Winter Olympics

So, the winter Olympics are over for another four years and once again I am in awe of, and horrified by the event.  I am in awe of all those wonderful young people who work their guts out for a chance to represent their countries with very little monetary support for most of them.  I am horrified at the media's attitude that it's all about the medals.  Of course, it's great to win, and being a true blue Canadian, the men's and women's gold medals in curling and hockey are wonderful, but no athlete should apologize if they don't win gold.  It's all too sad.  I am also struck by the sheer bloated spectacle that both summer and winter Olympics have become.  The amount of money involved with Sochi is beyond my imagination.  Anyway, rant is over.  (and, of course, I did watch!)

With the Olympic couch potato event that I was involved in, I was able to get stuck into some knitting.  We have one TV and that's at the other end of the house from my sewing room, so I had very little sewing output!

I decided to try a new sock technique for heels called the Fish Lips Kiss Heel by Sox Therapist on Ravelry.  I tried the toe up method a few times, but it didn't really click, and this method advertised that there was no picking up heel flap stitches and no holes left in the corners, so I tried it.  Very interesting! It's kind of  hard (no, impossible) to twist myself into the appropriate position to show the heel, but you can see it doesn't have the heel flap.

That's better!  Now you can see that there's nothing except a line of stitching to show the heel, with perhaps the only negative thing being the colour pooling.  But I figure no one but me will see that! I'd be curious to hear from anyone else who has used this technique.

It's still doing a lot of this, but the days are lighter and longer, so spring must be somewhere.

My faithful companion is still up for anything I do, although right now she's doing some Olympic snoring as she naps by my feet! The amount of whistling and snorkelling that an old dog can broadcast is amazing.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that she's ten, but other days her back end is weak and it makes me sad. But, she is a happy dog and she has the best life a dog can have.

The Joy of Snow

I like winter.  I know, a collective shudder goes through the blogoshpere, but really,  I do.  Take today for example--a deep blue sky with fresh snow so bright that it hurts the eyes. It is incredibly beautiful.  I like the extremes and the changes, from hot and humid summers to cold snowy winters.  Sometimes it's harsh, but  as I plodded along in my snowshoes this afternoon I was happy to be right here right now.

Last week I had reason to be grateful for snow.  I had a particularly Canadian driving experience with fresh snow and unplowed back roads.  Usually it's no problem until the snow starts making a bow wave over the hood, but that day I rounded  a curve and met a tractor completely blocking the road.  There was no time to to stop and precious little time to react, but I managed to avoid both the tractor and the hydro pole and got airborne as I headed towards the neighbour's pasture.  But, because of 10 cm of fresh snow, my car just landed with a metallic phflump and settled into the drift.  The airbags didn't even deploy!  Neil was able to pull me out with the tractor and there was minimal damage.  Since my car is 14 years old, a few more dents and scrapes make no difference to me!  I was lucky and all thanks to snow.  I could get out of temper and blame the snow, but really, it saved me too.

Winter also means more indoor time, which translates to more sewing and music time.  This week was a zippy pouch week, always fun.  I made a few for some friends of my daughter--I hope they like them.

I have no idea where this cat and mouse fabric came from, but I love it!

It's funny how all the bags have this strange trapezoid shape when photographed, even though in the flesh they are perfectly rectangular.  Anyway, this one is lined with a Denise Schmidt fabric that I love.  (I received an email last night with a picture of the delighted recipient, so it was well received!)

 And this one is made from fabrics my daughter brought back from Uganda when she worked there.  I've been saving them for something special again, but my self-imposed fabric diet means that I have started using lots of special stuff on the shelves.  It feels good.

And now a dog glamour shot--my faithful companion looking noble. I love the little icicles hanging off her whiskers!

Groundhog day?

I guess we all need the silliness of groundhog day to make us smile.  When February rolls around, it seems like spring should be here soon.  The sun comes up earlier (around 6:30 now) and it's light until 5 in the evening.  I find that even the birdsong sounds different.  It's enough to lift your spirits after too much darkness.  But we all know in these parts that it doesn't matter if the groundhog sees his shadow or not, there are still two months of winter left.

In honour of St. Valentine's, I made a little wallhanging for my mother's door at the nursing home.  She likes to have some decoration for each "holiday", so I oblige by making something for her.  It's funny how green the door seems when in fact it's beige.  At least the red looks red!

I made myself a little zippy pouch to hold the various small items that I constantly misplace.  I've had this fat quarter tucked away for quite a while, so it was time to do something with it.  The lining is a whimsical dog print that was also in stash.  

Around here, February means logging.  I'm not talking logging on an industrial scale, where everything is cut regardless of size, but the kind of sustainable logging that thins out the damaged and dying trees.  The woods here are so dense that if you don't thin out the trees, no light can get through to encourage new growth and that's not a good thing.  There are always trees that are dying, or rotten, or hit by lightning, or damaged by ice storms.  

Here's one that looked good until it was cut, showing it was rotten on the inside.

This one is so old that it doesn't have many leaves showing in summer any more.  It's probably rotten too.

This one is full of small holes and looks like prime woodpecker real estate, so it will be left.

Then after a while you end up with a barnyard that looks something like this.  Time to call the log truck to transport them.  I think these are all going for firewood.

The trouble with logging with old equipment is equipment breakdowns.  You can see the jaunty angle on the far side wheel --completely bent over!  Neil's cousin had to drag the tractor out of the woods with the skidder, which wasn't easy.  Our woods are very hilly and steep so it was white knuckle work until safely in the barn.  Nothing some welding can't fix!

And here it is two days later almost as good as new, or at least as good as a 40 year old tractor can be.  It's a good thing to have a man who was raised on a farm and can keep any piece of equipment going.