Tropical Shores Week 2

It’s Week 2 of the Tropical Shores Blanket crochet-along I’ve designed for King Cole and this week is all about those tropical seas! 🌊

We’re crocheting 4 squares inspired by those bluest of seas… and the free pattern is available over on the King Cole website here:

https://www.kingcole.com/tropical-shores-crochet-along-blanket/

And here’s the YouTube tutorial from King Cole to accompany this week:

Of course, with so many gorgeous tropical squares showing up on my social media, I had to do a weekly round-up! And here’s the round up of squares that so many of you have made so far. Thank you to everyone who is crocheting along and has shared photos… the first grid is from photos shared on Instagram using the hashtags #tropicalshoresblanket and #tropicalshorescal and the second grid is from photos shared over in the Facebook Groups ‘King Cole Craft Along’ and ‘Coastal Crochet’… aren’t they all fabulous!

Do keep sharing… it’s always so lovely to see people’s progress…

When we visited French Polynesia 20 years ago, I remember being fascinated by the calm, crystal clear blue waters of the lagoons near the shoreline, whilst larger waves were crashing in the distance… so different to any seas I had seen before…

And below is the next instalment from the diaries I kept 20 years ago when I visited the Pacific Island of Moorea in French Polynesia together with my husband… 🙂 I’ve kept these diaries completely original… no changing of words, no editing, just the words and photos from me 20 years ago!! Enjoy…

Wednesday 18^th April, 2001

18.00

This morning we headed to the beach and used the ‘outrigger’ canoe that is complimentary for the hotel guests. What hard work! We intended to simply paddle to one of the ‘motu’ (meaning islet) which seem so close across the lagoon and very inviting. Whilst canoeing, as the water is so so crystal clear, we could see beautiful coral reefs in the water beneath us. However, the current was just so strong and we struggled to go in a straight line, let alone right direction! We soon realised that it wouldn’t be possible to reach the island in our canoe (small motorboats got there with ease) so wanted to head back to the beach. Not an easy task! The same strong current hindered our progress and we both started to panic slightly if we would be able to make it back at all! After a lot of effort we got to slightly calmer waters and gradually got back to the beach – not the most enjoyable canoeing we’d ever done!

We relaxed on the beach and swam in the sea and then it started to pour with rain – we ran straight into the sea and sat in the shallow waters simply to experience the sensation of sitting in a warm sea whilst it’s raining! Our towels back on the beach were soaked but have since dried in the hot sun. We came back to our veranda area of the bungalow and had lunch – bread, olives, a tin of mackerel in tomato and basil sauce and bananas – very nice. You don’t get so hungry in this hot climate. We read our magazines and were going to walk to the local shopping centre, but it started to rain heavily again. We are now waiting for 19.30 to come which is the time we reserved our table for in the same restaurant.

Extract from Steve’s diary: The water is very shallow and so clear, you can look down and see coral reefs and fish. However we soon relaised this was not going to be easy. Although we had been able to head out from the shore, we weren’t able to make any progress west towards the island, as the current was too strong. We then realised that if we stopped paddling, we would drift past our beach. The people sitting on our beach, where we launched from, must have watched us with interest as we paddled out to sea, then paddled like mad going nowhere, before paddling back again! After hurling this lump of a boat back onto the beach, an American guy appeared with his paddles, but after our accounts of strong currents and getting nowhere, we didn’t see him venture out!