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.