Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Ptropical Ptarmigan

I'm back from a wonderful time in Tahiti! I think I will blog up the trip and its pictures separately for family and friends, but meanwhile, here are a couple of knittish bits that only you will appreciate.

First thing:
Doesn't this underwater sponge thingy look a whole lot like a pile of unblocked lace knitting?  Well, I thought so, anyway.  Maybe I should have taken video of it, because it was soft and waved around in the water.








Second thing:
During the partial phases of the eclipse you can create an amazing pinhole camera effect that shows the crescent shape of the partially obscured sun by casting the shadow of anything with small holes on a white surface.  Now, let's see--what do I have with small holes??  A knitted lace shawl!!  Tougher to photograph than I thought for various technical reasons and spousal reasons (there is a limited amount of time that a willing spouse will stand on the crowded deck of a ship holding a lace shawl up in front of a wall).  But in the lower right part of the picture you can see that the smaller holes definitely show up as crescents!
The real deal was done by a guy with much prior experience who makes elaborate arrangements of holes drilled in thin sheets of wood in advance of the event:

See all those bazillions of tiny crescents? (Click on the photo to embiggen & truly appreciate.)  Maybe next time I will knit a specially themed lace pattern to do the same thing? Probably not.

But none of this is very colorful, is it?  And bright color in the bright sunshine is the hallmark of the tropics, n'est ce pas?  So here's a colorful Tahitian fiberwork for you, a tifaifai, the beautiful applique Tahitian quilt: