2011 already! Where did 2010 go?

Best wishes for the year ahead. 

So far we've had a fairly open winter with sun and crispness.

Last time I wrote I had a nasty cold type of thing which hung on tightly for 8 weeks and I am still coughing but life continued.

James has had a show hanging at Kingfisher Used Books since early November and it will soon be coming down.

James and I did the regular craft fairs: one in Wynndel and one sponsored by the Creston Arts Council here in town, as well as James having been asked to show his work at the Images Art Show & Sale in Nov.

On the weekends where there were sales and Farmers Markets James and I did the "divide and conquer" and drove ourselves around the bend but we did it!

The poppy painting in the upper left corner is James' and sold as soon as someone saw the invitation.

In mid-Sept the Farmers Market moved from its outside venue at Millennium Park to inside Morris Flowers Garden Center where we continued until Dec 18.

I feel like I have been baking forever, We also sold James cards made from his paintings, mine made from post cards my grand parents exchanged in the early 1900's, my knit hats, Raku fired pendants James made, lathe turned candle holders James made, and tea cozies I have begun making. By the end of the market we took 2 tables. We will surely continue to need as much space as James also plans to plant a market garden for this coming year.

Our son and his fiance plan to marry in August so we won't be lacking things to do. 

 Here are a few of the tea cozies I'm making. The body is knit and the flower is crocheted. These are for a 4 - 6 cup tea pot and sell for $25.00 + Shipping and Handling, tea pot not included.

 

January can be an enjoyably slow month but I have eliminated that opportunity and will be beginning a 12 week course at Kootenay Employment Services for people over 50 who want to start their own business.

I am thinking of new endeavors other than birdhouses and need to get on a better business footing. I also need to learn how people sell on line.

James is relishing the thought of his "12 weeks of solitude." 

He has been keeping himself busy building a 16 inch band saw from wood, a project he saw on You Tube, but rather than order the pattern he has been designing it himself, and it is quite the beauty.

James has an ongoing show of his work at the Coffee Creek Cafe here in Creston. The restaurant has been recently sold but the new owner wishes to continue showing James' work and that is good for us too. The cafe will be reopening this week with a similar menu, keeping the great Borscht we all expect, but the new owner plans to be open in the evening also.

New show by James

Well, January and February have fled. Of course February was graced with 2 weeks of Olympics - what joy and what a great excuse to sit and knit! Now on with life.
Here it is March already, my oldest cousin turned 70 today, and James has a new show going in to Kingfisher Used Books on Friday with an opening on Sat. The show will hang until the end of April.
We really must whack the studio/gallery into order out here as he has much more and varied new work to show. This show is to an un-named theme.
Meanwhile there are hints that James will help me by cutting some parts for me and taking apart a drawer pull display that I have had quite the time with. If he can do that I may even get some bird houses done for this spring. We shall see. I've always done all the parts cutting but I'm so short the dust is always in my face and I hate that particular part. I don't intend to have houses all over the Kootenays but some on hand here and a couple local spots would be OK. I always give one to the local Rotary Auction. They do a lot of good both here and away.
Yesterday the sun shone and the snow drops were alive with honey bees, as were the compost piles and, as we get the old coffee grounds from Joe, at Kingfisher Used Books, last night I bet there were a whole bunch of bees on a caffeine high.
Yesterday I bought the most beautiful book I have ever seen.
It is "Landsdowne's Birds of the Forest" with paintings by JF Landsdowne and text by John A Livingston.
I bought it at Kingfisher. I had it set aside while I decided which books of mine to sell to help pay for it. It was $32.00, but new would have been much, much more expensive. While some books are referred to as coffee table books this is a desk or big table book: too big to hold in your lap and look at. It is the combining of Landsdowne's "Eastern Woodland Birds" and "Northern Woodland Birds" and would have been easier read in it's 2 parts but I so love it. For each bird there is a page with preliminary pencil sketches of it, then the next 2 facing pages are the writing and a lovely colour painting. The sketches are more exciting to me from an artistic perspective than the finished illustrations.
James acquainted me with a lovely blog full of inspiration the other night.
It is: http://donnawatsonart.blogspot.com/2010/01/inner-stillness.html#links
Tomorrow I meet with a young fellow at the Creston Public Library to help me see where our web page has fallen off the rails. As it sits tonight no one, including me, can get at it to see the art work and I would also like to change some of its features and "blather."
I am still knitting many, many toques. I had to stop last year when I developed a trigger thumb and had to have surgery but now I am using softer yarns for some things and have taught myself to loom knit left handed - gotta get all those sparks firing in the brain.
I read that the huge Chilean earthquake has actually caused the earth to shift about 3 inches on its axis and shortened the day by a couple nano seconds. I don't really think I need a shorter day.
Mailings are going out for this year's ArtWalk: our 15th. Harry Miller has come on board and will be doing a lot of the foot work. He has coordinated the Christmas Craft Fairs for the Arts Council these last few years and done a very good job and this seems a fit for him. I think I can't retire from it yet as I'm still the "computer person."
This was a grayer day. We will see what kind of spring we get.

I think I will live!

Here are Bandy and James communing. There's something about a nice warm cat in winter.
I finally think I'll live. First James got the nasty cold/flu and then I did and it sure takes its time to shake off.
Skeeter is such a nice round little cat, so very different from when she came to us, all scrawny and emaciated. Mind you, she is spoiled rotten! but such a good little hunter. She has been regularly bringing great big voles up to eat on the deck, or under it. She may be getting them under the chicken houses. She'd like to bring them inside but we draw the line at that!
Yesterday was lovely and sunny and so bright with the frozen snow. On a bright sunny day there actually is a lot of colour to be found. My big rose bush is quite attractive with its red arching vines.

A friend was bemoaning her lack of snowdrops yesterday. Obviously she's on another timetable than winter in the Kootenays. We can hope for them in March, I fear, this year as they are under that heavy frozen berm of snow where James shoveled off the porch roof.
But summer will come and in the next 2 weeks I need to make up and get the forms for ArtWalk printed and then we'll have a big day addressing envelopes to mail out the entries. Time also to mail out funding requests.
There was good news on the morning news! Another coffee study has found non-smoking nurses who drink 4 or more cups of coffee a day have a 43% lower risk of stroke. That's a good enough figure one could take it up, if they weren't already a coffee drinker!
I'm thawing a flat zip lock bag of tomato sauce from last summer's tomatoes. I find the flat bags more space efficient and if you have a large freezer, which we do, freezing tomatoes as they ripen, and then, at your leisure thawing and making them into sauce (to freeze again) is an easy way to go.
This morning on Martha Stewart she and her guests were talking about what one should have in one's pantry. Well, maybe city people live with nothing on hand but I can't imagine not having their list of foods on hand and then some! It was obvious things like pasta and rice and chick peas and canned tomatoes, mustard and olive olive oil and bread crumbs: the kind of things one needs every day if one cooks, but then many people don't cook from "scratch" or at all, so this is the new money saving tip - cook!
I've still been knitting touques on the round loom (more pictures next time) and this weekend and next am taking a class on "real" knitting.

A Merry Christmas to All

When morning comes our trees and bushes will still be robed in snow, but this is a winter scene James painted a couple years back.
I have been carefully turning the Christmas lights out over night because of power concerns but tonight they are tinting the steadily falling snow - very peaceful from our vantage point but a real problem for travelers and others at this time. I just read Greyhound has suspended bus service from Vancouver until it is safe to continue. I sympathize with folks stuck in a terminal somewhere not getting home for Christmas.
Later today James and I plan to go have dinner with my mom at Swan Valley Lodge. It's not the sort of weather to take frail elderly out in.
I bought myself a set of Nifty Nitters (circular looms that do large spool knitting) and am making a few toques for this winter. It doesn't seem at this point that it ever develops a smooth rhythm like crochet or regular knitting. I do enjoy crocheting but haven't mastered knitting. I got the Nifty Knitters specifically to use with a red and black eyelash yarn my sister gave me to make a shawl. The pattern called for crochet but I could not see the stitches and I plan to use the circular looms and knit a black yarn with the eyelash and hope I can see that. Another of the joys of aging.
Saturday is Creston's Christmas bird count. I had said I would watch our feeder and hoped to have one on the other side of the house. I have not seen any birds at the feeder in a long time. They like it in spring and fall but really don't like this location in winter. Maybe next year.
Poor James got to celebrate Christmas Eve by plumbing as the sink faucet decided to spring a good leak. Unfortunately "progress" has changed the parts available and they no longer make 1/2 inch supply hoses. They don't even make fittings to go from the 1/2 inch supply valve to the hose so it will mean more parts and a more involved job. There's no cold water in the kitchen until at least Saturday when the parts stores open again.
Well, now it is 4:16 am and maybe I should try sleeping again. You would think I was waiting for Santa!