snow

Isn't it pretty?

This is by no means the worse storm that we have ever had but it seems that since Christmas, we have been having at least one a week. And apparently we are suppose to get more on Tuesday. Sigh.

Waaaahhhhhh

Warnings

Fredericton and Southern York County
10:45 AM AST Saturday 05 February 2011
Snowfall warning for
Fredericton and Southern York County continued

Snowfall amounts of 15 to 30 cm during the period beginning this evening and ending near noon on Sunday.

A low pressure system will track across the Bay of Fundy early Sunday. Heavy snow will begin this evening ahead of the low and will be ending near noon on Sunday. Along coastal sections of the Bay of Fundy the snow will become mixed or change to rain. Snowfall amounts of 15 to 30 cm are expected.


It doesn't even have the decency to happen during the week.

Enough already

Every year, about this time, I start to get a little cabin feverish. The big Christmas rush is over and there is no break until Easter.
I had to stop by a friends house the other day to drop off a DVD she lent me and I noticed that one of her kids (I am assuming) had dressed up her garden buddha before the snow came.

I feel as cold as he looks. And some may say that he is suppose to have a look of serenity on his face. I think that he is a little disgruntled.

And speaking of insanity, two weekends ago, I went to the local Saturday Farmers Market. On the way home I happened to notice some rather strange tracks on the sidewalk. Now I have been known to step outside in the winter in my Birk's to drop the garbage on the street for next morning pickup. Or pop out to get something out of the car. There has to be little to no snow, and it has to be a very short trip.  Even then I end up with snow on my toes. Apparently the same rules do not apply to everyone!

I noticed the very distinctive tracks of Birkenstocks and followed them on the trek home for 4 blocks! They then veered off of my path and continued on. I might have followed them just to see how far they went, but it was cold and I just wanted to get home. I am still shaking my head.

Happy New Year?

Already? Where has the time gone?
Actually, I know exactly where it went. There has been a flurry of weaving and dyeing and selling, sadly mostly undocumented. There have been some minor health issues, which have decreased my productivity and my desire to put words out into the screen as the case may be. There has been life itself which, while I have been trying to do less, seems to conspire to make me feel like I am running on a tread mill with no end in sight. The Christmas break has been heavenly but sadly not anywhere near long enough.


Some good things have been happening here.
Mira created a wonderful snowman in the front of the house

He has some crazy eyes that she made out of wood knobs that she found somewhere and painted

Sadly some jerk knocked the head off. She learned a lesson about art in public places. I really don't understand those who take pleasure in destroying others work. She managed to salvage the eyeballs and will try and rebuild him.

And we had some snow the other day after many days of rain. I asked one of the kids were Bill was and they said out side shoveling. I didn't realize how he was dressed for the task until I went to ask him a question.

Real Canadian or Real Man or maybe both?

He said that he had to come in because his hands got cold.
I hope that it won't be so long until my next post, but until then, Happy New Year!

Back Yard

Some people have flowers in their yards.

Hmph.

Some of us still have snow.

Although there is a show of a promise.

Happy Easter

Even though it is snowing ( here is the weather forecast)

Snowfall warning in effect.

Today

Cloudy. Periods of snow beginning early this morning. Amount 5 cm. Wind becoming north 30 km/h gusting to 50 this morning. High plus 2.

Tonight

Periods of snow. Amount 10 cm except 5 cm over western sections. Wind northwest 30 km/h gusting to 50. Low minus 1.

Monday

Periods of snow ending in the morning then cloudy with 60 percent chance of flurries or rain showers. Wind northwest 30 km/h. High plus 2.

But the egg hunt is on in the house. Or as I prefer to call it, Home War 3. Nothing like chocolate to bring out the greediness in a bunch of children.
As for me, I made a big egg. It was a paper vessel for a show that opened Thursday. Did I get a picture of the final object? Well, in a way. I had a photographer from work take some pictures for me because I needed some good pictures for a submission to another show. And seeing as the deadline was that day, I didn't copy any of the pictures off of the CD that he gave me. As soon as I find my jump drive I can get them from him. Or wait for my CD's to be returned at the end of the month. Or I can go to the Crafts Council Gallery and take a pathetic picture on my own. We all know how great a photographer I am.
This picture makes it look HUGE. It is about 18 inches high and maybe 12 inches across.
Unfortunately, this Easter is not happy for all. My friend Joe had his apartment building burn last week. I know that everyone got out alright and that Joe is fine. I haven't been able to pin him down so I don't know if he found a new place yet. I do know that he was staying in a hotel and that he was wise enough to have tenant insurance. Joe is a collector of artwork and the thought if all of his paintings, prints, photos, drawings and other artwork being damaged is heart-wrenching. Add to that the thousands of books that he had collected, (Joe is a poet and owns a small independent publishing company) and his losses cannot be recovered. His apartment was not burned, but the water damage is extensive.

This is the second friend that has lost their home and/or possessions due to fire in the past year. Add to that my parent's barn and the massive damage caused by the flood last year too many New Brunsickers, and this add up to be a pretty bad year and a very depressing post.

On the bright side, I found a twill sampler in an old copy of "Handwoven" that a friend gave me that is 62 different treadlings for a four harness that uses the standard 1234 threading. I haven't done it yet but I put it on my "to-do" list. If anyone would like a copy, you can let me know, I'll get your address via e-mail, and send you one.

May all your chocolate be yummy! Happy Easter.

Sigh

Monday

Day: Snow at times heavy becoming mixed with ice pellets in the afternoon. Snow and ice pellet amount 25 cm. Local blowing snow in the afternoon. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50. High minus 5.
Night: Ice pellets changing to periods of freezing rain in the evening then to a few flurries overnight. Local blowing snow in the evening. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming northwest 30 gusting to 50 overnight. Temperature rising to zero in the evening then falling.

On a brighter note...Did I show you these?

Silk noil scarves

Hammered

No. Not that kind of hammered. No booze involved. No hammers or nails either.

Just snow. Lots and lots of snow.

And wind too.

So much wind that when I opened the front door there was a little tiny drift that snuck in under the so called weather stripping.

Out the front looking right.
Out the front looking left. I was surprised to see that the steps were relatively clear. That wind at work.


So I did what I normally do when showing you our lovely snow. I went to the back door and this is what met me. You can see the latch in the door jam just about where the snow ends on the left side.

And a close up of the snow in the yard. The wind brought all the snow to the back yard. The fence to the left is 6 feet. so that means that I have about 5 feet of snow in my yard.
Spring is suppose to start in less than a month. Not in my back yard!

In the mean time, schools are closed across the province, the college is closed, UNB and STU are closed, the buses are off the roads, doctors offices are closed, my dentist called and my appointment was canceled, RCMP have issued a warning for people to stay off the roads and travel at your own risk. Which means that if you venture out and get in trouble, they are not required to come help you. The fellow that is in charge of roads and streets (sidewalks too I'm guessing) was on the radio this morning and said that the drifting is very bad in some cases reaching over 6 feet.

And the snow and winds are to continue throughout the day.

Please don't tell me of your crocuses. I don't think that I could stand it.

PHBBBTTT

...to winter

My street. You can tell it is mild because the you can actually see the road!
The house across the street. And yes, those snowbanks are as high as the roof of the porch (which you need to walk up 4 steps to get to).


My sidewalk. If you said "What sidewalk?" you would be right! It is 1:20 pm and the snow stopped last night around midnight. I think that the city's snow removal budget must be pretty close to being gone.
Drat that groundhog.

Whump

Snow storm! Blizzard warning!
So I go to look out the back door and this is the sight that greets me.

The street with the lights is one of the main streets in the city. Barely cleared. The problem is that the snow is very light and fluffy, and the wind is very strong, so once the plows go by the wind move the snow right back into the void left behind.

Here's the driveway. Hmm. Shoveling fun!
Snow. Snow. Snow. And our street that hasn't yet been plowed. And probably won't be plowed for a while.


The back yard. And on the right of the photo, the other side of the back door. Covered in snow.


And I just realized that this is post 501 for one thread two thread! I feel like I should give something away.

Any one want some snow?

Hairy Scary Yarn

A couple of years ago, I inherited a bag of fiber from a former teacher. In it were a couple of hanks of jute. At the time, I didn't spin, but I thought that it looked pretty cool and I liked the colour and so I tucked it away for "later".

Later actually came. I have been working on a couple of felted vessels (here and here) and I decided to do some knotless netting on them as well as some beading. On the smaller, rounder blue one I used waxed linen and some glass beads. The shape reminded me of Anasazi pottery and so I stitched a few zig zag designs.

The larger one reminds me more of an amphora. Both of the vessels were felted over a flat pattern, and then once they were semi-felted, I threw them into my front loading washing machine. The small blue one, I checked frequently. It came out lovely and puffy. The larger one was forgotten in the chaos of the day and came out with a bit of a ridge where it had flattened out. I turned it inside out and put it through again and another ridge appeared. Sigh. Maybe not the best idea I ever had. I wanted to do some netting on it too but the waxed linen seemed too fine. While looking for something else in the shed, I discovered the bag of fiber that had been gifted to me. I decided to spin some of the jute to use with the larger vessel.



I have not spun anything like this before. The fibers are long and strong and every now and then I come across a clump of.... something. Not the easiest thing that I have ever spun, nor the tidiest. The stuff sheds like crazy and there are bits of fiber everywhere. It is something to be spun outside in the summer time. Unfortunately, it is spring and flood season and tomorrow I will update you with what effect today's rain has had.

In any case, Nicole came by and looked at the yarn that I was spinning and said "that scares me!" And she said it more than once. So here is the first bobbin of my hairy scary yarn that will be used for knotless netting on my large amphora like vessel.

And in roving form......

Here it is up close. I suppose that I should be spinning it wet, but I actually like the hairy part.

Tomorrow, I am back at work. It may prove to be an interesting day. The waters have risen quite a bit and with the rain that we had today the flood forecast is expected to reach the same level of the 2005 flood. Over 500 homes affected that year. And depending on the rainfall in the next couple of days, we may reach the same levels as the "Flood of '73" Here are a few images from the past few record floods. Most notably 1936 and 1973.

river watch 2008

We live along the St. John river. We also live in the great white north. And in the spring, the sun comes out and the white stuff (snow) melts. All of the resulting water has to go somewhere so it heads down hill and ends up in the river.

In case any of you missed it, we had a lot of snow this winter. Which makes for a lot of melt water. Which makes the river level rise.
I had been pretty much ignoring the rising river this past weekend but upon hearing that people were predicting that this years flood would be as bad as the Flood of '73, I decided to hoof it down to the river after work and take a few pictures.
The blue thing above and below is a pedway that crosses above the busy road that leads to the bridge. It connects to the trail system that runs along The Green beside the river. Or as the case may be, under the river.
Today we are having rain and I'll try and get a few more photos after work again.
This is also an issue for my parents. The farm is on the flood plain and most springs, this isn't an issue. The fields get flooded (which is good) but the houses are pretty much ok. Most may get a little water but not a lot. This year may be different.

And What To My Wondering Eyes Did Appear....

But a liberated barbecue!

The Marvelous Mamoo took heaven knows what tools along with the shovel and the help of a couple of kids and freed the barbecue. Well, all but its feet, but seeing as it is not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, I think that is just fine.

Thanks Mamoo.And thank you for displaying your amazing talent at getting the kids to do things that I can't. I couldn't even get one of them to bring me the shovel yesterday. I don't know how she does it.

First day of spring?

Nothing like the sounds of ice pellets in the morning.

Yes. This is another whining post.

We heralded in spring with a snow day for the kids. I had worked an extra day a couple of weeks ago and just "held" it so that I could take a snow day when we had a storm. The sitter (Mamoo) had to come in from outside of town, and seeing as I am rather fond of her, I don't want her to have to take chances on bad roads.

We had some snow last night, ice pellets and freezing rain today, to be followed by rain this afternoon. I have to say that I am heartily sick of winter. Pretty soon I will be sick of early spring. The snow banks in the above photo are over my head.

I remember back to that day in early February, the one called "groundhog day" around here, others call it imbolc. The basic premise is that if some critter shows it's face and hangs around for a while, we will have an early spring. I think that this tradition is just one of hope. "I hope he doesn't see his shadow", "I hope spring comes early", "I hope winter will be over soon."

Living in this part of the world, I have come to a conclusion. There is no such thing as early spring.

My plans for the day include laundry, cooking, cleaning, some weaving and spinning (I hope).

Do I have travel plans?

Nope. I'm not stepping out in that!

Small Steps

We have a week full of sun and slightly above freezing temperatures coming. Or so the weather page says at this time. That will hopefully diminish the snow banks a bit and melt some of the hard packed ice on the side streets and sidewalks.

Yesterday I hauled all of my fleece away from in front of my loom so that I could put on a warp. I chose Midnight Garden for the simple reason that I already had the perfect colour weft in my stash. The other three scarves will have to have weft dyed or purchased before I can weave them.
When I had moved all of my various fleece, batts, roving and fluff in general I realized that a fair number of them were in plastic bags. Apparently, fleece will felt just by sitting in a plastic bag. And having spun roving that this has happened to, I decided to do something to prevent this from happening again.

So I dug in my fabric stash and found about 3 yards of a thin cotton in a pale pink that I would probably never use for anything else, and made a bunch of bags to contain my fleece. I have to admit that it took me a bit of thinking before I remembered where this fabric came from. I have never purchased anything that was that colour of pale pink before so was at a loss as to where it cam from. Then I remembered Carol had brought over some fabric for me to pick through when she was cleaning out her mothers house last summer. It is a beautiful fabric, just not in my usual colour palate.

Not everything needed to be bagged, and there are still a few things that are in plastic (like the baby llama butt). The fleece that I am spinning usually resides in a gift bag that I can easily move around and will sit upright beside my chair while I spin.

All small steps heading towards my New Years resolution of getting more organized. And while we are mentioning resolutions, I have to admit that I am having mixed results in the "drinking more water" one. There are days when I drink my two litres (or more), and other days when I don't get anywhere close.

It's Official

The February Blahs have passed and I now have the March Doldrums. We still have 200 feet of snow and ice. Yes, the days are a little longer, and that is good, but I want to put away my down parka and get rid of my winter boots. And sun. Check out all of the snow and flurries in my future! And right now the radio is talking about all the snow up north of the province which, when it melts, comes down the river and rushes by Fredericton and leads to flooding. Oh joy. Which leads me to another concern. Our garden is under at least 3 feet of snow and it's on the flood plain. So I don't think that I will get my peas in early this year. In fact, I'll be lucky to get anything in the garden until mid May. Sigh.

I did make up 4 warps out of my hand spun yesterday so for those of you that have put up with my whining, here's a little reward.

Now I need to unearth my loom from all of the fleece that is in front of it and I can start weaving.

Blue ......

I am having a hard time naming this one too. It reminds me of blue water surrounding some tropical island. There is heat, relaxation, some fancy drink with an umbrella nearby. It brings me to mind of diving off coral reefs and being visited by colourful fishes. You know the type of thing that I mean. Even if, like me, you have never been to a tropical country, we have all seen the travel brochures. I'm talking Blue Lagoon without Brooke Shields.

I guess that I just dated myself.

One of the reasons for all of this tropical longing is because there are at least 4 people at work that have taken themselves and in some instances, their families down to a warmer place while the rest of us have been left to deal with yet more snow.

Here is Simon laying on the small snowbank out our front door.

And Liam standing in front of the garage. And yes, that lump in front of the garage is indeed a car.
This year has definitely reminded me of the winters when I was a kid. Lots of snow. So much fun if you don't have to shovel.

Come on Spring. Anytime now would be good!

Snow Day. The Valentine's Edition.

As suspected, schools are closed today, roads are in horrible condition, both UNB and the Craft College are closed until noon. I won't be going in this afternoon because I don't want my mom (the babysitter) to have to drive on slippery roads.

Here is a shot of yesterday that I took on the way home.
This mornings offering of the house across the street.
Streets and the driveway that are icy. The city crews are concentrating on the roads and the sidewalks on the main streets. Which means that our sidewalk will probably not be plowed for a couple of days. I am NOT looking forward to walking on them.

And yesterday after I got home from work, Liam and I set off for the grocery store to pick up a few things for supper tonight. I was short a few esential items for Scandinavian Chicken Salad. that is going to be our supper tonight and the forcast was for rain yesterday evening. I didn't want to be out in it.
Liam (not surprisingly) said that he wanted a treat, and I agreed on the condition that he act as my pack mule and carry the groceries home. He readily agreed. We ended up in the junk food isle and he chose a sugary drink. He only complained a little bit on the way home.
I can harldy wait for supper time!

Update: the link to the recipe is fixed. Thanks to Bill for pointing it out to me.

Rain, freezing rain, ice pellets, and snow

20 cm of snow followed by an indeterminate amount of ice pellets and freezing rain turning into 25 mm of rain? Hello! Some consistency here would be nice.

How much do you want to bet that I am NOT going into work tomorrow? Thursday is my dyeing day. I look forward to it every week. I get to spend all day in the dye kitchen playing. Sigh. What's not to love?

It's all so pretty......

but I think that I have had enough.


We have had two more storms since the last one that I complained about and another one on the way tomorrow.


And instead my usual shot of more snow falling outside my door, here are a few of some of the trees on my way to work at the end of last week.

I love the no parking sign in the middle picture. It seems a bit obvious to me.



Keep warm and safe.

Oh, yeah. For all of you who are feeling a little envy at all the pretty white stuff that we in the great frozen north are experiencing, come on up and shovel my steps and drive way. It's beginning to get a little stale for me. I'll make you a great dinner for your pains.