-fisherman. Down here he contents himself with spending his evenings making flies and dreaming of trout-fishing in New Zealand.

August's Crafty Round-Up

Stegosaurus, Snowflake and Stripes

Well, my commitments at the end of July's Crafty Round-Up largely went out of the window when I realised that we had 65 days until the planes came back, and 65 squares of blanket left to knit. I've put the sock on hold for the time being, as I want to knit the pattern as a mirror image to the first sock, but that is proving trickier than anticipated. It is possible that I might just have to accept having two identical socks. I also haven't been back to Mech School, nor ventured into the Chippy Shop again.

Enough about what I haven't done, and more about what I have done! I knitted a dinosaur for a friend on base. His name is Hardy and being a vegetarian dinosaur he went out into the Antarctic forests to see what he could find to eat. He found a lovely patch of Sanionia moss, which is the closest thing we've got to a forest - Chelsea Flower Show eat your heart out!

I reached the half-way point of my blanket (I know we're well past half-way through winter) and stormed ahead. I not only started, but also finished the 6th strip, and have started on the 7th strip. I have 37 squares left to go (I'm working in 13 squares per strip) and approximately 45 days until the planes are due. Some USAian planes transit through Rothera before our own planes arrive, and I am definitely committed to having it finished by the time the BAS planes get here, but am open to negotiation on the other planes. Also, by finished I mean finished knitting all the squares and sewing it together. As I am undecided about the border and the possibility of backing it with fabric, they don't come into the deadline.

I have also been test-knitting a fox pattern for Emily Ivey but as he is still a collection of arms, legs and ears and was feeling camera-shy, he asked me to post a different picture instead. There is a snow flake which fell on the railings on my way to lunch today which looked cool.

So, next month's commitments are to:

• finish kntting the 7th and 8th strips and have them sewn onto the rest of the blanket;
• have made good progress on the 9th strip;
• sew Foxie together;
• finish sewing on the soles of Geek-Boy's slipper-socks. They are tantalisingly close to being finished (and have been for about 6 months), but I need to get him to stand still long enough for me to sew the soles on!

I fear it is largely going to be blanketblanketblanket for the rest of winter, but have high hopes for more varied crafty fun in the summer!

Stork and Orca

Mint Choc Chip Ice-Cream Cookie Sandwiches

The chef has been off base on his second winter training trip this week, so Geek-Boy and I volunteered for a day of canned, dried and frozen food fun. 

Our canned carrots are generally quite mushy and tasteless, so we strained them for several hours, before adding them to a caramelised orange sauce. The frozen sausages are fairly reasonable and the liberal application of butter and dijon mustard turned the Smash into mustard mash. To finish I made choc chip cookies using a recipe sent to me by a friend from home; Geek-Boy loves mint chocolate, so I sandwiched two cookies around mint choc chip ice-cream.

Skiing down Middle Stork Col

Wednesday was dingle, so I took the afternoon off, in lieu of several weekends worked recently, and one of the GAs kindly took me out on a ski mountaineering adventure.

As far as I can tell, ski mountaineering involves about 80% uphill skiing ('skinning'), 10% ice climbing, and 10% of the fun stuff - downhill skiing. One spends a lot of time dripping with sweat either from exertion or fear, and very little time flying gracefully downhill with the sun on your face and the wind beneath your wings. We took skidoos out to Middle Stork and skinned as high up the col as we could. When it became too steep to skin, we took our skis off, strapped them to our rucksacks and climbed the rest of the way up. As we sat on the col eating chocolate, we took our skins off the bottom of our skins and admired the view of Orca Mount and the untracked snow that lay between it and us. For a few short and glorious minutes we skied down the slope, picking lines which avoided the dips and bumps that the wind had formed. At the bottom we put the skins back on our skis, roped ourselves together as we would be travelling over crevassed terrain for the rest of the trip, and spent the next couple of hours making our way uphill around Orca Mount, past North Stork and back to the skidoos.

Orca Mount from Middle Stork Col

A 'Testing Blow'

The Dive Team Hard At Work

Continuing with the sea ice theme from previous posts, on Wednesday I went to help the Dive Team while they were cutting a hole in the ice for a new dive site. Once the blocks had been cut with the chainsaw, we set about attaching ice screws, clipping in ropes, and hauling them out. It is surprising how heavy a half-metre block of ice is, and it is hard to handle when you're on ice, with little grip, and a freshly cut hole to fall into if you slip! With the holes cut, covered with a wooden board, and marked with flags for safety, we decided a little sit down was in order. The Dive Officer is a big fan of Lego (as evidenced by his recent Lego Death Star purchase), so he took charge as we assembled the various blocks into an armchair, using the hand-saw to neaten rough edges as necessary and slushy snow to cement any spaces and sculpt rounded edges. This was shortly followed a predictable fight over who got to sit in the seat while we posed for photographs!

Saturday was too windy to go out to play, although this was no bad thing as it provided the 'testing blow' we needed to prove the strength of the sea ice for more distant travel. I worked on my blanket, reaching the half-way point - 59 squares knitted, 58 squares to go! Of course, there is the small matter of sewing the strips together, knitting on a border, and probably backing it with fabric, but as far as the squares are concerned,  half-way!

Sea Ice Break Out

Sunday was even windier (gusting up to 74 knots!), but we were stirred from knitting and pool-playing by an 'all stations' radio call from a couple of people who had noticed that the sea ice was blowing away. The 'testing blow' had tested one blow too far, and we all got to watch a sea ice break out. Everyone rushed to get dressed up in lots of warm gear and headed up to the Cross to watch the spectacle, and what a spectacle it was! A strong Westerly wind was creating enough sea swell to crack the edge of the ice, and was then blowing the chunks away from the main body. This meant that the crack line gradually worked its way further and further into the ice sheet. We sat there (sitting, because with the wind speed standing wasn't an option!) and watched the crack line move back about 500m in half an hour. Our beautiful armchair broke free and went sailing off; with the direction and speed of the wind, hopefully it will make it all the way to San Martín Base and the Argentinians can make some use of it!

Armchair Traveller

Killingbeck Island

Killingbeck Island

With the recent cold temperatures helping to form and stabilise the sea ice around Rothera, on Saturday we decided to strike out for Killingbeck Island. There is a photo of Rothera Point in a previous blog post, and Killingbeck Island is in the middle far left of the picture, about 2 km out to sea.

We started out from North Cove and made out way around the North end of Rothera Point. As we had drilled this area recently we could move fairly quickly. When we reached new ice which needed testing, two of the GAs struck out ahead so the rest of us could travel along more leisurely, admiring the icebergs and taking photographs. On our arrival at Killingbeck Island we were rewarded with a visit from three Adelie penguins who came running up to us. I am sure they thought we were penguins too as they ran very fast until they were about five meters away, and then stopped, looked at us with a disappointed expression, and then waddled slowly away. We also had a lot of fun getting on and off the island, as there was broken ice around the island caused by the tide lifting the sea ice up and down. It had formed chunks which we had to move across, a bit like lily-pads on a pond.

Killingbeck Island was at the limit of the current stable ice. The photo of the island shows the thicker white ice which was about 30cm thick, and a small amount of newer darker ice, which was only about 10cm thick.

Adelies Saying 'Hello'

Doc On The Ice Lily-Pads

Rothera Point Sea Ice

A Chocolate Cake Tool Kit!

Wednesday was our generator mechanic's 40th birthday. Having seen photos on Facebook of the wonderful cakes his wife at home makes, we felt we ought to try to make his 40th cake something special. A team effort, admittedly mostly lead by the chef, resulted in a spanner, hammer, nut, grub screw and a bottle of WD40, all made from chocolate cake and iced with molten chocolate. We couldn't find 40 candles, and even if we had, we would probably have set the fire alarm off, so we settled for 11 baby pink ones instead! I 'helped' clean up the icing bags and excess icing a few hours earlier, and couldn't face actually eating any cake, but it disappeared suitably quickly!

Testing The Thickness Of The Sea Ice

This afternoon the clouds cleared and the wind dropped, so a few of us set out the test the thickness of the sea ice around base. We set out to go around Rothera Point, but were prepared to get back onto land and come back to base that way if necessary. To test sea ice, one drills a hole all the way through, and then inserts a very technical stick which has a lever on the end. You pull the stick back up until you feel the lever catch on the underside of the ice, and then read the depth off the stick. The ice has to be a minimum of 20cm thick for people to ski on it, 25cm for walking, and so on upwards to 157cm to land a Hercules! We had 30-40cm thickness all the way, so successfully made our way around the point. It was very strange seeing the land from the ice, and to be able to look up at the wharf. The ice feels so substantial, but six months ago I was bobbing about here in a boat doing my crew training.

This evening one of the GAs did a slide show (yes, slides, with a whirring motor, genuine clicky noises and everything!) of a climbing trip he did in his younger days around the USA which was a nice change to the usual knitting, DVD watching or pool playing. On the knitting front, the dinosaur is progressing nicely. I have changed the pattern so that I am knitting in the round with the legs and plates knitted on, as I didn't fancy sewing ten stegosaurus plates down its back!

Biscoe Wharf From The Sea Ice

July's Crafty Round Up

Or, 'Here's One I Made Earlier'! This is what I have made this month while not working or playing in the snow.

Photos by Miss Adventure/Photoshop magic by Geek Boy 

At the top left is my hip flask and its cosy. Geek-Boy and I went for an overnight trip to the caboose a while back, and while he was packing his Coke cans, I thought a G&T might be nice with dinner. Not wanting to carry the weight of a 1 litre bottle I looked for a smaller receptacle and found a spare water sampling bottle. It looked a bit boring though, so once we'd returned I painted it with silver nail varnish, and used some electrical tape to make flower templates, which were then filled in with pink nail varnish. Even though I had given it a couple of coats of clear lacquer from the mechs' workshop, I was concerned both about the paintwork getting chipped in my rucksack, and the bottle itself being damaged. Out came the knitting needles, and a few attempts later I had a hip flask cosy with drawstring closure - just what every self-respecting girl-about-base needs!

The wildlife specimens are: Alanis, an Adelie version of Pasha The Penguin made as a knit-along with the Doc, who is learning the ways of sticks and string; Sage, the white chicken and star of our 48-hour Film Festival entry; and Onion, knitted to stop Sage feeling lonely, now adopted by Geek-Boy.

Inspired by Cornish Blue storage jars in my grandmother's garage, I turned some empty food tins into Antarctic Blue tea storage jars, with the cunning application of electrical tape. I carried on the stripy blue theme to make a Nalgene water bottle cosy using an old camping mat and some fabric tape - portable hot Ribena for all!

In the centre is my wine bottle stopper. The mechanics have been running Mech School on Monday nights for the last few weeks, giving us the opportunity to learn about welding, engines, using the lathe, or anything else mechanical. I have been spending time on the lathe learning lots about how to shape the metal in different ways. My bottle stopper is recessed in the centre with a protruding screw, so the cork is gripped and supported from both sides. Like most things that come out of the garage, it is probably somewhat over-engineered, but I enjoyed making it.

At the bottom centre are my (semi-finished) sock blockers, one of them modelling my Pomatomus sock. I used an image downloaded from the internet, then scaled up on the photocopier and cut out to form a template. At the chippy shop I taped the paper to the wood, attempted to draw neatly around it (and in the process demonstrated why I failed Colouring In at Primary School) and then used the bandsaw. It was much harder than I had anticipated, and necessitated a certain amount of tongue-poking-through-teeth. They are only semi-finished because the paint-brush kept losing bristles in the varnish; I picked them out of the first coat and lightly sanded them again, but I have left them in the second coat. On my return to the land of paint-brush shops I will pick out the hairs, re-sand them, buy a decent brush and give them a final non-hairy coat of varnish. For now though, they are functional, and will be used when I make the second sock.

Lastly in the bottom right is a square of my blanket. Progress has slowed somewhat from my initial start-of-winter enthusiasm, but I am still hoping to finish it by the end of winter.

My aims for August are to:

• finish the 5th strip of my blanket, and have at least started the 6th; 
• knit the second Pomatomus sock and block the pair; 
• knit a dinosaur (pattern as yet undecided) for a certain base member who saw my chickens and said, 'I want a chicken! No, wait, I want a DINOSAUR!' (he did nearly chop off two fingers while making my Mid-winter's present, so I suppose he deserves a dino if he wants one); 
• make another bottle stopper, this time a bit bigger, for an empty whiskey bottle which will probably become a salad dressing dispenser when I get back to the Real World; and 
• start making a swift (whirly knitting contraption).

Ice Ice Baby: Two Cold Photographs

Two recent photos of what happens when you have a few days at around -20°C (-6°F).

Rothera Point surrounded by sea ice as far as you can see. In Hangar Cove at the bottom left of the photo the ice is so thick now that it is almost indistinguishable from land.

Up at the ski area we had retreated to the caboose for a cup of tea. I swilled my mug out with some more hot water and threw it out the door. The chippy suddenly got very excited as he had noticed that as my hot water met the cold air, it froze and created a cloud. Everyone ran back into the caboose to get more mugs of boiling water to throw in the air.

I've shamelessly cut and pasted from the internet, as they have worded it better than I could:

First, the near-boiling water is already close to becoming steam when it is thrown into the air, which means that the water molecules are much closer to evaporating into the vapor state than they would be if the water were cold.

Second, the act of throwing the water into the air causes it to break up into tiny droplets. The water that was contained in the cup (which originally had a relatively small surface exposed to the air) now experiences a tremendous increase in the total surface area exposed to the air. This situation helps to speed up the evaporation process (evaporation is the process of turning from a liquid to a vapor).

Finally, very cold air typically has a low humidity level (that is, a low amount of water vapor present). This is yet another factor aiding the transition from liquid water, to water vapor, to ice crystals. At sufficiently low temperatures, this process seems to occur almost instantaneously. 

Cold water is more viscous than hot water, so doesn't separate and spread out as efficiently as boiling water does, which is why it doesn't happen with cold water.

Sunrise: Oh no it isn't! Oh yes it is!

Hoisting the Union Flag

Being south of the Antarctic Circle we lose the sun completely for a few weeks around Midwinter; as we also have many hills to the north of us, this time is extended as, although the sun has risen over the flat horizon, it hasn't made it high enough to peek over the mountains yet. We lost the sun a good long time ago - I am not sure of the exact date as it was cloudy for so long, but it was probably some time in April or May.
Last Thursday (22nd July) is the date when the sun was due to pop back up over the mountains for a few brief minutes. The morning dawned bright and clear and there was a lovely orange glow in the sky to the North. Geek Boy and I were on cooking duty and I stood at the sink washing up watching excitedly as the glow became brighter and brighter. With about half an hour to go the clouds came in and my hopes were dashed, but in true British style we didn't let a few clouds stop us, so after lunch we all trooped up to the flag pole to hoist the new flag and claim Rothera Point for Queen and Country once more. A few patriotic attempts were made to sing the National Anthem, until we realised we didn't know the words, and shortly afterwards, also in true British style, we decided that a cup of tea was just the thing. We finished taking photos and went back down to base to put the kettle on and to tuck into our latest cake creation!

Sunrise cake

The clouds finally dissipated on Sunday morning, and the doctor announced over the radio 'All stations, all stations, the sun has risen!'. I was so excited that I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and shot outside. After taking the first photo I realised that being barefoot in pyjamas outside in Antarctica probably wasn't the best plan and went back in to put some more clothes on. Five minutes later when I went back out the clouds had covered the sun again, so unfortunately I don't have much record of the momentous occasion.

In other non-sun-related news, I've started knitting the 5th (of 9) strips of my blanket, and an Adelie version of Pasha The Penguin - photos once it has been completed. At Mech School on Monday I finished turning my bottle stopper on the metal lathe, used a grinding stone to make a point on the threading, and a wire-brush-wheel thing to give it a bumpy finished texture. 

We also watched all of the other bases' submissions for the 48-Hour Film Festival, which they can be seen here. I don't know how long that link will stay live for, but my favourites were the animated 'Catch U Chicken' for originality, 'Who's The Chef?' for simply managing to talk for that long in one take without stumbling or laughing, and 'Fitness Month' because it just had a nice feel about it. It was also good to have a look around other bases, and it certainly made us appreciate the standard of living we have here!

48-Hour Chicken Contest

This weekend was the 48-hour Antarctic film contest, organised each year by McMurdo Research Station (USA). As the name suggests, it runs for 48 hours, from Friday evening to Sunday evening, and you have to plan, script, act/film and edit the whole film in that time. To prevent people making films in advance, there are five key things which must appear in the film for it to be entered. We met after dinner on Friday and the Base Commander read out the list of requirements:

• Character to appear - a grumpy diesel mechanic
• Line of dialogue - 'Has anybody seen my chicken?'
• Sound effect - a siren
• Prop 1 - a mop
• Prop 2 - a bottle of mouthwash

It occurred to me that there was a problem with the line, 'Has anybody seen my chicken?'. There was no chicken to not be seen. There was however, a knitter who was bored with knitting her blanket and who likes a challenge. A short search of Ravelry revealed a pattern called 'Chicken Chicken Chicken' (so good you say it thrice), and a plan was hatched. I printed the pattern, cast on before the ink was dry, and knitted for the next 5 hours straight while those around me formulated the plot, storyline and characters. I went to bed at 1am with a one-legged wingless chicken looking over me.

We reconvened at 9am, by which time I was halfway up the second leg. I went to the Bonner Lab, where filming was beginning, and knitted on set. By the time the second leg and one wing had been added, the chicken was declared fit for filming; I added the second wing and a tail as and when breaks in filming occurred and by lunch time I had a fully functioning chicken. I kept referring the bag of toy filler as 'chicken stuffing', and since chickens are usually stuffed with sage and onion, my little chicken was named Sage. Sage was lonely though, and if you have sage, you need onions; so to everyone's amusement I cast on Onion as soon as I had finished lunch, with the aim of having him finished by the end of the filming deadline.

We spent the day filming in various locations around base, and started editing footage in the evening. Sunday was mostly spent editing (I contributed by staying out of the way knitting and making tea runs) and doing a couple of reshoots. Onion was completed and I saw a first cut of the film at about midnight - I believe they finished compressing and uploading it at about 4am. 

'From Rothera With Love' by the 2010 wintering team at Rothera Station, Antarctica.

'It's Like A Rave In The Sky'

Today we were very fortunate to be treated to a display of rather amazing clouds. Nacreous (or Polar Stratospheric) clouds form during the polar winter at an altitude of between 15,000 and 25,000 metres. Due to their height, they are illuminated for a long time before sunrise and after sunset and are highly iridescent. Some of the clouds, especially the electric blue ones, were so bright that I couldn't look directly at them.

Iridescence occurs as light is diffracted by water droplets or ice crystals, and can be seen in other clouds around the world. I have seen it many times in the UK, especially in Alto cumulus clouds in Autumn, but never as bright as it was in nacreous clouds.

Most people on base came to look and take photos and it was fun to hear people's reactions and description. Our electrician, who has clearly had a far more active social life than I have, said, 'It's like a rave in the sky where all the clouds are taking LSD and tripping out'. Quite.

Antarctic Water-Skiing

Now that we've had sufficiently prolonged cold temperatures and a calm period, the sea ice has thickened and solidified enough for us to go onto it. The dive team and GAs have been monitoring it for about a month while it has been too thick to use the boats, but not thick enough to walk on, as they are keen to get back in the water to carry on with their science experiments.

To travel on sea ice we wear a dry suit and skis. We also take a sledge with spare clothes, and rescue equipment. Sliding onto the ice was a strange feeling, but it felt reassuringly substantial once I'd gone a few meters away from the crumbly bit at the edge where it gets broken away by the rise and fall of the tide. As we went out further it was interesting to look back at base, and also very cool to see the icebergs trapped in the ice. We reached an area of newer ice which was being monitored, and the GAs drilled a hole and determined that ice not to be thick enough yet, so we skirted around the edge past the runway and into a different cove. This was where the dive team had been practicing with the chainsaw, so we each had a go at jumping in, splashing around and the trying to get back out. It really wasn't as cold as I'd feared because the immersion suit and the dry clothing underneath keeps you warm, but my hands were a bit cold. We carry ice axes in case of falling in, so used these to dig into the ice to pull ourselves back out again which wasn't too bad as the air trapped in the suit makes you very buoyant anyway (hence me looking rather fat in the photo - I haven't actually put on 20 stone!).

Wednesday afternoon was the equivalent of a family trip to Tesco. Food is stored in a few different places around base, so that if there is a fire we don't lose the whole lot in one building. First we went to the deep freezes in Fuchs House and formed a human chain to pass out chips, scampi and chunks of Argentinian beef so large that I'm sure if we'd let them defrost they could have just walked over to the kitchen by themselves. Next was the food store in Old Bransfield for 20kg bags of pasta, 2.5kg tins of tomatoes, enough bread flour to sink a small battleship, and other assorted dry goods. Everything was loaded on to sledges, which were then pulled by skidoo over to Bransfield House where it was stored according to the dictator's chef's instructions.

Most excitingly, we also found 2 fugitive tins of spaghetti hoops lurking at the back of a shelf. Roll on Sunday morning!

Skiing and Sun Pillars

My plans for an extended Sunday morning slumber were shattered by the wail of the fire alarm. After pulling on my overalls and grabbing my emergency bag I headed over to muster at Bransfield House, to be greeted by the smell of burnt toast. Courtesy of the chef. He can cook an eight-course meal for 22 people on Midwinter's Day, but making toast? Not so much.

It was 08:30, so rather than go back to bed I headed to the kitchen to make some Chelsea buns in anticipation of a skiing trip after lunch. They were good fun to make with pummelling the dough and rolling them up, but they took about 5 hours rise, so they had to go straight from the oven into a box to take with us, without time for cooling.

The snow conditions at Vals were lovely so we spent several hours practicing turns, and trying to take photos of each other going over the jump that we had dug the day before. Things were also a little less eventful than the previous day, when someone let go of their snowboard at the top of the hill. I gave chase, swooping it up just before it collided with the caboose - a risky manoeuvre which could easily have ended with egg on my face, but instead I have now acquired a reputation as a superhero skier who wears her pants on the outside and a cape around her shoulders. How little they know.

Some folks went into the caboose to get the primuses going for tea, so I had a go on a snowboard. I've improved a lot since I first started, and can now fall over making both left- and right-hand turns, as well as backwards and forwards. We'll get there one day, but after one run down I decided that tea and cake was the better option. The Chelsea buns went down very well and fuelled us for our ski back down to base.

Monday's main excitement was my first decent sighting of a Sun Pillar. This is coded and entered into the synopic observations which are sent to the Met Office. It is a 99040, for those who care!

Wibbly Wobbly 3

At Lancaster University there is a burger bar called Wibbly Wobbly 2 (originally there was a WW1 in town, but it moved to campus), affectionately known as WibWobs. Wibwobs do the best ever spicy bean burgers, with lots of salad, in lovely soft rolls. You can pile it high with chillies, spread it with a multitude of sauces and enjoy a LiteBites on the side (chips, onion rings and mushrooms). Geek-Boy loves the chicken fillet with mushrooms, others go for the pork chops, or beef burgers or bacon. Or several of those together - there is a WibWobs for everyone. There is even a WibWobs Appreciation Society on Facebook

In Antarctica however, there is no WibWobs. Until now. The chef is doing night-watch this week, so we're fending for ourselves, and Monday was our turn in the kitchen. We made beef burgers, turkey fillets (we're running low on chicken) and pork chops. Geek-boy made bread rolls, but there weren't quite the success that last week's were (in fact, they were like yeast-flavoured rocks), so we had to put out bread instead, and we are somewhat lacking in lettuce and tomatoes at the moment, but I mixed up garlic mayo and made some beer batter for the mushrooms and it all went down rather well.

We'd decided on roast lamb for dinner, so once we'd cleared away after lunch we started scrubbing potatoes, opening cans of carrots (well, soggy orange disks, which might have seen a carrot once, from a distance) and brushing the 3 lamb legs with butter and rosemary. It was a bit stressful as I've never done a roast for that many people, but everything came out fine.

Cooking continued on Wednesday when I rustled up some dark chocolate covered ginger and vanilla ice cream sandwiches. Trying to dunk frozen ice cream into hot molten chocolate was, to say the least, rather messy; subsequently trying to photograph them, when the only decent light was the heat lamp on the food service area, was also not without complications - hence not being the best photograph in the world - but you should get the general idea.

Midwinter's Week Round-Up

This week's vital statistics

• Rows of sock knitted: 54
• Exciting boxes of presents received: 1
• Rows of sock frogged back: 54
• Horizontal bungee rope challenges run: 3
• Rows of sock re-knitted: 43
• Amount of paracetamol taken to fix neck after bungee run: Lots

This week has nominally been a 'week off' for most of base. Since the weather doesn't take a week off, we've still been doing met obs and balloon launches, and fixing things that break, but most normal work has been suspended.

Midwinter's Day and the Winter Olympics have been covered in earlier posts, so this is just a round-up of what else has happened this week.

I wanted to get a blog and online photos sorted by the end of the week, and have accomplished the blog (evidently), but online photos are taking a bit more work, partly due to the slow internet, and partly because knitting is so much more interesting than faffing around online.

I've started the Pomatomus socks from Knitty, but despite knitting to gauge, it wouldn't fit over my ankle. I ripped it back and started again on bigger needles and it feels much better - more elastic - and the pattern is showing more. I won't finish a sock this week (my original aim), but they are at least on the needles, and can be returned to when I get fed up with my blanket.

As it has largely been dark and windy, I've watched a lot of 'Harry Potter' and 'Northern Exposure' while knitting. On Thursday, Geek-Boy and I were on cooking duty, so made Chunky Chicken Stew (a.k.a. Left-Over Surprise) and chunky wholemeal rolls. It was all eaten, so I assume it was okay.

On Friday we went skiing on the Ramp, which is the bit of glacier opposite base and offers the steepest skiing available. It was pretty icy in places but we had fun playing on the slalom course that was used for the Winter Olympics until the wind became too strong for it to be any fun any more. In the evening we had a bar crawl around various bars that people had set up around base. We went 'Under The Sea' in the marine sciences laboratory, to the 'Texas Penitentiary' for orally administered 'lethal injections' and of course the horizontal bungee-run provided by the GAs.

This involves wearing a skidoo helmet and boiler suit, then being anchored to the far end of the corridor with a large bungee cord. One then runs down the corridor in an attempt at reaching the drinks lined up at the end. First available is water, then lemonade, lager, John Smith's, Guinness and a final prize of Pisco. I don't think anyone reached the Pisco, but many good attempts were made. Sadly, being fast-moving and in the dark, it was hard to photograph.

Saturday evening was the debut performance of this year's winter band, 'Snow Rhythm'. They played a good set, and it was all the more impressive as several members had never played before the band formed. It was also one of the GA's birthdays, so out came the obligatory themed cake and everyone finished the week on a sugar high.