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