Friday 2 August 2013

Contemplation of my bobbing rod tip

The best textile judge I know always asks 'what is the purpose of this object'?  Why he should have found my tightly swaved fishing unitard so puzzling I cannot imagine. 

I just got back from Salmon Camp, a gruelling voyage in a little boat in the icy waters of California.  Shackleton himself would have balked.   Only the iron men of seafaring legend could contemplate such a trip.  Amongst the guests were a retired millionaire and his wife, so clearly we were as hardbitten a group of seamen as ever braved the icefloes and 10' swells off Santa Monica.  So sit right back and I'll tell you a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.

Our little boat set off with the tide.  Almost immediately I began testing knitwear.  Another of the guests was a scientist, but I was disappointed to learn that he knew nothing about the physics of heat sorption in wool.  The man's a fool, and actually shook his head bemusedly as I attached a laser tachometer to the mast to measure the oscillation.  I left him to his mojito and crawled out onto the bowsprit, to test my spray-repellent properties.  I assume that he knew that I was right, and didn't want to look silly in front of the bikini-ed redhead he was chatting up.  I applied my linen tester to her bikini top, and found it substandard, and in no way protective against abrasion from the spars.  But ladies of fashion care not for functionality.

The salmon were biting, and with my catch I was able to test a revolutionary new feature that I included in my Salmon Gansey - sleeves that roll up.  Modern knitters are unaware that this is possible. 

I tested the salmon in my bucket with the linen tester.  At only 7 scales/inch they were obviously substandard, so I threw them back.