veterans day & tea towel for the engine room

Print your own fabrics! re-upholster your bunk, make cool pillows, and frame your porthole with your own designs!  Spoonflower, is a site based in Durham, North Carolina that prints your designs at their ‘mill’. Read more about them here.

In honor of Veterans Day (today: 11.11.11) they just held their military fabrics contest which I missed, but inspired me to make a tribute fabric anyway. (I never knew the symbolism of poppies until this contest.)

The Ships Ahoy Tea Towel calendar is now available! The fabric measures 21″ long by 18″ wide, but the edges are raw and will need to be finished:

All ships are denizens or frequent visitors of NYHarbor, and run on their own power. I love our historic vessels, but will save those for the Dead Ships Dinner Napkins series.

Here are past Bowsprite fabrics. I am going to do one with egrets and booms, a la Tugster! Have an idea for a fabric? drop a line!

buoys move & sh!t happens

A Patchogue captain returning from Boston squeezed through Shinnecock Inlet, and was making good speed when he suddenly ran hard aground in Moriches Bay.

“I don’t understand! I’m in the channel!” said he, as he pulled out his paper charts and peered at his GPS. And—as real life is stranger than fiction—while he was there, a Coast Guard boat came from behind him, picked up the channel buoy, and dropped it about fifty yards east of where he’d grounded, and disappeared.

“Ah, ” he said as he slowly listed 45° to one side, “NOW I’m out of the channel.”

A Port Jefferson greenhorn was a glutton for punishment: electrocution from lightning, several dismastings, near sinkings and allisions were not enough to dissuade the new sailor from the sport. On one early voyage, he managed to bring his wearied self and his disheveled vessel to a dock where he found himself tied next to a fancy boat:  “There was a couple sitting on white cushions, they had white-carpeted boarding steps and a white french poodle.”  Our sailor wrestled to pump out his holding tank. “It exploded. It went all over everything. It went everywhere.”

Many, many thanks, Capt. Tim of the Flaming Scorpion Bowls!
and thank you, N!

clearwater’s great hudson river revival 2010

This weekend: Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival 2010
A musical and environmental festival; the venue looks amazing!

Uglyships has its Flashbacks, BibliOdyssey has its Image Dumps. Here is mine, for John Sperr’s old Instant Button Machine in the Dutchess Outreach booth this weekend. He asked for a few images to represent river and harbor activity, so I collected a few together. I have to draw more tugs! According to Roberta Weisbrod, since 1991, there is a 37% increase of tugs operating in NYHarbor. Taurus is foist on the list!

All artwork is ©2010, but is available upon request for altruistic, beneficent, benevolent, charitable, eleemosynary, good, humanistic, philanthropic, public-spirited causes, and for birthdays and ship anniversaries.

cool charts

I love charts & maps, and here are some of my favorite sites:

Wikimapia: I like labeling, and it’s maddening to find someone’s beaten me. Clicking on the site will often lead you to the current occupier’s website, history, and other information. I’m always impressed with how thorough and fastidious my anonymous co-mappers tend to be. Map mode is easier to read street names. However, I like the satellite mode as some folks like to outline and label their boats! I’m still looking for the surveyboat–she was not at her slip the day of class photo. Please label resp0nsibly (anyone can label)! Friends don’t let friends label drunk.

Sturgeon Bay‘s out, Katherine Walker‘s out on the beat…everybody’s out working.

Google Distance Calculator / DaftLogic: Disclaimer claims that all distances are estimations, but this is great for measuring crumbling piers (in satellite mode).

So with this handy website,  you can see that the distance between Atlantic Salt and the DSNY Marine Transfer Station is, as the seagull flies:

8miles/12.6km/6.8nm

and yet we insist on rumbling over potholed roads, congested bridges, and through backed up tunnels to truck it, schlepping the salt through three four boroughs:

16mi/26.5km

when we could it tie it on seagulls’ legs and fly it!! duh!!

Antipodes Map: could we dredge our way to china? not by going straight through! we’d end up due west of Tasmania!
If It Was My Home:  this is a new find. You only feel like playing with this one once. Thanks, BitterEnd & RedRightReturning!

© 1987 D.Jouris/Hold the Mustard. All rights reserved. The copyrighted image may not be reproduced, altered, or transmitted in any format

Hold the Mustard: You in Funk? at War? in Hell? They have very fun maps! Thank you, David, for permission. Take a peek, place an order!

Upside Down and Unusual Maps: the last time I felt this disoriented was when I was driving the survey boat south, away from one of the many basins in Jamaica Bay. I was so confused: the chartplotter was north up, the manhattan skyline seemed east of us, the channel seemed south, my boss was checking our data, and I was tearing along at 20 kts headed straight for a shoal 1’depth at low water.

And! the Source—NOAA: Ode to 12327, Hommage to 12334!

¡Hola, fellow ChartLover! I have BOTH charts and Katherine Walker on here por te!

tallships toile, frazil pizza print

Hello, Toile-Lovers! go to Spoonflower to vote for this week’s Fabric of the Week. I think the contest ends thursday. Spoonflower is a site where you can design your own fabric, and buy it: no minimum order! the marvels of the modern age!! I like that you can vote for as many designs as you like.

the Tallships Toile features the Bounty, Lettie, Picton Castle, Pioneer and the Wavertree!!! click on it at the Spoonflower site if you like it; if you do: thank you!

Coming soon: the VOSS print! Be the first in your waterfront condominium to upholster your sofa in the latest and greatest in oil spill recovery!! the VOSS print features heros as the USCG Rankin, the Bainbridge and your friendly neighborhood Medium Response Unit!!! (VOSS – Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System, as brought to your dock by the National Strike Force)

Coming soon: the Driftwood print! drape your windows with the Driftwood print, throw a cocktail party, and wow your guests as you walk out in the matching dress or smoking jacket!!!

and this just in! do you recognize this print?

yes! it’s Frazil Pizza! as created by the talented textile artist, ODocker, who reads blogs before lunch. Order your rolls of Frazil Pizza fabrics today! Toss those lines in style! upholster your boat cushions! wallpaper your galley or marine head with this eye-catching print!

2009 World Maritime Day Parallel Event

The IMO (International Maritime Organization)’s 2009 World Maritime Day Parallel Event was held last weekend on Chelsea Piers:

NOAA Hydrographic Research Vessel
208′ Ship Thomas Jefferson
(formerly one of three U.S. Navy survey ships, all named the USS Littlehales.)

Coast Guard Buoy Tender
175-foot Keeper class Coastal Buoy Tender James Rankin (WLB 555)

Coast Guard Patrol Boat
110′ Island Class Patrol Boat Bainbridge Island (WPB 1343)

Tug Boat
K-Sea Transportation Davis Sea

Coast Guard Medium Response Boat
45′ Response Boat-Medium (RB-M 45614)

Passenger Vessel: Statue Cruises ferry, Miss Gateway (sorry, not shown. She left before I could thaw out to draw her. Also, the advertised Staten Island ferry did not seem to be in attendance, but they are not far from this pier and our hearts.)

(not done yet! more to come on this event and the ships…)