The Sun Turns

Have you noticed the longer days we're getting?  The first few weeks of January mark the turning of the season after the winter solstice.  The sun reaches its furthest point south, and starts rising each day further and further north on the horizon.  I mark the change by the point along our fenceow where the sun rises.

Dec. 20, 2016 - The Winter Solstice

Fri. Jan.  13, 2017 - Today

Look carefully; spring is on its way!

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Good-bye Roxie!

Suddenly today we have to say good-bye to our beloved dog Roxie.  She had been loved, and been a big part of our life here.  She`s the one who got me out for at least a short walk every morning, and most afternoons.  She was gentle, handsome, and loyal.  We will miss our `Grey County Mutt`terribly.

This is my latest picture of her, just a few days ago, and it`s the way I will remember her, lying in the snow outside and surveying her domain.

She was at the dog sitters while we were away for my surgery, and was sick overnight.  Then we got a phone call saying they had rushed her to the vet.  I won`t share the details, but after tests and discussion with the vet it was apparent that the prognosis was very poor.  And she was obviously in a great deal of pain.  We made the agonizing decision and said our good-bye.  When I can see clearly I`ll put together a longer post about her life with us.

Good-bye Roxie.

Schools and Churches

Apparently it will take longer to recover from my eye surgery than I realized, so I'm afraid I won't be reading and certainly not commenting on, many of your blogs over the next week or more.  But the doctor said everything went 'perfectly', so I anticipate improved vision in the long run.

On the other hand, I think I can manage a brief post with a picture or two, since I took typing decades ago and can type wihtout looking at my fingers.  I won't be editing any pictures though.  This is a beautiful old single room school a few miles north of here.  I noticed driving around the other day a number of former small churches and one room schools that are now residences.  I think I could make a good collection of some of them for the record.  Winter is a good time, because with no leaves on the trees they are more visible.

Since I have very little vision in my other eye, and the eye I had surgery on is still foggy with the swelling, reading blogs is particularly hard.  I have already given up on any where the font is small, or doesn't provide enough contrast, like gray lettering on white background.  But if I enlarge the lettering as big as it will go, to 3 or 4 words across on my ipad, and scroll across for each line, I can manage til I'm tired of it (holding my ipad 3" from my face).  If you want to see the blog that is easiest to read (and also one of the best written and most interesting, check out Al's blog on  'Travel with the Bayfield Bunch'.  His bold yellow lettering on a black background is the single easiest blog to read that I have found!  

After all our snow so far this winter, it's above freezing now, and we may get rain tonight.  We'll see what kind of a mess we have tomorrow! 

Winter in the Valley

On Friday it was too cold to entice me out on snowshoes or skiis, but bright and sunny, so I headed out for a photography drive, still seeking more blog pix for this time of year.  I got lots, and the drive reminded me of a lot of things that characterize winter around here, besides just lots of snow!

In a few spots as I drove along I got beautiful views of the valley - on a beautiful day too!  When we've had as much snow as recently, the plows come along later and push the snowbanks back further like this, to prepare for the next storm!

At least we have lots of pretty snow.  When it starts as rain and changes to snow and keeps on snowing, like last week, it tends to stick to all the trees like this.

As you drive around, the roads themselves are what you become most familiar with.  They cut across the valley in an arbitrary pattern imposed on the landscape 150 years ago.

And down in the bottom of the valley of course is the Beaver River, this shot in the middle of a part we canoe in the summer.

And along with the river come the bridges.  This is a brand new one, built elsewhere and lifted into place, to replace one damaged by flooding 2 or 3 years ago.

We totally depend on the snowplows to keep the roads open for us in the winter, this one a road grader with its wing blade out to the left.  I saw this one parked at the top of a long hill I was driving up, diddling and dawdling and taking pictures.

As soon as I passed it swung out its wing blade and headed down the hill, occupying almost the entire road.  It had just been waiting for me to get out of the way!  It can plow at least 15 feet wide at once.

But the valley also attracts those who like winter, like skiers at the Beaver Valley Ski Club.  Can you pick out a few skiers on the slopes?  All those trees dividing the runs were planted by club volunteers about 40 years ago.

For others, it's snowmobiles that come out once winter is here.  I see their tracks more often than the machines themselves.

But if I pass the local restaurant near lunchtime I can be sure of seeing a few machines - on the weekends there might be 20 or 30 of them!

Today it was sunny again, but quite windy, and the little drifts started creeping out from the snowbanks.  They get a few feet onto the road and they grab your tires as you pass through them.  You have to adjust your driving quite a bit here in the winter, and everyone gets snowtires.

In places where the snowbanks build up (many of them now over 6 feet high), if there's a wind, visibility gets to be a serious problem!  And this example is quite mild, 'cause if it was much worse I wouldn't be out there taking pictures!

Of course there's always the General Store in Kimberley where I can stop for coffee on the way home!  Having some eye surgery tomorrow; I will return on Wed.

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Winter Barns

Most of the landscape of the Beaver Valley is made up of farms.  There's a lot of woodland, but the basic landscape is a farm landscape.  So barns are not just buildings, they're the biggest symbol of the valley I drive through.  And I find with every barn I see, I wonder what sort of farming is being done, if any.  Over the years I drive by these farms in all seasons, and start getting an idea of how they're used.  I even get to know some of the owners.  I'll probably post about barns several times this winter, and those questions will be running through my mind each time.

This is a beautiful double barn, well cared for, and I believe still in use, at least for a few horses.  The farm extends all the way up to the escarpment cliff, but the upper old fields are growing back into forest, as is happening on a lot of the properties that back onto the cliff.

This second picture raises an interesting photographic question.  Photographing a barn simply as a building, I often tend to get close pictures like this.  But as I've gathered more pictures of barns around the valley, I find I like the upper one of these two better, showing the barn in the landscape.  What's your preference?

I stopped to get this picture first, but then noticed the big obvious yellow tag for the underground phone line which to me sort of spoils the shot.  I don't think the barn is actively used any more.

So I backed up 20 feet, and the tag almost disappeared.  But I couldn't get the same view exactly, because of a big shrub beside the car.  Always a better picture if you slow down and choose your view carefully.

I really like this barn, and I think the red doors really do a lot for it.  But I've never seen any sign of it being used.

This barn is being well cared for, a few new boards replaced last year, but I don't think it's being used, except perhaps for storage.

I bet in the first picture of this barn above, you didn't even notice this old tractor, apparently missing its engine.

And like the first picture above, this is actually my favourite picture of this barn, the barn in the context of the Beaver Valley landscape.  In fact, this is probably my favourite picture of any barn in the valley; I have views taken in all seasons.

Nice and sunny again today, but bitterly cold here, not a day for snowshoeing or skiing, at least not for me!  Mrs. F.G. adds her thanks thanks for your interest in her fibre art.

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The Barn Collective

Mrs. Furry Gnome's Fibre Art

I'm sure you've all wondered what Mrs. F.G. does while I'm out hiking and taking photographs, so here's the story.  Today, have a look at her sewing studio and the current projects on her design wall and sewing desk.  These range from creative quilts to what I call fibre art.  Mrs. F.G. hasn't sewn a typical large quilt in some time now.

The fibre artist's motto hangs on the wall behind the sewing machine, where you can always see it in case you get distracted.

And this is the design wall today, six projects on the go, plus two small old quilts that live in the upper corners.  The design wall is 3 sheets of foam insulation, 2" thick and 2'x8', covered by a sheet of quilt batting.  With a few pins she can lay out her projects and visualize the finished project.

And here's where all that creative work gets done, the sewing studio, another new project being laid out on the desk.

And of course several stashes of fabric around the corners, in all the shades of colour you might need.

The big project, ongoing for 18 months now, is this intricate hexagon-based pattern, all done using English paper-piecing, in odd-shaped blocks that will all need to fit together perfectly at the end.  It will be about 4x6' and is entirely being done by hand.

When you put the blocks together, you get some incredible patterns.  There are 6 tiny pieces of fabric in the centre here, and 18 around the next ring.  The idea is that the points all have to meet perfectly.  To give you an idea of scale, this entire piece is about 10" wide by 8" high, with 35 pieces of fabric if you just count out to the pink ones.

It you look closely here at individual seams, you can make out the tiny stitches; there are about 20 stitches per inch joining all these pieces.  The loose threads on top will be removed as a later step.

English paper-piecing is done by cutting out stiff paper for each shape, and folding the fabric over these to then stitch the pieces together by hand.  This is the back view.  It helps you be more accurate in getting each shape exactly the same.

This is the front view.  All those little loose threads holding the paper to the fabric (called 'basting') will be removed, as is the paper.  And of course eventually it will have a layer of batting and a back sheet put on to be quilted.  This is just step one, piecing the design together.  I'm estimating next year at this time for the finished product!

This is an embroidery sampler that Mrs. F.G. worked on until recently.  Many of the projects she does now are chosen in order to learn a particular technique, this one to learn a whole bunch of different hand embroidery stitches.

 A Bumblebee

 and a flower.

This one was an exercise that the artist did on her own, practicing 'layering', and curved piecing, where the fabric is not all cut on straight lines.  It also illustrates how the quilting itself (the wavy lines across the 'sky') can be a strong part of the pattern.  About 20" square.

 And this exercise was done at a workshop, where you started with a centrepiece, and then tried to cut fabric in crazy shapes to highlight it, about 16" square.

Five fibre art dolls made three years ago guard the sewing studio, and serve as inspiration for more creative work!  Hope you enjoyed the complete break from my usual blog topics.  I'll share some more projects from the artist in the future.  Mrs. Furry Gnome thanks you for your interest!

The Red Squirrel

Got some good shots of the Red Squirrel that visits our feeder today.  Briefly I saw a second Red Squirrel poke his head up from under the deck, but it disappeared again fast.

Somehow I got the focus on these just right!  Even though these are all considerably cropped.

The Red Squirrel just sits under the feeder and eats seeds that fall to the snow uneaten.  I fear the Chickadees drop a lot of seeds they try to carry away.  And he was probably hungry after the past two days of snow squalls, which cover all the fallen seeds.

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I also got out on a photography drive today in search of photos that aren't just of the snow around here.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and I got 150 pix in a couple of hours, so starting in a day or two I'll have some other views of winter in the valley beyond the snow in our yard!