Frozen Frontier Flashback Friday

Hello Knitterly friends,
Lynn and I have started this for every other Friday...the 'Frozen Frontier Flashback Friday' otherwise known as 'FFFF'. We want to share with you some photos of us and the place we have called home for so much of the last couple of decades, Ross Island, Antarctica.

These photos are from my second summer in 1998.

I love looking through old photos! Used to be you would do that with a big photo album in your lap, but nowadays it's as easy as sitting at your computer and looking through iPhoto.

I found these photos of a knitting session back in '98. This is about the time I picked up the needles and started knitting again. My grandma had taught me to knit when I was a teenager, but I hadn't done any knitting since then.

At McMurdo Station, there is a regular knitting group, Stitch n' Bitch every Tuesday night. This is the longest running group activity at the Station. There is a long history of knitting in Antarctica and we're just carrying on the tradition: sharing, teaching, learning (and did I mention wine?)

In Antarctica, we have to make do with what we have available. If there isn't a swift (or a husband) around to ball up your skeins, you get creative...

It's also an amazing place to get out and about. The scenery is probably the most spectacular on the planet. One of the popular things to do around town is to climb Observation Hill, or 'Ob Hill' as it is affectionately called. It's a steep climb on loose volcanic rock, but the view at the top is worth it.

You can see Ob Hill in this photo, just poking up behind Robert Scott's Discover Hut.

At the top is large wooden cross, erected on January 20, 1913, a memorial to Britain's Robert Scott and his exploration party who lost their lives upon returning from a long and treacherous journey -- their bid to be the first humans to reach the South Pole. Unfortunately for them, Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat them to it, and planted the Norwegian flag there.

Here is the cross.

It bears an excerpt from an Alfred Tennyson poem "Ulysses" which reads, "to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." Potent words.

It is both exhilarating and moving to be at the top of Ob Hill. Hard to believe it's been 15 years since this photo was taken.

Now on to more knitting today. I have some exciting patterns I'm working up that I'll post about a bit later on. Happy knitting!