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!