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I'm blogging over on http://www.caffinara.ca. Please update your bookmarks.
I’ve had a debate going on in my head these last few weeks about what to do about my blog- should I keep blogging, should I stop, how much will I miss it, why am I blogging anyway? The Northern Voice conference I attended a week ago made me proud to be a member of the geek community but is that enough to keep going?
One thing I know is I need to stop talking about myself so I’ve decided to take a break from blogging.
I truly appreciate everyone of you who has taken the time to read my thoughts, to leave a comment or said something about what I have blogged about on your own blog.
I do intend to keep blog reading and flickr gazing.
Labels: blogging
I’m in Vancouver all weekend attending Northern Voice at the University of British Columbia. It’s a conference about internet applications and how to integrate them into out personal and professional lives.
The weather is surprisingly sunny. I’ve found myself leaving the beautiful faculty of Forestry building, where the conference is held, to wander around the campus looking for old haunts. There are snowdrops in full bloom, violets and even a few crocuses in the sunnier spots.
Labels: Northern Voice
I feel wrung out, something like how I imagine I would feel after psyching myself up to jump off a forty foot cliff but landing it safely, with my arms, legs and most importantly my head still intact.
It’s work pressure. How I resent the way it makes me feel, I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t sit still. I wish I could stop doing this to myself. As Robert would say, they are not paying me to take my work home.
We were about two thirds of the way up, it was colder, the snow had lost its crust , it was steeper and as I turned around to look at the view I saw a perfect line down between the trees. Suddenly I wished I was on skies not snowshoes.
It always happens midway through winter- the mercury rises, the sun comes out, the top layer of snow melts then freezes, melts again refreezes etc, all the snow falls off the trees becoming wet, sticky and crusty. The only way to get out is on snowshoes. Yet it's still fun. And I was able to convince myself that that skiing would have been terrible.
We hiked up there for lunch. It was colder and I was glad I had packed my down jacket.
I love the way the trees get this frozen wedding cake icing look
Labels: snow, snow shoeing, winter
Update: you can find me on Ravelry here.
I was invited to join before Christmas, back then I put up a bare bones face page and forgot about it. Yesterday evening I went back to it.
I started looking at patterns for cardigans and bags. I found it interesting to see how people knit the same pattern and had it coming out so differently- using different yarns and colours, making small adjustments, alterations and additions to the pattern. Making it their own.
It was so easy to be able to fave or queue a pattern, design or other users project. I was really having fun so this morning I spent nearly five hours entering in all my knitting projects and uploading photos. I have kept a ball band from every type of wool I have used for every project. Now with Ravelry I can keep track of the needle size I used for each project, the pattern and designer and my thoughts when knitting it.
I could even keep a separate inventory of all my knitting needles, all my knitting books, magazines and pamphlets and every ball of yarn I own. Not only can I keep track of the knitting stuff I own but the stuff I want to own, may someday own or can only dream about. In addition to all that I can keep track of my knitting friends or friends I....
If you want to be a member of Ravelry you have to put your name on the waiting list. The founders of Ravelry ( Casey, Jess and Bob) make it clear the reason they have a waiting list is not because they want to be snobby but at present they only have "one Casey code monkey to keep up with updates and bugs!" And Ravelry is still in Beta, that makes all us Ravelers guinea pigs.
Labels: knitting Ravelry
I saw this over a year ago but just dug it up, after been reminded of it while listening to Stash and Burn to remind myself how fast laura Chau can knit. I'm jealous.
Labels: knitting
This morning I cast on the enough stitches to make the smallest size of my next project, Claude designed my Anna of My Fashionable Life
I was knitting away happily, although in the back of my mind I thought the whole thing looked loser than it should be and was probably way too big. Eventually, after listening to the entire latest episode of the Knitters Uncensored podcast I took out my tape measure to check. No point in getting upset. without further thought I ripped out the two inches of knitting I had done. It hurts less if you do it fast.
I had a lot of baking to do, bagels, oatcakes and a chocolate soufflé cake for supper. In between shaping the bagels, washing the flour off my hands, rolling out the oatcake dough, cracking the eggs, melting chocolate and beating cream, I knit gauge swatches.
I had to go down a whole needle size to approximate what the pattern called for. Even after casting on the required number of stitches I obsessively measured and remeasured how much space the stitches took up.
When I bought the kit to make the thrummed mitts I was given two skeins of wool. The mitts took most of one of them. With the other skein I made a hat.
I used the pattern for swell from knitty. I only used it as a guide because my wool is too thick and it’s variegated. After I had knit about half of it I decided to add in some left over mohair. If you look closely you can see the fuzziness near the top. I also crochet an edging around the whole thing and used it in the tassels.
I’ve always wanted a hat like this.
There is still wool left over so I’m making a scarf. I’m using a needle about six sizes too large because I want it to be light and airy and knitting it in garter stitch because I want the process to be mindless.
Labels: knitting
Anne Enright's Man Booker prize winning novel, The Gathering, is an engaging, deliciously written story. I read it curled up on the couch, wrapped in a wool shawl while feasting on Rogers Victorian creams and sipping cup after cup of rooibos tea.
Enright has a way with words which makes me jealous. Rather than repeat staid clichés she approaches her subject, three generations of an Irish family, by climbing inside it making it fresh like new leaves in spring.
Veronica, the protagonist, is off to identify the body of her dead brother. Memories of old hurts, dimply understood childhood events and her adversity to having sex with her husband crowd her mind as we follow her to the scene of her brothers suicide and back again, home for the funeral.
We get her grandmother, her mother, her father and her dead brother painted in glowing technicolour, every detail rendered in loving brush stokes as bit by bit the complicated myriad of decades, all fading together in the back of her mind, is dismantled.
It’s Enright’s prose that kept me greedily turning the pages. Every last word of it.
A jar of Baobab oil from the body shop has stood on my shelf for years. A sample of Burt’s Bees vitamin E body and bath oil was in my Christmas stocking. Several months ago I heard on the lipgloss and laptops podcast that olive oil was a great substitute for shaving cream. Even longer ago I discovered a delicious recipe, from Pink of Perfection, for a homemade body scrub containing grapeseed oil.
Homemade Sugar Scrub
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. grapeseed oil (olive oil would be great, too)
splash of vanilla extract
Stir to combine and slough away
The other day I found a tube of pure coconut oil in the cosmetic section of my local health food store. I took it home and transferred it into a glass jar, mainly because at room temperature, around 19 C in my house, the oil is a white solid and hard to squeeze out of the tube. The heat from my fingers is enough to soften it as I rub it over my body. It’s absorbed quickly and leaves my skin feeling soft and supple.
Since December I’ve been using an organic rosehip oil, made by Kosmea an Australian company, as a moisturizer for my face. It was recommended by the women in the health food store. As usual the company claims great benefits for its usage.
The point for me is that it’s pure and unadulterated if any of the other stuff is true that’s a bonus.
The only problem with all this oil in my life is the greasy ring left around my bathtub. But, a quick wipe with a damp cloth sprinkled with my all time favourite cleaning powder recipe, a mixture of borax and baking soda soon gets it sparkling white again.
Labels: beauty, housework, weather, winter
I finished these mitts and socks just in time because the mercury has plunged again. Unfortunately all this, frostbite can occur in seconds, type of weather is not good for my skiing life; I had to cancel my ski trip to PK today.
I got out of swimming for the iceman this year because I wanted to spend the entire weekend watching movies. Except I chickenend out, I thought I would be too ansy to sit still for so long so I only bought passes for tonight and tomorrow.
I was hoping to ski Sunday but most of my ski buddies are in the iceman, away on other trips or hobbling around on crutches.
I finished the socks on Monday, started the mitts and have been knitting every second of my spare time, even at the dentist, I finished them this morning.
Sunday at PK might be only slightly warmer. Maybe I should buy a movie pass for Sunday....
Labels: knitting, prince george
It was five years ago today I started this blog because I was bored.
For complicated reasons I had left my life back in the BC Peace, sold my sheep, abandoned my friends, resigned from my volunteer positions in the sheep association, the public library, the parents association and others, to move reluctantly with my family to Prince George.
I found Prince George to be a big smelly city full of unfriendly, unhelpful people. I suppose I was homesick.
I don’t know if starting this blog was the tipping point but it sure gave me something to do for the rest of the winter.
Since then I’ve joined two outdoor groups and met and made friends with many interesting, enthusiastic, fabulous people. Robert and I have built our dream house although it still is not finished on five acres north of Prince George outside the city limits.
Unfortunately on really bad days we can still smell the pulp mill in the morning.
Eewwwwww.
Labels: blogging, prince george
The only problem with today is I forgot my camera. The weather was picture postcard perfect and for once the higher we went the warmer it got.
We did a ski tour in the Pine Pass. When we arrived it was probably minus 21. By the time we had put on our boots, activated our avalanche receivers and put the skins on the bottoms of our skis our toes and fingers were freezing. Nobody spoke as we followed each other past the cabins, across the sled run and up the mountain. We traversed quickly across the slope trying to warm ourselves.
I didn't stop moving untill the tips of my fingers and toes were toasty and the rest of me was sweating. Only then did I feel safe to take off my jacket, neck warmer and hat.
The scenery was gorgeous, lots of snow and blue sky. Every conifer tree or the bit of it that stuck out of the snow was covered in a thick layer of more snow like a rich cloak of clotted cream. We stopped numerous times for snacks and cups of tea from our thermoses.
Eventually we burst out onto the ridge ready to check out the terrain looking for the best place to ski down. It was very warm, it felt like minus 3, and there was no wind. I think it had something to do with a temperature inversion, where the air is warmer at the top of the mountain than at the bottom.
I really regret not taking my camera
I was looking through my stash of yarn for something suitable to make thrummed mitts with when Robert came inside asking me if I had a palm pilot to give away.
I remembered responded to someone's request on Freecycle, a worldwide network where you can get rid of stuff you no longer want and aquire stuff others no longer want. I thought of my Palm 111 in the bottom drawer, in the desk in the basement. I fired off a reply so, now here he was to collect it.
I ran downstairs, spent a frantic few minutes digging around in the bottom drawer, pushing aside cables for crossover ethernet, reular ethernet, usb adapters, firewire, a whole box of cables for dailup, a couple of very tiny hard drives, two battery charges, one for use in Europe. and my Palm Pilot.
I found a couple of triple A batteries put them in, pressed the on button and there was the welcoming screen, The thing is at least ten years old. Anyhow I gave him a brief lesson then ran back downstairs to look for the software. I found it, as well as a whole stack of things, like every Mac installer disk from system 7 through to system 9. File Maker Pro, remember that ? Tech Tool for fixing classic Macs, games like, The Sims, Doctor Brain, version 1 and 2 and Glider Pro, I loved that game. There was also a few promotional disks from Apple and software for printers I no longer own.
Why am I keeping this stuff, nostalgia?
If you liked Glider Pro go here to get a free version of the game for Mac OS X.
Labels: "Glider Pro", apple, macintosh, tech
My chances of getting my own photo of the Amphibex digging a channel through the ice on the Nechako river have been thwarted. The Amhibex is going home.
It only worked eight days out of the expected ten. Last Friday and Sunday Large amounts of ice broke away from the main jam causing the amphibex to spin around like a top and the crew on board to fear for their own safety.
The other problem is there is nowhere left for the freed ice to go, plus the city is anxious to try their plan, pumping warm water from the mill onto the ice in attempt to melt it away.
The ice dam, for the first time, stretches beyond the boundaries of the city and is now an astonishing 25 killometres long. It will be interesting to see what effect if any this warm water has on the ice dam.
Labels: ice dam, ice jam, prince george, prince george amphibex
Thrums are wispy bits of raw fleece, unspun wool or roving, twisted and incorporated into a piece of knitting. See some thrums, I have made in preparation for knitting my second sock, in the picture below. After inserting your needle into a stitch wrap a thrum around it and knit both the thrum and the stitch in the usual way. On the next row treat the thrum and the stitch as one.
The thrums form a thick layer inside the garment making it warmer. Like the author of Hello Yarn and after completing one thrummed sock I agree that there can never be too many thrums and that each thrum should be thick.
In my photo I have rolled down the top of the sock so you can see the thrums. Since a thrum is always knitted at the same time as a stitch it is visible on the outside making a nice contrasting fatter stitch. Notice the bigger stitches in the photo.
I'm working on finishing the second sock and hope to have it finished before the freezing cold weather, is over. It was minus 36 here this morning and with the windchill it was minus 46. Of course if I were a more conscientious knitter I would have had both socks finished before the cold weather arrived.
Labels: knitting, thrums, wool
As I write it is minus 27.3 outside, probably closer to minus 40 with the windchill. A very informative CBC article about how Environment Canada calculates and defines wind chill says:
It is not the same for inanimate objects- cars trees or rocks- they will remain the same temperature regardless of the wind.
Backcountry skiing, this weekend, has been a disappointment. On Saturday it was because the road into Sugar Bowl trailhead had not been plowed. Leaving my tiny car parked on the road was not an option because of the snowplows. We ended up paying to use the lifts at Tabor mountain.
Today at 6 am it was minus 15. Despite Environment Canada's cold wave weather warning we headed back out to Sugar Bowl. This time we were in Gary’s four wheel drive pickup. As we left town we watched the mercury plunge to minus twenty. We could only imagine how much colder the wind would make it feel.
In the few minutes it has taken me to write these words the outside air temperature has gone down to minus 28.4
Update: Here is a link to an article from environment Canada about the Windchill Factor. They even have a formula for you to calculate the Windchill facto based on the air temperature an the speed of the wind. Interesting stuff.
Labels: weather, windchill, winter
I’m in my car, on my way to my next client. In front of me the pink stained sky is giving way to shiny blue. My phone rings. with one hand I unzip my bag, poke around until I find its smooth, hard surface. Excitingly I flip it open. Only close friends and immediate members of my family phone me on my cell phone.
I stop at the corner to let a pedestrian shuffle his way across the icy street. Snow like wedding cake icing, compacted my thousands of tire treads is everywhere, filling in the ditches, banked up around lampposts, garbage cans and the edges of buildings. Four black lines are the only sign of traffic.
The voice on the other end of the phone is exuberant, happy, "whose this?" They say in response to my hello. The voice does not belong to a loved one and besides they would never ask such a stupid question.
It happens all the time, idiots dialing the wrong number. They are so persistent I’m beginning to suspect the phone company of handing my number out to someone else.
So, in my nastiest voice I say, "who do you want to speak too?" The voice at the other end, somewhat diminished, mumbles something I can’t quite make out. Still using my nastiest voice, I say, "you have the wrong phone number." I slam the phone shut, toss it back into my bag. A few seconds later It rings again, three times then again. After the second ring, silence.
It’s not that I resent strangers mistakenly phoning my cell number but the fact I have to argue with them, convince them that the number they keep dialing, is my cell phone number, only mine.
The other thing, the thing I resent most is I have to pay for all these wrong phone calls.
Labels: US election
This morning I cancelled my backcountry ski trip to the Jubilee Bowl because of the freezing weather, windchills of minus 27. All this cold meant lots of sun and blue sky. By noon it had warmed up a bit and the wind had died away. I put my camera in my pocket, put on my cross country gear and went outside.
The neighbourhood dogs came with me.
the exercise made me hot. I even took off my jacket and tied it around my waist for awhile. I soon put it back on again because even though the sun felt hot it wasn't really.
At home I filled up the wheelbarrow with wood and took it over to the house except I couldn't open the basement window. I thought it was locked but it wasn't. Eventually, when Robert came home, he managed to force it open. The runner was full of snow. It all fell off the roof yesterday. Some of it must have got caught in the window runner then, when he threw a load into the woodbox.
If we took the time to fill the woodbox up to the brim we would only have to do it about once a week.
Today the Eco Technologies amphibex was let loose on the six killometre icejam here in Prince George. I haven't been down to the River to see this machine in action. The photo above was taken from the Opinon 250 website. You can see a video of the amphibex unloading here.
Back before Christmas when the icejam first became a thorn in the mayors butt and while male city officials wrung their useless hands, a Prince George stay at home mum, used her own hands to type in relevant search terms on the intenets search engines. She found Eco technologies, a New Brunswick based business which had a machine, the amphibex specifically designed to break up excess ice on frozen rivers.
Jackpot. Except it has taken the officials and experts weeks to take her solution, turn it around in their minds, admit the brilliance of it and somehow try and make out that it is their idea in the first place. They are still struck with and still putting into action their solution, piping warm, 15 degree celcius, water from the mill over the ice in an attempt to melt it.
Update: According to the CBC this particular Amphibex comes from Montreal. For more photos of the amphibex take a look at diffuse's photos
Labels: ice jam, prince george amphibex
When I first heard the title of Jeffery Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winning novel I thought it referred to Middlesex, one of Englands 39 Counties. However the first words of the narrator Callie, led me to think otherwise.
Being Creek American Callie grows up in a traditional family. Her father and Grandfather eke out a living the only way they know how by opening up first a bar, in the basement of her Grandparents home, a restaurant and finally a whole chain of successful fast food franchises.
They spend their wealth on a series of Cadillac’s a new one every year and despite the realtors wish to keep immigrants out they move into to a large house in Grosse Pointe; which I gather to be a very classy suburb of Detroit.
At this point in the story I discover their new house is named Middlesex. Is this the reason for the title? and not as I had begun to assume, while reading, a reference to the protagonists sexual ambiguity. Being neither one hundred percent male or female, caught in the middle, Callie is some kind of Middlesex?
The story is accurate in its medical knowledge as well as historical events, the destruction of the Turkish city of Smyrna, American Prohibition, the Detroit race riots and the downfall of President Nixon.
Middlesex is a complex engaging read. I loved it. Does anyone have a copy of Eugenides first book? The Virgin Suicides. It’s next on my reading list.
I kept seeing an ad for this pattern in all my knitting magazines. I liked it a lot and eventually tracked it down online at the Artful Yarns website. Instead of their mediocre reccomendation I used a luxurious yarn, Knitpicks Panache ( 40% baby alpaca, 20% cashmere, 20% silk, 20% extrafine merino) It is very soft. The lace pattern is very easy and very quick to knit up despite all the resulting pieces I had to sew together. I used 2 sets of needles, size 3.75mm and 4.5 mm.
My next knitting projects are the thrum mittens and socks from Fleece Artist. I bought the kits from Stychentyme, a really nice knitting and quilting store in Jasper Alberta, when I was there last September.
Labels: knitting
The recipe is on the inside of the box of Bakers unsweetened chocolate. It calls for nuts, pecans to be exact. I would love to put nuts in my brownies but my husband is allergic to all nuts, even coconut. Instead I put chocolate chips in my batter. You can never have too much chocolate.
The recipe is very easy. The hard part is trying not to overbake them. If you do they will be hard like diamonds but taste just as yummy.
The January 12 edition of the "BC This Week" podcast has a great summary of the latest news about the Nechako River Ice Dam here in Prince George. Click here to download the podcast.
Betsy Trumpeter interviews First Anne Martin about how her and her husband are escorted out of their flooded home. Next she talks to John Brink, his business, Brinks Forest Products has been flooded for over a month. Last she interviews John Curry, a UNBC professor, about the ins an outs of climate change and what it means for the future of the Nechako flood plain on which most of the city of Prince George is built.
For a more controversial discussion on the ice dam and the people affected by the flooding go to this google list of links from the website, Opinion 250.
Labels: ice jam, politics, prince george, weather, winter
I went on a fabulous backcountry ski trip to a place which will remain unnamed. Bruce said he didn't want other people to follow us. Hah. However, in this photo, taken from the top of the ridge, you can just make out the meandering, frozen Fraser river below us in the valley.
We got in four good runs before skiing back down to the car. The last bit was in the dark. Despite wearing our head lamps Greg, member of the Trinadadian Telemark ski team, fell down lots. Of course we all know how much harder he works for his turns than us wimps on AT gear. His legs must have been jelly at this late hour.
I love spending the day outside, tromping up the mountain side, skiing back down making exhilarating turns in the powder, driving home in the dark and once there relaxing in a chair, propping my tired legs on the coffee table.
I meant to go to the hairdresser before Christmas but I never had time. Last week I was so frustrated with my hair I was willing to give a friend a pair of scissors and let them hack it off. However, I'm glad I waited.
A good haircut is always worth the wait. I should make my hair appointments all at once at the beginning of the year, every six weeks or so. That way I will have no excuse for terrible looking hair.
Labels: life
I can finally take a breath. I’m not traveling, visiting, skiing or working. I can sit around at home doing not much. Things like catch up on my RSS feeds, day dream about luxury knitting yarn, pure silk, mohair, cashmere and sea cell (made from seaweed) while browsing my favourite online knitting shops. I'm thinking about making the Icarus shawl from the summer 2006 Interweave Knits.
The amaryllis flower has shriveled up but there is a surprise in the form of another bud twisting around towards the window light. I cut off the old stalk in the hope it would straighten out.
I indulged myself by mixing up a dough of white flour, eggs, butter, sugar and yeast. After it had risen I rolled it out flat, spread it with more butter, brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon, rolled it up into a tube, cut it into rounds and let it rise once more. When it was puffed up and light as a cloud I baked the buns in the oven untill brown and the sugar and butter had melted into a delicious soft toffee.
Still warm from the oven I ate two, spread thickly with chocolate spread/sauce, I made by melting semisweet bakers chocolate in warmed cream. If you put it in the fridge it hardens so it can be spread on bread. Zap it in the microwave to use as a sauce over ice-cream. Mmmmmnnnn.
Labels: baking, cooking, gardening
It was Friday morning, three friends and I were in the parking lot of the Yellow Hawk trail head sticking skins to the bottoms of our skis. We lifted our packs onto our backs and headed up the easy trail towards the Murray cabin, situated in a valley below Murray mountain.
Once there we took the heavy stuff, food, sleeping bags and extra clothes from our packs, ate lunch and continued up. Skiing was awesome. It snowed every night covering our tracks from the day before, lovely.
Back inside the cabin we discovered the firebox in the wood stove was to small, its design was stupid, wouldn’t draw properly, and the wood was wet. Eventually we opened the cabin door and the firebox door, ensured the draft was wide open and cut all the wood into tiny pieces. It burned but not without saturating our bodies and clothes with smoke. I even woke up with a sore throat.
But the thought of all that champagne powder outside, thickly strewn over acres of slopes made the smoky fire bearable.
By four PM it was too dark to ski. After struggling with the fire we heated up culinary feasts of spaghetti with meat sauce and chick pea curry with rice. One of our brethren surprised us with a bottle of tawny port from the renowned Fonseca port lodge in Porto Portugal. Its fruity smooth deliciousness spiced up our conversation and made our many rounds of hearts hilariously enjoyable.
Oh, and did I mention the snow conditions were fabulous making for some amazing turns not to mention spectacular falls on the slopes ?
See more pictures here. Remember you can click on them to see them bigger
Labels: skiing
My driveway is a mess of rutted snow. It’s too much for my little car so I’m forced to park it on the road. Yesterday I got an involved message on my answering machine from the guy I thought I had hired to plough it. One thing he said, "The first time I came by to plough your driveway it had already been done," made my jaw drop.
Later I talked to him on the phone. He said he had never ploughed my driveway. So who has been doing it ? they’ve done it three times. He had no idea but it wasn’t him. Ok, so I guess that explains why it hasn’t been done all month and wasn’t done when we got home from holidays or since, despite all the snow we’ve had.
Only problem is, he said he wouldn't come to plough the driveway untill Saturday morning. That’s two days of walking.
All my handknit Christmas gifts got rave reviews.
For Charlotte I used the Twinkle Hoodie pattern by Wenlan Chia, from her book Big City Knits. I knit it with bulky weight Austermann Bombolo. The colour number is 06 using size 17 and 15 mm needles. I crochet an edging with brown wool and used 5 big brown buttons to finish it off.
Roberts sweater was knit with Silkroad Aran Tweed in tarten. I used a size five mm circular needle and a set of DPN’s, size 5 mm for the sleeves. The pattern is the Cobblestone Pullover from the Fall edition of Interweave Knits.
Three days ago Callum told me he had changed his mind about wanting a sweater. He said he wants his sweater to be white like the one he wore in Portugal, see picture. I don’t think it will be hard to emulate.
My current knitting project is for me. It is the Short Sleeve Lace Cardigan from Artful Yarns. I‘m making it with Knit Picks Panache in black.
Labels: knitting
1)The amaryllis is still in big beautiful red bloom
2) Leftover shortbread in the fridge
3)Sleeping in my own bed
4)A damp spot on the ceiling below the upstairs bathroom. The same bathroom we had to rip apart because of a leaky connection in the handheld shower and the same bathroom where the pipes froze.
5) Arriving home in the dark and seeing the driveway has not been ploughed. Consequently spending ten minutes roaring the engine and pushing and pulling the car through the snow, most of the way towards the house.
Happy New Year
It was a hairy drive down the snowy icy Coquihalla highway yesterday. We saw three horrible accidents. One involving a semi lying diagonally across the road, three munched up cars, the people in them probably dead. In Hope the snow was mushy. In White Rock it was gone. In Burnaby where one of my sisters lives there was a little bit along the sides of the road. In Vancouver it was gone and here in Victoria they hadn't had any snow. What a relief.
We are prepared for snow but down here not many people are, driving would be a lot scarier.
We are staying downtown on Government St. in a hotel recommended by friends There are lots of my favourite shops on Government St, Munro's Books, Mountain Equipment and Rogers Chocolates. We are off to find some breakfast, do some shopping then visit the inlaws.
Labels: holidays
We've had a wonderful three days of skiing. There was lots of fresh snow, the temperature was around minus ten and the sun shone more than it didn't. Today we are going to relax and look around the village, tomorrow we are driving to Victoria.
Tomorrow we're driving to Sun Peaks ski resort to spend Christmas with my family, then its over to Victoria for a few days then back to White Rock for New Years.I'm looking forward to skiing and visiting family and friends. If there is WIFI I may even blog.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Labels: Christmas
It's the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow is the first day of our winter celebrations, it's Robert's birthday, then Christmas then Callum's Birthday on the 27th then New Years.
The thermometer registered minus sixteen this morning. I've been shopping and wrapping and shopping some more. I spent a few hours priming the person, who will be looking after my plants at work, while I'm away next week.
I've got almost everything done except this sweater I'm knitting Robert for Christmas. I'm going to sit here by the fire, hot drink in hand, podcasts on the stereo and knit. 
Although, I do have to make a winter salad for dinner tonight with friends.
Remember that scene in the Bridget Jones movie, it was a Christmas party, when Bridget says something rude to Mark Darcy about the sweater he’s wearing. Mark Darcy manages to dispel the moment by saying, it is a Christmas present from his mother.
You don’t have to wait for your mother to knit you a Christmas sweater you can knit your own and it’s so easy. Head on over to, we hate sheep we love holiday sweaters. Click on window shopping to see others creations or start knitting your own, piles of fun.
Via Alison
Yes I did go skiing yesterday. Yes the snow was great, Blah Blah Blah. Although as the day progressed we had to go further and further afield to find untracked powder. At one point, while skiing down a great open area full of bottomless white stuff we thought we had not arced far enough left to get back to the chair. We feared we might be walking back along the highway.
But eventually as we skied lower we spied the cabins of the old sub division. Thank goodness. The trek back was still almost 2 K and no one, except some kid we didn't know, came by on a sled to give us a lift. The company of my fellow skiers more than made up for this slight deviation from the expected plan.
Labels: skiing
It has shrunk from the massive size of six killometres down to only two killometres long. As you can see, in the picture, the Nechako, on the left, has managed to carve a channel around into the Fraser, on the right. Much of the flooding has subsided but there are still business closed and people are not yet allowed back into their homes. For more pictures go here. You can click on individual photos to see larger sizes and read comments.
Labels: ice dam, ice jam, prince george, winter
I was not surprised to read a CBC news report just now, saying that the ice jam, at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers here in Prince George, is not expected to melt until Spring (April). Well Duh.
Last week the ice jam started to form up when Alcan released a lot of water out of its spill way at the Kenny Dam. They did the same thing last spring causing all kinds of havoc. Anyway, this time the excess water caused a build up of ice pushing the river over it’s banks, flooding the park, running along the roads forcing people from their homes and causing business to be shut down.
Officials were hopeful, some still are, that somehow the river would be able to carve a channel out of the ice and the problem would resolve itself. I suppose they forgot the all important point, that is is winter and only the beginning.
Experts hired by the Province said, trying to blow the ice dam up with dynamite would cause more problems. They said, the only way to fix it, for the future, is to build a very big dyke.
I’ve been meaning to go down there to get pictures. No matter what, I’m going there tomorrow.
Labels: ice jam, prince george, winter
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