The yarn farm yarn

And while I was failing to make functional slippers Jeannette learned how to crochet and then made me a hat.

I definitely feel untalented right now.

Update: I forgot to mention that the hat matches a scarf that Jeannette made me last year.

Bummer of a trip to the felt ranch

So Jeannette thought that if baby booties were so easy that I should try to make her a pair felt slippers. Unfortunately I agreed to give this project a shot.

Now several hours later I have a few pieces of felt and one of the gnarliest 'slippers' I've ever seen. Ugh.

Back down on the felt ranch

After last Saturday's trip to the felt ranch I thought that there wasn't much more to do once the booties and owl had been finished.

Turns out that on Sunday I realized that I could make another trip back to the ranch to turn a handful of the scraps into something or other.  Of course, when I started the recycling project I was really just interested in getting a bunch of the scraps to stick together in something that resembled a ball.

Once I had a ball I decided to use a bit of the black wool that I had purchased (which, until then, had been unused).  From there the remaining bits and bobs just 'spoke to me' and revealed themselves as cat head components.

Now we have a poorly made felted cat head made from scraps and because I put a little bit of effort into it I'm not entirely inclined to throw it away.  Great.  This is the kind of thing we definitely need.

My dream car?

I'm not exactly sure why, but I love that I've seen a few Chevette's since we've been in Regina.  The presence of these cars have lead me on a real nostalgia kick because I don't think I'd seen such a car for close to 20 years (as they've been out of production in North America since 1987).

Anyway, I'm quite pleased to be living in a place with at least a handful of Chevette's kicking about for my viewing pleasure.

Oh, and I'm definitely starting to think that if I ever try to get some kind of 'vintage' car that it would have to be a Chevette.  Who knows, maybe I can pick one up on the cheap before they really become popular as collectors' items?

Big day on the felt ranch

The birth and anticipated births of a few friends' babies had Jeannette and I felting up a storm this afternoon/evening.

While I took care of most of the wool-into-felt part of the operation, Jeannette did an excellent job turning my raw 'fabric' into three dimensional structures that look like baby booties.

Oh, and in case you're curious - I did the owl all by myself.  And maybe for the first time in my life I've shaped something that isn't a piece of furniture or bread so that it looks like I hoped it would look.

Maybe if I'd been given some wool and a felting needle instead of crayons and paper kindergarten wouldn't have been such a struggle?

A tale of two storms

It seems that yesterday two of Canada's most important cities, Regina and St. John's, were hit with crippling snow storms.  Of course, these storms were quite different.

In St. John's/much of Newfoundland a very substantial snowfall was accompanied by strong winds and sizeable drifts.  Not surprisingly, many people throughout the province lost power - and there are apparently many who are still without power.

Of course, maybe the worst aspect of the St. John's storm (aside from the mass power outage and crippling snowfall) is the fact that for the past 24 hours the temperature hasn't been below freezing.  So all of this freshly fallen snow is in the process of melting or at least turning into slush.  Yum (especially if the forecast about lower temperatures later in the week comes to pass).

Not surprisingly, the way things played out in Regina has been a little different.

First of all, we had less snow and less wind (so our drifting wasn't nearly as bad).  On the other hand, I suspect we've had a touch less ploughing of side streets and we had side streets that already had inches of ice build-up so many side streets are almost impassable and will likely remain in a similar condition for at least the next few days.  Oh, and instead of the temperatures dropping to something that might allow melting of the snow the temperatures have dropped substantially.  It seems that a windchill of -29 is as high as it has been in the past 24 hours (when I was walking around in this weather it seemed cold but in retrospect I timed my walk during the warmest part of the day).

Anyway, while if I had to choose one of these two storms I'd likely choose the Regina storm it will, nonetheless, likely be with us a little longer than the already melting snowfall that recently befell St. John's.

A Few Quick Notes 595

-Though it was -10 tonight both Jeannette and I were commenting the day's warmth.  Sure, we both still wore jackets when we went to the grocery store, but I'm not sure either of us zipped them up.

-So, it seems that maybe at least a little residential snow clearing occurs in Regina.

When I came home from work I noticed that a few inches of packed snow had been removed from the roads near our apartment. Of course, these streets still have a few inches of packed down snow on them, and in at least one case the dreaded ruts are already beginning to re-appear.

-As I returned home from work I reminded Jeannette that this morning she expressed an interest in a return visit to a local grocery store this evening.  Of course, we could both remember that Jeannette asked to go to the store but neither of us could remember why she wanted to go.  Throughout our visit, though to no avail, we both kept trying to recall the original reason for our trip.

Not surprisingly, just a little while after we returned home Jeannette remembered that she wanted a new pillow.  Woops.

I guess we'll be heading back tomorrow.

-Today Neil sent me a link about oxalate content in certain foods that lead me to additional material on the same topic.  The real bummer of the whole excursion out onto the fast lane of the information super highway was that I learned that just about everything seems to have kidney stone causing oxalates.

Well, at least I still have water with lemon, right?

Kidney stones are the worst.

-But at least the days are getting longer?

A Few Quick Notes 594

-At -3 it's as warm as it's been for quite a while in Regina.  Amazingly, the current forecast suggests that the temperatures will remain above -10 for much of the week.  Weird.  I wonder if this means that if it's sunny we might even start to see some melting?

-One of the aspects of this Regina Winter that I've really enjoyed so far is that many of the trees seem to be completely enrobed in snow/frost.  Consequently, most trees have turned white - so they look like those white fake Christmas trees (an effect I didn't know was real until I saw it with my own eyes).

Of course, the photos I've tried to take of the effect don't really do it justice.  It is incredibly striking.

-I'm not sure how it came about, but last night Jeannette and I decided to head to a movie.  I guess because New Year's Eve is such a popular party/bar night I assumed that the movie theatres, if they were even going to be open, would be empty.

Turns out I was way off.  I don't think I've ever seen a busier movie theatre.  Not only were there few parking spaces available, but once we got in we found that the movie we hoped to attend had a long line-up outside the theatre.  By the time they finally started letting people in and we were able to grab seats the theatre was close to two thirds full (though we managed to snag satisfactory seats).  Maybe even weirder is that almost everyone in attendance seemed to be between the ages of 50 and 60.

I guess this last fact about the audience composition is a little weirder when you consider that the movie we were there to see was Django Unchained, a Quentin Tarantino movie about a bounty hunting slave violently securing the freedom of his wife.  Though as far as I could tell the audience seemed to like the film, though I'm not sure exactly how much they like it.

In case you're curious, Jeannette and I were both quite underwhelmed by the movie.  We both had the impression that the script needed a few more trips through the editing cycle, if not a few major story adjustments.  And Jeannette might disagree, but I thought the cartoonish violence didn't really do the story/historical reality justice (but I guess cartoonishly gruesome violence is kind of Tarantino's trademark).

-Oh, and for no particularly good reason I decided to make a batch of English muffins this morning.

Aside from the size (they were much too small) they turned out quite nicely and were easy to make.