April 14, 2007

I wonder where the whales are now

All week long I keep meaning to write about the day before, but the internet here is patchy, you can only use it in the lobby of the hotel or the teaching space, and I keep being really busy as I pass through those spaces. If I wrote about everything we'd done here, I wouldn't ever be done, and I'm busy today helping the Blue Moon Ladies tear down, and gathering my stuff from teaching (which was fabulous) and still trying to arrange a little time to sit quietly, knit and appreciate the place I'm in, it's so beautiful here. Aside from classes with me, Cat, Nathania, Cookie A., Tina and the Sockateers, Sock Camp has other events. We went on a boat cruise.... Remember snakes on a plane? This is Knitters on a Boat. Very rare. Doesn't happen much in the real world at all.

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An entire whale watching trip with just knitters.

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I think the Captain liked us a lot. The whales choose not to join us that day, and I feel pretty fine about that. I'm of the opinion that as long as an animal can totally take down a boat, they should have complete free will. We saw other stuff though. Bald eagles and Gazelle (Yes. Gazelle. There's this one island where this big game hunter imported all of these African animals and populated his island with them and they all just live there. It's not a hunting place anymore, so all of these trippy horned animals from the wrong continent are just wandering around one of the San Juan Islands. Freakish.) We saw Sea Lions on their way to Alaska...

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They are 2000 pounds each. (That's 900kg for the rest of us.) All you really need to know is that they are big. Really big. Huge.
We had underwater knitting olympics where a bunch of us (the true, the brave) put on our bathing suits and knit underwater with nylon ribbon that looked like jellyfish when you got it wet...

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Seriously. Did you think you were getting a picture of that? We all agreed that we wouldn't even do it if we so much as saw a camera near our bathing suits. Stephen taught us a synchronized swimming routine (very short. We all sink when we do "flamingo") and a seriously good time was had by all...with the possible exception of the chick responsible for keeping everyone from making too much noise in the pool. Her afternoon was rough.

Cookie and Nathania taught everyone how to knit four to a blanket...

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Thats me, Cookie, Tina and Nathania knitting around on a blanket for charity with four balls of yarn and four circulars...we go round and round in a stacked spiral.
There were other contests...tons of other contests, one in which Cat Bordhi and I tried to settle (for once and for all) which was faster...DPNS or Two Circulars. ( I won.) and and unspeakably beautiful contest in which two knitters knit one item...one hand each. Cat and I were team-mates (I was the right hand - she was the left....we lost.) and it was fascinating. It ended up being really beautiful to watch. (Nathania has awesome photos of both of the contests. Go bug her.) We closed with a banquet...

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and a fashion show...

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and singing...

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and Nathania....

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well. I don't know what she's doing. Looks pretty while she does it though. I think she looks like the front of a ship.
Am I knitting? Yup.

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I leave for home in the morning. I've had a wonderful time... but dudes. I . Can't. Wait.

Posted by Stephanie at April 14, 2007 6:03 PM