It's my birthday!

It's my BD today. DH fixed pancakes and bacon this morning, and cleaned up after himself! What a prince! He'll be cooking dinner later, too. I walked with Karen, who was the second person (after DH) to give me BD wishes for the day. We did our 4.5 miles in 1 hour and 4 minutes. My plans for the day include talking with Mom to settle on the dates for me to go visit her this week, taking a hot bath and lots of knitting and spinning. Other than the weather it should be a great day. It is just grey and cloudy out there, not bright and sunny, which would be my choice. If I were given a choice. Which I wasn't.

I had to frog most of what I had knit on the test sock last night. I started with size 1 needles because that's what I usually use for sock knitting. It just barely made it over my heel and up my leg when I tried it on after 1 inch of ribbing and one pattern repeat. I went up a needle size and will be ready to try again in 2 more rows. I love this yarn and the pattern is easily memorized but not boring. Pictures soon - I need more than one pattern repeat to show you. I also finished frogging the Cables and O's section that I didn't like and I am ready to pick that up again. I would like to spin today, also. Busy day....

Moving on....



This is our boat with new canvas and side curtains on it. The side curtains will keep us safe and warm in inclement weather and allow us to use the boat later into the year without me being bundled up as if I lived in the far northern area of Alaska. LOL. We will be able to sleep on board, fully protected if we need to be (weather-wise) and still be able to have good visibility all around because of the window in the back curtain.

Another thing (in addition to boats) that you see a lot of on the Chesapeake (most other bodies of water, also) is buoys. They serve to show the way from point to point and also to show you where the safe water (as compared to shallow water) is so there is less chance of running aground. I like buoys. They seem so stable and enduring. They are out there in good weather and bad, year after year. There are red buoys.



The little antennae thingies on top are to keep the birds off there, otherwise they would be nesting and ... doing other things all over the buoy.



And there are green buoys. In this photo, if you enlarge it, you can see the light on at the top of the more distant buoy. At night they each light up in a particular pattern and frequency to aid with navigation. It's difficult to read the buoy number at night, so this way you can look at the chart and it will tell you that, for instance, a particular number buoy will flash one long and two short flashes. If you coordinate the chart information with the buoy lights you can see, you can find out where you are and how to get to where you need to go.




We've come to the end of my boating trip for this week. I will leave you with this final image. This is the peaceful, relaxing Chesapeake Bay at the end of a wonderful spring day.