Island hopping

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We had a chance this fall to return to two lighthouses we tended in the past. First we headed off to Bakers a Island in Salem, MA.  We knew it when.  Now the grounds are cleared, the lighthouse is freshly painted,  both keepers’ houses have been renovated and the public can once again visit the island thanks to Essex National Heritage Trust, the National Park Service and volunteer caretakers.

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Next we headed north to Seguin Island, Maine.  We arrived as the summer caretakers departed and the foghorn was mistakenly blowing.  We settled in and hiked the trails with good friends. After dinner, as we got ready to play a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit,  we lost all power to the island.  The light went out! And the backup lights didn’t come on.

After checking out the boathouse at the bottom of the hill, the whistle house at the top of the hill and all their circuit breakers,  we made calls to find out which power company supplied the island and contacted them. In minutes, coincidentally (?), the power returned.  You can imagine the phone call.  We don’t know our zip code, account number or name.   They were impressed we were calling from a lighthouse though.

But the light never came back on.  So we contacted the Coast Guard, who maintains the light, left a message and went to bed.  This morning, while volunteers arrived in pea soup fog to tackle several projects, the Coast Guard walked us through some troubleshooting to no avail. They stopped by  for a visit today and got things working again. Now we can rest easy and enjoy the sunset.

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Aclimitizing

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It was harder for me to settle back into my “old” life than it was to leave it for several months (except for being apart from loved ones). Schedules demand our time, utilities can’t get it right – we still don’t have functioning internet. It was better when we were 60 miles offshore and expected less.

But here we are. I got socked with some viral syndrome for ten days upon our return. So much for being cooped up on three planes, with hundreds of other passengers, for more than 28 hours. At least my 21 day incubation period has passed without anything serious.

And now – I’m back!

My peonies waited to bloom until I got home and the garden needed lots of trimming. It was strange to see how well the lilacs bloomed by the number of withered blossoms.

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I finally found most of my fiber stash, which was hastily, but neatly, put away before we left. I was eager to make a holder for the Majacraft wool combs I had acquired in a yard sale but was reluctant to use freehand. These babies aren’t for the feint hearted and I’m certain my tetanus vaccine is up to date.

Yesterday was the day. I remembered seeing a clever holder for Valkyrie combs at my dear friend’s studio in Lachlan but couldn’t picture the design, other than remembering it was elegant.

A brief google search resulted in some photos and here’s my version from materials on hand. It needs a little tweaking but works just fine and combed alpaca is luscious and spins like buttah.

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Three pins secure the comb on a board which can be clamped to a table. I embellished by including a holder for the diz and crochet hook used to pull the fiber into a long thin fluff of fiber.

It soothed me to comb and spin some of a beautiful alpaca fleece. Once I have enough, I’ll venture into dyeing with Greener Shades dye

Tim’s having his own fun. He really enjoys playing piano and brought a full size keyboard to Deal Island. When we got home, he learned a friend was selling his beautiful Steinway grand piano. Now it’s Tim’s. I got to watch its move via the cellar stairs into the basement. It fit, and now sounds and looks – grand!

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Goodbye Tasmania

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We spent five more days on the beautiful island, Tasmania. Gale winds if 60 mph found us here too. We stayed in Launceston and swam daily in the beautiful 50 m city pool.

We caught up with friends, had other people cook for us and generally reacclimatized to civilization. And what do we return to? A prison break, 50 miles from home, that made the Tasmanian paper! Hmm. At least it will be summer. It is with mixed emotions I bid farewell to Tasmania.

Deal Island: parting shots

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We greeted the next caretakers, Graham and Leonie, helped them unload and get settled, and then made a pasta dinner. It was a lively evening and our first glass of wine in 6 weeks!

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I know the feeling when you wave goodbye to your last visitors for the next few months. Bittersweet, but mostly sweet.

We arose early Thursday and departed Deal Island on the Strait Lady. It was the calmest and fastest crossing to Flinders Island we ever had. We saw the sun rise on the cliffs of Deal,

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a last view of the compound,

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sunrise to the east of Bass Strait,

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And sunset from Flinders Island looking west.

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A perfect ending to a fabulous three months. We met lots of interesting, hearty, brave people, took good care of the island and each other, didn’t break anything nor have to be airlifted for emergencies.

Maybe we’ll be back again.

It’s clean up time

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Our departure date is set. The new caretakers arrive Wednesday and we leave Thursday. We’ll get to sleep in the new bed we built for the visitor’s house when we move next door.

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We shoveled and swept sand from the jetty road since we had 116 mm if rain in May. I also found a dead possum and tossed it into the tussocks. Let’s just say I had to shovel the loop of intestines as well. No such thing as paradise. I hope it wasn’t this cutie pie who wanders by our sunroom every night.

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We’ll be busy these final days cleaning and moving. Our food stores worked out surprisingly well. We didn’t run out of anything. I bought too much jam and feta cheese but that’s OK. We are making dinner for the new crew tomorrow and I have to work out what to cook with supplies on hand. Probably a pasta bake, fresh bread and apple pie.

Tim submitted our final report to the ranger and I added a photo of my kitchen improvement. The corner of the stove exhaust fan can surprise you at times.

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I finished the body of my shetland shawl and grafted the two pieces together with the kitchener stitch, can you say “knit, purl, purl, knit” 210 times!?

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Now I’m knitting the edging. It will be lovely. It’s soft as a cloud and warm.

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Now I’m off to clean and do laundry.

The bands of Deal Island

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Warning, the content herein is solely about fiber. If you’re not interested in fiber, talk amongst yourselves.

Since I’ve become more interested in weaving, I decided I would weave during my three month time on Deal Island. And weave I did. Without any loom! I found great resources online: backstrapweaving.wordpress.com for backstrap inkle weaving and lots of interesting techniques; TWIST, a newsletter and group for tablet weavers; and great tablet patterns from flinkhand.de

So I started with what I knew, tablet weaving and made a belt. 20150423-070310.jpgTablet weaving dates back thousands of years and patterns are created by a combination of how the tablets are threaded and then how the pack of tablets is turned. It’s really pretty fascinating because it puts a four shaft loom in the palm of your hand. When I needed more cards, I cut them out from discarded cardboard boxes.

When I ran out of commercial cotton, I spun cotton on a charkha loom and used it in in both tablet weaving and inkle weaving. I used various devices to keep the yarn stretched out while I wove, depending on the weather and on my mood. During nice sunny days, I tied one end to me and the other to either the laundry post or a vertical post near the house. Some days I sat in the sun room and attached to the lovely goose that adorns the coffee table there. https://www.flickr.com/photos/24868212@N05/17583060869/in/dateposted-public/I often got started by attaching to a door latch and a chair. And off I went.

I occasionally fashioned a backstrap from a pillowcase, but for the most part, I used an old camera case strap I found for the strap. Although I brought string heddles with me, I learned how to make continuous string heddles from any yarn, which was very handy. I found the idea for a simple tensioning device in a back issue of TWIST.20150321-232156.jpg

When my spun cotton dwindled, I turned to sewing thread and wove a couple of ribbons. I had this idea I would weave my own labels for hand knit items, and I did. I experimented with Baltic weave, Andean pebble weave, supplementary weft and horizontal stripe pick up patterns. The patterns are endless and now I want to incorporate them into larger pieces. We’ll see.

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Some insight from Tim

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There is no Tom on this island with us. I often misspell Tim and then started doing it in purpose for my own warped sense of humor. Here’s what Tim has to say:

Questions, questions, questions

These are some of the most frequently asked questions we’ve heard as caretakers on 4 lighthouse islands:

–How did you get this gig?
About 15 years ago, I sailed with a friend to Seguin Island lighthouse in Maine. I chatted with the caretakers and discovered something I would love to do. When I met Lynne, I soon realized she was the perfect person to join me. We applied and voilà. The 3 island lighthouses after that were found through word of mouth and internet searches.

–How do you get supplies?
We don’t. We come with 3+ months worth of food, supplemented by the garden. Lynne plans and buys everything we need with amazing aplomb. AND, she’s a hell of a cook!

–What do you do all day?
We follow the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Repairs out here are very difficult.
We maintain a presence and greet visitors, perhaps our most important responsibility. We introduce them to the island and sometimes invite them in for a cuppa. It’s quite a trip to Deal and people don’t rush off. We had 230 visitors the first 2 months and none the third. The rest of the time we’re cooking, gardening, clearing 16 miles of trails and dirt roads, cleaning (Aussie caretakers are neatniks!), maintaining the power and water systems, making repairs, and even building furniture.
We leave plenty of time to explore, swim, jog, star gaze, and—sorry to say—surf the internet.

–Finally, there’s a question often implied but rarely voiced: how can you spend 3 months alone together?
If anything, isolated islands bring us closer. You have to be really nice and loving with each other if you’re going to make it work. We’ve now spent over a year and a half as caretakers with more to come.

Tidying up

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Me and the Deutscher. We haven’t given the lighthouse equipment names but this one goes by the manufacturer’s name. The Deutscher is an industrial strength lawnmower. He and I took a walk yesterday to mow Winter Cove, which has about 6 km of mowable track and lots of hills. It’s my favorite track to run, although I covered more distance mowing because many areas had to be covered three to four times.

When I got back to the compound, I headed down to the jetty and caught the sunset.

Today I stripped the bathroom floor to reseal it. I had to leave a puddle of the stripping solution on the floor for about ten minutes. When I returned, to my surprise, this skink was lounging in the puddle. Before I could get my camera, it hopped aboard my makeshift mop and I escorted it outside. How did it hear about the puddle, I wonder.

The fungus amungus

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I know. I can’t help it. I have a grade school sense of humor. Our travels yesterday took us down to Squally Cove to cut up a couple of downed eucalyptus and she oak trees on path.

I brought my new walking stick with me to bolster my confidence on the slippery downhill portions. My walking stick appeared suddenly when the sponge mop broke off from its rusted base. It was a little long, not tres chic, but did the trick.

I did keep my eyes to the ground though and found some lovely mushrooms.

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Time flies

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We experience relativity here on Deal Island. At first, the time seems limitless, stretching lazily before us. Now with a little more than two weeks left, the days fly by.

We’re catching up on many projects and had to contend with several downed trees and branches after the last storm. But beautiful sunsets returned.