Not quite the North Pole, but close

There are days that I think my job is great and others that I wish I had just gone to Accounting School and done something safe. Yesterday was one of the latter. The X-band radar on the Hudson developed a leak in the bit of wave guide that connects the antenna to the rest of the wave guide. Water in the wave guide is pretty bad and gives you a giant blob in the middle of the screen, generally not desirable. So, since I am the new person, me and another newish guy had the pleasure of climbing up there to remove the faulty waveguide in the cold yesterday, and we get to go put the new one in today in the even colder weather. Here's hoping there are no frostbite or falling 30 feet type injuries right before Christmas.



Edited to Add:
Re: the mast climbing in -17 weather. A couple of the older guys on the ship's crew have taken to being quite protective of me since I am one of the few young girls around. When they found out that I was up the mast they gave my supervisor an earful for making me go up there in the cold. They also sent a deckhand to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't need anything. At least I am well taken care of around here.

Skin of the Sea and early Christmas events

This year, some of my Christmas celebrations had to come early as Fred is now at sea for the holidays. Alright, who am I really kidding. I always celebrate Christmas for about 3 months every year. Anyway, he got to spend about a week in Halifax before sailing away. While he was here we made Christmas cookies.



We also went out to dinner at Opa's before exchaning gifts. Here I am in my Christmasy shirt all set to go out.



I started Ilga Leja's Skin of the Sea a couple weeks ago. I reached the blocking stage last night. After this, I will just have to seam the shoulders and pick up some stitched around the collar and down the front. I think I got the guage off because it seems like it is going to be pretty big. It will come down past my hips, which I don't think it's supposed to do.



I also picked up the Perl Grey Imogen sweater kit on the weekend. It's Green/Blue/ Yellow. I am not sure if it the Rainforest or Nova Scotia colourway, but it is lovely.

Charity knitting anyone??

I know you all busy with those last minute Christmas projects right now, but after all that settles down and you are wondering what to do next here is a suggestion.
I went to a meeting last night of the Canadian Cancer Society volunteer organization. I asked if they had any use for donations of knitted hats,etc and they do! Downtown they run a place called the Lodge that Gives. Basically, if you are from out of town and need to have treatments in Halifax this is a place to stay. Not only is it a warm bed, but they organize activities and offer much needed support to patients. They have a gift shop there that sells hand knits and gives profits back to the lodge. I was told dishclothes sell especially fast, as well as hats, mittens and scarves. So, if any of you would like to donate a couple things you could drop them off at the Lodge that Gives or give them to me at KOL and I will see that they get there.

And the amazing luck continues

As many of you know, Halifax got a lot of snow last night and then some rain, so this morning things were a slushy mess. Also, I still have my all seasons on because I store my tires at my folks place and wanted to change then when I was home in November, but my lock nut key had been misplaced. Now I have a new lock nut key (Portland Street Honda Service Dept is great btw), but still not winter tires. I was hoping that the weather would hold off until after christmas like it did last year. Anyway, I was mentally prepared for a hard commute to work this morning. It was slow moving but pretty good. Then when I was coming down the driveway to my workplace and tapped the breaks coming down a little hill I lost control and slid into a snowbank, right outside work. I am glad it was the snowbank and not the oncoming truck. Also, I was amazed while shovelling myself out at the amount of people who drove by and did not stop to help!!! Obviously some people have not seen the Ninja's pay it forward blog posts recently.

Anyway, I have decided not to leave the house anymore.

Here Anna is reinacting my mood this morning.

This weekend was a bust

I had big plans this weekend of getting caught up on my laundry and housework and also going to the Christmas Open house at Gaspereau Valley Fibres out in the valley.  They were forcasting light flurries for Saturday which didn't worry me too much, but as soon as I hit the highway the wind and snow came up and the visibility was nil.  Seeing as I drive a sporty little  car and do not have my snow tires on yet (they are at my folks in a different province right now)  I decided that a yarn sale was not worth the risk and turned around.  Skidding on the Bedford Highway on the way back confirmed my decision was a responsible one.

I got home and decided to do my laundry, first starting with all my bedding, including my duvet cover.  While my clothes were in the washer the one dryer in my building broke, so now I have a basket of wet bedding and a couple old blankets on my bed, not to mention over 2 weeks worth of dirty clothes on the floor.  After these two failures, (oh yes, my internet was down most of Saturday as well) I didn't think anything useful would come out of the day and decided to knit continuously for the rest of it.  I started my Skin of the Sea by Ilga Leja and am done the back already.

Now that the snow is coming down out there, it looks like another good evening for knitting.  I still wish my dryer was working though.

So that's who's been making all those long distance calls...

Cutest baby ever...

Little Anna, two months old.

A long overdue post...

As you might know, I went to Labrador for a month back in August/September. I never got around to posting some of the pics from that trip, so here they are.


We flew to From Halifax to Goose Bay on a Dash8. From Goose Bay to Nain some of the crew flew on a twin otter, while the remaining six of us got to fly on a little 7 seat Navaho. Since we did not have a co-pilot and being the only girl around, I got to sit in the co-pilot's seat for the flight! This was the highlight of the trip for me. It was a beautiful day and I had the best seat in the house. (The flight home was a different story; not such a nice day)

This is somewhere around Voisey's Bay, which is home to the largest nickel mine in Canada.

Nain is the northernmost community in Labrador and it is only about half way up the coast. I'm not sure what the population is, but you can walk from one end to the other in about 15 minutes. There is one store and one taxi in town and the airport is a small gravel strip.


After arriving in Nain, we got situated in our new homes and prepared to sail out of the harbour.


A few days into the trip we were at a nice fishing spot on a calm day, so the Chief Scientist was nice enough to give us all the day off to go fishing or just to go ashore and check things out. I didn't fish, but I went ashore to explore and take my turn at polar bear watch (ie. carry the rifle) While posing for this picture, the bugs were so thick that I could barely stand still. In the background the Matthew can be seen.


The thing that kept me busy on this trip were the hydrographic launches. They are small boats that are carried on the ship and launched over the side to survey in shallow waters. They often came back with problems and I would then have to board the launch and get them fixed up. Here I am making sure the multibeam system is happy.


We continued all the way up to the northern tip of labrador to continue our work. Once we started to head back down the weather started to change. On Sept.7 we had a huge blizzard. This is the view I woke up to the following day.


And here I am learning how to stear the ship!

Tagged

Tagged by yesiknit.blogspot.com

The Rules:Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself.

1) I start listening to Christmas music in October and last year put up my tree on Nov.7

2) I work on ships but don't know how to swim.

3) I only make my bed about onth a month and consider it a huge waste of time.

4) I am a member of a union called the International BROTHERHOOD of Electrical Workers. When I get letters from them, they are signed "fraternally yours" which drives me crazy.

5) I grew up in nearby New Brunswick, but never visited Nova Scotia until I was 19.

6) I hate the noise made when you move stuff around in a freezer and boxes rub up against the frost in the freezer.

7) I am horrible with plants and even managed to kill a cactus.

8) Remember that awkward kid who got picked last for everything in gym class? That was me.

Back to the "real" world

After being gone off and on for the past few months, my sailing season is finally over and I am starting to reintegrate back into normal society. Living on a ship for 4 weeks in isolation is definately not normal society.

This past weekend, my first weekend off in weeks, I spent running errands and doing things around the apartment. I managed to finish up some UFO's but cannot show them as ther are gifts. I did however knit these two sweaters Saturday night. They are ornaments from Last Minute Knitted Gifts and a cute way to use up bits of sock yarn. I plan on starting a miniature sweater sweat shop for all the bits of sock yarn in my stash.



Halloween is tomorrow, and to celebrate I am going to Pictou to do an emergency repair on a hydrographic survey boat. It seems the hydrographer is trick-or-treating for a new processing unit for the multibeam system as the old one is dead. I have never been to Pictou before and don't really know how to get there so it should be interesting.

Here we go again

(gratuitous baby photo)

Now that we got that out of the way...
We are back out to sea, trying things out again. They managed to fix the leak so my hopes of going home for thanksgiving and seeing little Anna again were dashed.

Here is a shot I took while we were coming in the harbour the other day.

And here is the tug that escorted us in, just in case we had any problems. I was hoping they would send Theodore but I guess he had a prior engagement.

I started a this wrap last week. It is the Romantic Moments wrap by Evelynne A. Clark in some laceweight merino. It is my first try at something like this and it is already full of mistakes, but I am cutting myself some slack considering the conditions under which I have been working on it. The colour is not showing well but it is actually a sage green.

Enjoy your turkey time everyone!

Back so soon?

Well, my three week sea trip was cut down to about 3 days and I returned Monday afternoon. Why, you ask?

The ship was slowly sinking... Yes, we were taking on water around one of the eingine shafts. Thankfully, the engineers aboard are amazing and slowled the water enough for us to get safely back to Halifax. Ideally, the ship should be put in dry dock to be repaired but since the dry docks are full, they are attempting to do it underwater. So I am on standby and things at work are quite hectic!

A post from the high seas

I realize I have not even posted about the last sea trip yet, and here I am at sea again. This time I am aboard the CCGS Hudson and right now we are at about 41 N and 65 W. We just left yesterday and it has been a little but rocky out here. The nice thing about the Hudson though is that we have the internet and satellite TV, so it's almost as good as being at home minus all the motion. (I don't know about your house, but mine definately doesn not pitch and roll.)




I brought some knitting in hopes to get the time to do some. Among the 3 balls of sock yarn is the lacey wrap I just started in some kind of sage laceweight merino. It is my first time knitting something so intricate and delicate and the enviroment that I am attempting it in is not ideal. Walking down the hall without bumping into things is hard enough let alone trying to knit lace.

Back on dry land (sort of)

The land is not so dry, but I am glad to be back on it just the same! I won't get into the details of my trip just yet because I would first like to announce that I am now a proud auntie of the beautiful Anna Ruth, born Sept.5

Shape up or ship out

I have chosen to ship out.



I will be MIA from blogland for the next month as I will be on board the CCGS Matthew maintaining their electronics so that the Canadian Hydrographic Service can collect their data using a multibeam sonar system that makes 3D images of the ocean floor kind of like this:


This data is eventually used to make navigational charts that other sailors use. Having charts with accurate depths is needed to keep ships from hitting rocks and shoals. The ironic part is that the Matthew has actually done that before. Let's hope we do not run aground while I am on board.

And thus concludes our lesson of hydrographic operations. I apologize for the lack of knitting content.

the Harlot

No, this is not an x-rated post. It's okay, you do not have to send your kids out of the room or worry about getting into trouble for reading it at work. Just so we're clear I am not talking about Paris Hilton, I am talking about the Stephanie Pearl McPhee aka the Yarn Harlot.

Last night the harlot was at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax giving a speech and book signing, which may have well been stand up comedy because she is really THAT funny. Like an idiot, I forgot to pack my camera so I have no pictures, but at least I remembered her book and didn't have to ask her to sign one of my body parts. The KOLers stuck around to get our books signed last and then she mentioned she was heading over to the hotel bar if we wanted to go. So, I had a drink with the Yarn Harlot!

I also was told by the charming Master and Commander of the tall ship Silva that I look like Charlotte from Sex and the City. I suppose that is a compliment. All in a all, a very pleasant evening.

My Vacation to NB

First off, this happened before vacation, but this is what the Captain gave me for my birthday. 4 Sets of knitting needles and note the lantern moon needles on the right. He thought of this gift with no hints from me, pretty smart eh?



Last weekend, July 28th or thereabouts, I went camping with fred and a couple of his friends in northern NB. It poured rain and I am not a huge fan of camping to begin with, not to mention the fact that everybody spoke french and I didn't really catch what was going on most of the time. Anyway, that was only for two days... Here is the travelling duck supervising the pitching of the tent, which only leaked a little.



Gratuitous cat photo time. This is Ratatouille. He is about 2 months old and belongs to Freds roomates, but he is not staying as Captain Fred is allergic and what the captain says goes... poor kitty.




While in Moncton I went out to London-Wul on the Melanson road. It is such a nice shop and the owner is very sweet. They have a lot of their own fibres and yarn as they have their own farm on site. I walked out with some pink mohair, and some angora/alpaca which you would have to touch to really appreciate. If you are ever passing through the Moncton area you must go!



Lastly, I went into the local yarn/ sewing shop in Fredericton just to see if there was anything new and exciting, but not really expecting much. Surprise!! They had a variety of lantern moon bags!!! So this one came home with me. It will look really snazzy at the Yarn Harlot tomorrow!!!

I sock at this...

Sunday afternoon, in my weekend recovery mode, I went to chapters to get some much needed coffee and look at the books. I had seen this lovely sock book online and when I found it in the store I decided that it would make my life complete, for the day anyway.

I started the Embossed Leaves pattern with the ball of Jawoll which I have already started to knit and unknit countless other socks with, but I thought "this pattern will be the one!". That was a little ambitious considering I have never done socks in that degree of difficulty or read a lace chart before. I probably should have done some research before starting so that I would have known that you read from the bottom up, etc, but alas it was not meant to be. I really messed up that one and had to rip back again! I have decided that the particular ball of yarn is cursed, but I started the Go with the Flow socks from the same book last night because they looked easier. Hopefully, this will be the pattern to tame this unruly sock yarn.

I won't be at KOL again until Sept 18th because I will be in NB next week, seeing the Harlot the week after (hooray) and then going to sea for a few weeks where I won't even have internet! How will I ever survive?

A weekend tale

Here is a comic version of the drama that ensued this weekend when I introduced Fred to Henry...

(click to make larger)

A Fitted Knit and mass confusion

This is the Two Tone Shrug from Fitted Knits done in Malabrigo. There's a pretty big difference between the dye jobs of these two skeins of yarn, and it's quite obvious where I switched. Other than that it turned out ok.






The mass confusion part refers to me changing the title of my blog. Why you ask? To make you lives difficult? Well yes, and because I have been thinking about it for a while and decided that while I sail only a few months of the year I am always a techie and felt like an imposter by calling myself a sailor. Maybe I am over thinking things here as I often tend to do.

The finally finished BBB

I finally finished the boring baby blanket from the Yarn Harlot and by the end of it I was starting understand why she named it so! I used three skeins of butterfly super 10 cotton on size 6 needles. It came out almost sqaure, but it could have used a few extra rows I think.



And here it is in the baby's crib...



And finally, back by popular demand....
......Winston!!

Ontario Trip: The travelling duck strikes again

The travelling duck has been MIA for quite a while now, but has recently resurfaced to take a trip to Ontario with me. For those of you who don't know, the travelling duck went to Europe with my friend and has accompanied me at sea a few times. The first day/night of our trip was spend at an old friend's place right downtown Ottawa. Here the travelling duck is enjoying the view of a little courtyard in the byward market area.



The relaxation didn't last too long before the travelling duck had to the face the Monty Python killer rabit slipper!!! He keeps his cool throughout the attack until the rabit finally gives up after remembering the number that the last rubber toy did on his digestive tract. The killer bunny slippers were a birthday gift from my friend.



The next thrill came when the duck faced the meanest beast of all...Winston! What a challenge!



And here is my DQ birthday cake. Yummy.

Happy Birthday to me

I'm two dozen years old today

I'm in Ontario celebrating with my sister, baby to be, and a lazy dog.

FO's and yet to be started O's

Here is the sweater from Baby Knits for beginners that I made for my neice using baby cashmerino and saartje's baby booties and matching hat in some cotton. That blanket is not quite finished but I am hoping to finish it up while I'm visiting my sister in Ontario.




I stopped by LK today to pick up some sock needles and noticed that they do indeed carry Lana Grossa Royal Tweed which is called for in this pattern from fitted knits. This will be my next big project!

Another exciting weekend...well, not really.

Today I managed to take some time away from my soldering lesson preparations, living room rearrangement, and french exam studying to head over to the Atlantic Quilt and Fibre Arts Festival. I have to say that I was quite dissapointed by it really. I guess there was a fair bit there for quilters, but there were only two knitting booths, both of which are stores in the HRM anyway so they were not that exciting. I guess I was hoping for some things that I don't usually see in the stores around Halifax. So, to not make my trip over a complete loss I gave in to the Lantern Moon silk needle case that I had been eyeing. I really should have bought it when Tangled Skiens had their sale. Oh well. Here it is in all it's silken glory.






I also started the two tone shrug from Fitted Knits, except that I am doing it in one tone. It's some Malabrigo that I was smart enough to pick up on sale. It's almost done, I just have to finish off the ribbing. I can't wait to wear it, and if this chilly weather keeps up, I just might get a chance soon! Although, sun would also be nice.

Surface Mount Soldering

I attended a high reliability soldering course this week, of course working with electronics I already knew how to solder, but I hadn't yet learned how to do surface mount and use some other specialized techniques. I won't bore you with the details, but tis picture is some of the work I did on the course. This might not mean much to anybody, but try imagine putting molten metal on all of those tiny componet leads, not an easy task!

Long weekend

What a weekend I had! A friend was in Halifax to do an exam on Thursday (which he passed. yay!) so he stayed up for the weekend. To celebrate his new certification as Chief Mate, I took him to Anatolia Thursday evening for supper.

Seeing as it was a nice day Friday, I took the day off and we took a drive down to Lunenburg, because I had never been there. I was looking forward to seeing the Bluenose II, but unfortunately she was not there. It was a cute little town though, and of course, I had to stop at Have a Yarn in Mahone Bay. It's a surprisingly big store and they had some lovely things, but I managed to restrain myself from buying anything, which was hard, because there was a burgundy skien of Hand Maiden Cashmere Silk that I was quite enamored with.

This is a bit of the Lunenburg waterfront.



And this is a car I saw parked on the street there. I did laugh at it, and I took a picture!



I had knitted up this kitty a while ago and just got around to seaming it yesterday. It didn't turn out quite right. It's head is too wide and too short and the body is weird. I guess that's what you get for not doing a gauge swatch. He looks kinda mean in this picture too! He's guarding my iMac with one of his nine lives. Pattern for kitty found here, knit with some scrap dk acrylic on size 2 needles.




The highlight of the weekend though was our outing Saturday night!!! Where did we go? Well here's a hint!!!!

It was a great show, a little pricey, but very much worth it. Lumière and Gaston were especially well played. My only complaint is that they made it much longer by adding some pretty weak songs, but all in all a very entertaining show, and of course, amazing company to enjoy it with.