Tuesday, February 03, 2009

If at first you fail, try, try, again....

This was taken this morning looking to the north east. The fog is rising along the Goat River and we have hoar frost on everything. The bird feeder is one of the many I built when I was building bird houses. You are actually looking at the back of the feeder. Sadly, the birds don't like this location except in spring and fall. I think here, on the north of the house is too dark for them.

So Blogger didn't like the number of photos first and then it didn't like the html which it had written itself! so we'll try this again. It actually is part 2 of Cozy heads, but given the computer's mind of its own.
This second picture is facing the north west and the fog is rising off the large flats which are a flood plain, now diked, of the Kootenay River. Some mornings with the fog it looks like a huge lake.

This third photo is facing North looking at Goat Mountain which is supposed to be a long extinct volcano and is a much smaller and less impressive mountain than the others surrounding us. The old wagon was used to haul logs out of the bush. It used to be in the poplars down below but we moved it up here to try to "save" it longer in dry location. Time is causing the wood to drop out of the rims of the wheels. "Time waits for no man", or woman either. We have been back here 19 years. The time has gone quickly.

Because James and I only heat with wood we don't go off on overnight jaunts in the winter and if it's REALLY cold we don't leave the house for more than a few hours as one has to feed the fires. Now we have settled into a more comfortable winter pace. The cats were not amused to see it snowing yesterday morning. I think they thought I had "fixed" that! However, we only got around 2 inches which was very slick in the morning and melted by the afternoon, except on the driveway. In that we have a good 1/4 mile of driveway and it was all ice, the snow was actually an improvement.
James and a fellow artist friend have been painting the bathroom in the library to look like an aquarium. There are nearly life sized seals and all manner of fish and sea gulls and..... In that one wall is curved it only adds to the look.
I go along and sit in a nice wooden rocker and knit. I have been knitting toques on round looms. I started doing adult sizes but the last few have been little kid sized and they are just too much fun! I put pictures on Facebook of the adult ones and one child's. Most of these are done with a double yarn so by varying yarns and adding novelty yarns one can get some really fun hats. I have spent WAY TOO MUCH MONEY on yarn but I think I'll be able to sell them. The different colours and textures are quite fun!
For 15 years I built and sold rustic, arty, functional birdhouses but with the problems I have had with my hands the doctor and I decided that building the birdhouses was making me need more hand surgeries earlier. It has taken me a year and a half to be able to say "I quit." and the thought still goes flitting through my brain as it was a significant part of our income.
However, "I quit."
A year and a half ago my girl friend and I organized our 40 year high school reunion, I had two hand surgeries and had had multiple ones the previous 2 summers, was still trying to bake for the farmers' market and build bird houses, and we mostly emptied my mother's mobile home so it could be rented out. However we ended up storing more than we should have and I hit grid lock, mentally and physically.
I wouldn't call it a depression, and I did continue coordinating ArtWalk with all the shows and openings that entailed, and doing openings for James' shows but I've spent an awful lot of time sitting in a comfortable chair. I am hoping to crawl my way out and actually making something again feels good. I still aspire to finding another medium closer to art than craft but this is fun just now.
I'm also trying little by little to get through some of the physical gridlock, so that has been my life. It is a time of losses for us all. Our parents, those of us still lucky enough to have them, are not as they were nor are we.
This Christmas I bought myself Dragon Naturally Speaking so I can get my grandmother's diaries in print form on the computer so they can be shared with her other grandchildren. Grid lock and procrastination being close bed fellows I haven't loaded it on the computer yet.



1 comment:

Shirley Goodwin said...

Hope the gridlock breaks! Your photos are absolutely gorgeous.