Polar Knitting

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I made a trip to Svalbard, Norway, last summer. In search of wildlife and dramatic scenery, we spent much of our time cruising the polar waters in open zodiacs. I stayed warm in my very own genuine reproduction Douglas Mawson balaclava. Mawson was an Australian geologist who explored Antarctica in the early decades of last century, including leading the first expedition to reach the magnetic south pole. He knew what he was about when it came to cold weather equipment.

One of my shipmates, Doug Cheeseman admired my Mawson balaclava so much that I promised to make one for him. As the owner of Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris and frequent leader of trips to Antarctica Doug was familiar with Mawson's history, and appreciated the usefulness of balaclavas in very cold environments.

Doug Cheeseman enjoying Arctic Beer

In the spirit of the original, I made Doug's balaclava almost entirely of yarn leftover from other projects.

Mawson's balaclava

For more information and a link to purchase the pattern take a look at Artlab Australia's website.

You may also remember that during my trip to Svalbard I was practicing two color knitting. I originally thought I would use the piece as a scarf, but once it was finished I decided it was too heavy and too bulky to be worn comfortably. Instead I stuffed it (using up lots of long narrow scrap pieces of quilt batting) and have put it on a bed as a bolster. It makes reading in bed more comfortable and more colorful.

If you are wondering about the quilt in this photo, it is the first one I ever made. I started it 1986 when I was laid up after foot surgery, then put it aside unfinished while life - school, marriage, new jobs - got in the way. Somehow after my second daughter was born in 1998 I pulled it out again and finished it.  I'm not entirely sure how I found the time to do it then as I was working full time and had two young children to care for. It's not particularly well made but I still really like it's vibrancy and that I can identify the source of every piece of fabric. Some came from clothes I made for myself, others from home decorating items, and still others were given to me by friends. It shows once again that quilts can warm your heart as well as your toes.

Faces of Svalbard

Feathered and furry, bewhiskered, bearded and bloody, Svalbard has all kinds of faces. No, I am not referring to my shipmates, though by the end of our ten days some of these descriptions were fitting. I am, of course, referring to wildlife, the focus of our trip.

Walruses were the strangest of all the creatures I saw. I had to keep reminding myself that they were real, not some long-extinct creature that we know only from the fossil record. Like seals, they are unwieldy on land, graceful in the water. This one was so curious about us that it popped up right next to our zodiac, water dripping from its whiskers. I wonder what it made of us. Did it take our bright, multi-colored rain jackets for plumage, our big camera lenses for eyes?

On another day we saw a group of walruses sunning and sleeping on the beach. This big male sat apart from the group, obligingly striking poses for our cameras.

Bearded seals' faces have amusingly human-like expressions and big round eyes that give them a childlike innocence. This one seemed to be thinking, "Oh, my! What is that?"

With youthful curiosity, this polar bear cub played in the water near where its mother was eating from a whale carcass (which you can just see in the upper right of the photo). 

Here is the pair of them, the mother showing just how bloody a job it is to eat raw whale meat.

And here is momma bear mid-meal.

This is another young female, making her way to the same carcass. We first spotted her swimming just offshore and watched as she swam first all the way around our ship, as though sizing us up, and then proceeded directly to the carcass, several kilometers distant.

One day we went ashore to take a close look at this polar bear carcass, desiccated, but largely intact, right down to the black tongue lolling out of the left side of the mouth. Impressive teeth!

On a cheerier note, we spent an afternoon watching a puffin colony. Puffins are adorable little birds, with round cheeks, eye markings that might be the envy of Lady Gaga, and large orange and black beaks. A turn of the head gives this one a quizzical look.

The way they swoop around the cliffs makes them devilishly difficult to photograph. Their antics and appealing nature make it worth the effort.

Fox kits are equally appealing. We watched this fuzzy little arctic fox sleep in the afternoon sun, then stretch and show its even fuzzier tummy, eliciting a flurry of shutter clicks and "awws."

On our last day, not far outside of Longyearbyen, we stopped to see reindeer up close. We perched ourselves on a rise several hundred feet from where a few were grazing and waited.  Eventually a couple approached, so close that I could almost reach out and touch them. Some of them looked at us with their eyes turned so that a bit of the white was visible. They looked terrified. Others had calm, dark brown eyes, and mouths that seemed to be smiling, giving them rather sweet expressions.

With a big rack and the right stance, they can look quite regal.

And finally, here is my face, as my shipmates came to know it while we were cruising in zodiacs.

My balaclava, a reproduction of the one Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson wore to Antarctica, kept me warm and comfortable through hours of being outdoors. It is a heavy item, weighing in at five and a half ounces (assuming my grandmother's circa 1925 kitchen scale is reasonably accurate), and no surprise, as I knit it with two strands of wool yarn held together.

The pattern, written by Kristin Phillips and Liane Gould for Artlab Australia, can be purchased from the South Australian Museum Shop and comes with detailed instructions for choosing yarn and yarn colors - the original was apparently made from scraps - and with a tag which you may sew into yours to show that you have a genuine reproduction!