Settling Down

Things are slowly settling down now that my my pre Christmas show/sales are done for the year, although I'm still in "order fulfilment" mode, trying to get all the Christmas orders handled and out the door. While it seems that for every item I take off the top of my "to do" list, another three appear on the bottom, I am making progress and I should be able to meet all my deadlines. 

I have an odd follow-up to my post of a few weeks back (Nov 20) regarding the courteous thief who went through my vehicle and removed my parking change in its special cup, but left the GPS unit and all other items, which I appreciated. Fast forward to early last week when we were heading down the front walk with the dogs for a late afternoon walk. Jim spotted something in the snow by the walkway to our house, and when he picked it up, it turned out to be the stolen change cup from the car, thoughtfully returned after a couple of weeks of being MIA. I'm not sure if this is a thief with a conscience (although the few dollars in coins were still missing), or if they are blog readers and read that I wanted the cup back. Either way, it's an entertaining end to the story. 

The main concern for local residents these days is the horrendous ice coat on most streets and sidewalks since the big snow followed by the big melt of a couple of weeks ago. Shot one shows the glare of the late afternoon sun reflected on the ice of the streets in our neighbourhood. Most of the sidewalks are covered in glare ice as well, so walking is hazardous and stressful, and even the dogs are slipping and having their legs go out from under them. Needless to say, the turnouts at the stables and the roadways from barn to turnouts at Ebon Stables are pretty treacherous as well. Luckily the horses tend to be  sensible about being careful when the footing is so bad, but they are all getting energy build-up due to not being able to run around outside as they are used to. We really need a good dump of snow to cover the ice so we can all get on with regular programming as far as winter goes.

Shot two shows the interesting cloud formation I saw on the way home from the stables last week.

Shot three features an old barn that was scheduled for demolition last Saturday, so by now it's history. I learned about it from one of the barn owners, who noted my fascination with old farm buildings while at the Sundog show the previous weekend. She inquired about my interest in photographing old barns, and indicated that I would need to move quickly if I wanted to shoot this one. I knew I would regret it if I didn't follow up on this opportunity, so on Wednesday I headed out to the farm site to get some shots while I could. You can't tell from the lovely warm light in this photo, but it was appallingly cold that day. Temperature-wise it was only about minus 5 C, but there was a fiercely strong wind that put the wind-chill into the low minus twenties. I got the shots I was able to as quickly as possible before my hands seized up completely, then was more than happy to head indoors for a welcome cup of hot coffee in the farmhouse. The house itself is wonderful, a very well cared-for and maintained Victorian farmhouse. The barn was from the same era and they would have been willing to restore it, but it had shifted on its base and was structurally unsound and unsafe, hence the need to take it down. Another grand old pioneer building gone, but at least I got some photos.

On Friday we headed out to Solar Gardens to check out their Christmas offerings and take some supplies for their SPCA fund-raiser. I got this shot on the way home as we were approaching the city. This was taken around noon, and shows how little light we have been seeing on the many cloudy days of the past week. This is looking south over the South Saskatchewan River, which is starting to ice up as winter tightens its grip.

A little closer to the city, we came upon this fine raven having a snack by the side of the road. He was refreshingly non-spooky as ravens go, so we were able to slow right down and get a few shots before he moved along. It really helps to have decent light for raven photos, so as soon as the sun returns (if ever) I plan to go back to that area for more raven photos.

This week marked the launch of a wonderful new website, Network for Art Collecting (NAC) . This is a content-rich "go to" site for everything to do with art and artists in Saskatchewan. This province has a disproportionately large number of artists and fine craft artisans for the size of the population. Nobody quite knows why, but it's been that way for a long time. It's nice to see a site that gathers together such a lot of information on Saskatchewan art and artists.  I'm glad I took up the option of being a part of this comprehensive site. I'm in the "artists" area, under the Ws.