“We just got a notion… we took three years, and we rowed from Dublin from Wexford, to Wales, to Britany… we did the Bay of Biscay… went as far as Corona… and then went by sea to Santiago-Componstela (Spain).”  –Breanndon

“And, what was it like, now… rowing in the high seas… a man-made boat?”  –Interviewer Maire Moriarty

“…she kind of stuck to the skin of the water… and she was one with the sea…  It was, just pure magic…  Being in the boat, which was built by two members of the crew, designed a couple thousand years ago…   You come ashore in a yacht, and just, nobody notices you; but you come ashore in a (Currach) and it has a humanity about it… just, people just stopped and just looked at it as if we were carrying… a whale, or something… it kind of speaks to you…  It had personality, that we didn’t design…   You’re out there, humbly, just dealing with the sea, and nothing between you and the sea except a small bit of canvas, painted with tar…   You come ashore at night, and you hear the sea every night, and you hear it in the morning; you go to bed with the sound of the waves and the sound of the birds, and you’re waking in it the following morning…   It’s taken me this long, six or seven weeks, to come really ashore.”  –Breanndon

–Breanndon O’Beaglaoich (“Brandon O’Beagley”) of Brandon Creek, on rowing in a currach, from Ireland all the way down the Camino

 

Welcome, Indian Summer

Hi, September!  This year Winter stuck around well into April, so why not Summer in September?  There’s wool to be meddled with, that’s why.  Woe to the cool autumn breezes, that the air conditioning is still going strong.

Whether a fiber fancier’s habit, a Northern hemisphere cultural paradigm, or just plain old mainstream marketing, when September hits I start wanting textured cables – just as surely as I want warm gooey chocolate when the oven timer for the brownies goes off.  The 90-degree afternoons count for naught.  Those current projects?  Pshaw!  Surely nothing is more important in this moment than newly dyed yarn in Fall’s limited burnt-red-orange, and cables on mitts.  Second only to the sweater-jacket (Ash by Amy Christoffers) that I’ve suddenly, and drastically, decided would be perfect not in woodsmoke grey or charcoal or orange, but in a gentle shadowy mint green.  Hurricane mist on the Atlantic shore.  I see what you did there, September.

These two (very, very insistent) daydreams aside, this month I’m looking to finish a Christmas sweater for this year (improvising the pattern), and start picking up pace on another from last year. I’ve promised the recipient of the later that it will be done before it’s cold; wish me luck!

Somewhere in the summer days, I lost my trajectory and ended up dabbling with all kinds of dangling possibilities.  Now that Fall has put her sensible feet on the ground and looked ahead down the road, I see I’m going to have to run to keep up with her smart heels clicking down the pavement.  I’ve all but forgotten our last meeting, and she has scheduling notes on that clipboard under her arm.  I’m pretty sure I had a project list around here somewhere…