Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It's November All Over!

Okay, so it's nearly half-past November, and I've been out in a kayak only a few times since September. It's not enough that the 'flu has kept me home, napping. The weather has done its usual "autumn" thing around here... chill and rainy days don't normally keep me off the water when I don't have the 'flu, but wind definitely does.
That's why it was so nice yesterday when the wind and rain stopped. I took the little Dragonfly inflatable down to Cadboro Bay beach and paddled out to Flower Island. The clouds blew away from time to time, and the sunlight had at moments that amazing clarity it gets. On little Stein Island there were a dozen colours of lichen and microbes staining the waterline... so many colours that one day we'll have to get knitting designer Kaffe Fassett out here in a kayak.
That idea may make sense only to Louise and Alison, who have also read his books Glorious Colour and Glorious Knitting. Fassett has designed many sweaters using plain knitting and purling in two-colour rows, and the resulting sweaters often have a dozen or more shades. He has been known to pick colours based on the peeling paint on a wall, or the lichen on a wall, as well as Muslim tile murals. That's why Alison and Louise and I would like to see what designs he'd make after seeing the colours on the trees and rocks and water in several of the places where we go kayaking.
You can see some of Fassett's fabric and needlepoint designs at his website. You can get some idea of how yesterday's sunlight on rain-wet trees and stone took my breath away if you look back through the Kayak Yak website at some of the photos taken of our trips along the Cadboro Bay shoreline. I didn't take a camera along. Just being there was enough, surfing a few waves at Stein Island, and realizing once again that this place, this whole grand assortment of islands, is so fine and beautiful.
The waves broke over and into my boat as I launched and landed. No problem. My boat wasn't like the yacht that washed up onshore during the storm that lasted all night. Good luck to that boat's owner!

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