Waxing cross country skis

Around 8:20 this AM I was outside poking around in the cupboards which line the sides of the carport. I found my cross country skis on a shelf next to a pair of crutches, a grain shovel and some old ski poles. I was wearing Polertec pants, Lifa underwear, Christmas present wicking top, ancient cracked cross country ski shoes and a windstopper polertec jacket. I decided to use "blue extra" ski wax.(-1 –7) The temp was minus three and I knew it would probably warm up. After inspecting my ski bases I decided to scrape off all the old wax before applying a coat of fresh wax. I spread the blue extra all over the base and rubbed it in with a sponge. Then I crayoned another layer on the kick zone. The wax worked great for the first trip around the meadow. The second trip was plagued with difficulties, either the wax wore off or the snow warmed up or a combination of the two. Back at home I took another look at my stash of waxes. I saw the blue extra had two temperature ranges the first one, the one I looked at earlier (–1 –7) was for fresh snow. The other temp range was for transformed snow, more the type of snow which was outside( –3-10). Hmmmnn, I think I should have used red special(-1 +3) instead or the purple wax which is for 0. Maybe I should have used blue extra on the whole base and red special on the kick zone for extra grip?

That was Christmas

Now that it's over and I've had time to get over my funk I going to tell you about Christmas.

Two weeks ago my son came home with the news that he had to work on boxing day. He has a part time job in big box retail. It pays minimum wage and requires workers to wear a uniform. When he told them he couldn't work boxing Day because he was going to his Aunties place in kamloops for Christmas they threatened him with termination. He was almost in tears, so we decided to forgo a big family Christmas and stay at home.

I boxed up all the Christmas presents and sent them off in the post. Since I didn't have time to buy a turkey… really what happened is both males in the family hate turkey so I decided to humour them, we decided on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding instead.

We spent Christmas eve watching old movies and drinking wine. The next day everyone got up late around nine, everyone except me. Unwrapping presents didn't take long. There was no turkey to prepare, I talked to my family on he phone, not the same. We didn't go for the traditional afternoon walk and we played no games, Apart from the dreary weather the day felt flat. I ended up sulking most of the day and all of the next day.

My New Years resolution is to always spend Christmas with as much family as possible, no matter what.

Skiing, Snowing and Knitting

A couple of days ago we went skiing at, Powder King. The conditions were passable at the top but deteriorated horribly towards the bottom. They need a ton more snow. Although, we still plan to go back there next Monday.

Yesterday I woke up to a white world, six inches of snow. This morning there is another inch. At least it looks like winter outside now even if the thermometer still hovers around zero. When the weather is warm the snow is wet, heavy and sticky making it hard to shovel off the driveway and walkways, great for snowballs and snowmen though.

I finished my hat. Yesterday I bought some double pointed needles, I’ve never knitted with these so it was an interesting half an hour. After it was done I threw the hat in a hot wash with a towel and some napkins, to aid the felting process. I used almost a whole ball of Patons Classic merino wool. My next project is a cotton face cloth and then I’m tackling the sweater.

Blog Brand Or Blog Personality

Halley wrote about the notion of blog branding. She talked about how the name of the blog becomes synonymous with the writer, how readers come to that blog specifically to read about that bloggers thoughts, feelings and unique take on life. This is perhaps obvious but only became clear to Halley when she visited several blogs and was disappointed to discover they had been taken over by guest writers. It is ok, she says, to invite guests on your blog but it must be made clear that someone else has written the post.Only by linking back to the guest can readers can get some kind of idea what is going on and who these guests are.

In a sense blogs are becoming brands. they are a synopsis of the writer, but I have a quibble with the term brand. Clothing brands and food brands have a particular cachet associated with them because the advertisers have created it. A pair of jeans or a can of soup does not have an innate sense of itself it is only an inanimate object, not capable of creating meaning for itself.

Blogs, on the other hand, are created by individuals, people resplendent with history, a unique sense of themselves and the world around them. The writing on a blog is imbued with that persons personality. Unconsciously the words the blogger chooses to construct her sentences reflects herself. Despite the bloggers efforts to put on a "public persona"her real self still shines though.

Calling something a brand equates it with all kind of capitalistic connotations. In my mind it becomes something created specifically for the purpose of making money. People are not commodities, they cannot be bought or sold. A better term instead of blog branding is blog personality. Think of, for example, the name Johnny Carson. He was the most famous American talk show host of all time. People tuned in because they liked his humour, his view of life and the people he chose as guests to appear on his show. Watching his show was like reading someone’s blog. You knew what to expect and you liked it.

Learning to Knit

I have become obsessed with of all things KNITTING. I've spent most of my day perusing the pages of Knitty. Despite barely knowing how to cast on I'm determined to knit myself a cardigan. My past project, the MELLLy bag, was an interesting, easy undertaking. My current project, a felted wool hat, has been taken apart twice because I’m knitting it in the round, gosh I’m picking up he lingo fast. I had a huge problem with the thing twisting. I know I won't be able to concentrate on a knitting pattern long enough even if I could decipher it. I need something very simple, no fancy stitches, for my first cardigan. I'm considering the top down cardigan from Cosmicpluto knits or Madeline from Berroco. I want to use Patons Classic merino wool because it's readily available in lots of colours. I know I will have to rely on knitting swatches, different sized needles and probably adjust the numbers of stitches to get the intended result. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

FTP blog Part Three

Since I can’t beat it I've decided to live with it. I've redone all the links on this site and changed my email address. Everything should work as expected. If it doesn't let me know. Resignedly my index page for this site remains caffinara.blogspot.com and the rest of the pages are caffinara.ca but all the links point back to blogspot. I'm not happy about this, seems I’m at the mercy of Blogger and their inability to fix their FTP software or whatever their problem is.

In other news we attending another Christmas party tonight. This is our third celebration if you don’t count the two birthday celebrations we have already had.

AND We found a rebuilt Volkswagon Golf Transmission for $1200. This is the cheapest one so we brought it over the telephone. After adding in labour, taxes and freight, the total price to get the golf up and running will still be less than $2000. Let's hope this is soon.

Winter Solstice

Today is the shortest, darkest day of the year. I still can’t FTP my Blog over to my new webspace, Our car doesn’t work, the snow is melting (so much for skiing) and everywhere is covered in black rocks and salt, the cities efforts to get rid of the ice. Even so I slipped twice today as I walked along the sidewalks, falling backwards, using my arms to catch me. Visions of myself breaking something, an arm or a leg, did not improve my mood.

I guess the future will be brighter. It can’t help but be since from this day forward, each day will stay lighter a little longer.

Counting Cars

We are no longer the proud owners of a black Volkswagon Golf, circa 1996. Hang on rephrase that. We are no longer the proud owners of a working black Volkswagon Golf, circa 1996. Yes it happened, the wrecked transmission finally seized in third gear. I was driving or trying to drive, after the transmission seized, home from the bus station. It took me a moment or two to realize what was going on, I couldn't gear down to make the corner from fifteenth onto Tabor. Help!

The golf, covered in ice from this mornings freezing rain, is now banished to an out of the way place next to the garage. Our other vehicles, a Ford escort 1993, belonging to my son and the truck, a Mazda four wheel drive 1988, fight over which one gets to sit in the carport.

Please… let there be a newer vehicle in my future.

Because it Has Character

We are looking for pine, big pine, fat, heavy, huge logs to make our house. Yesterday, in the frigid weather, we stood inside a partially finished log house to look at its popup roof, its double beam under the edge of the loft and its multitude of screw jacks. Ours is only going to have one screw jack. Log houses shrink. Screw jacks are put under vertical supports so as the house moves down you screw the vertical log closer to the floor. This way as the house settles holes don’t appear in the walls. Other things employed to accommodate shrinkage are shims under the stairs and horizontal spaces above the windows. We are going to have a popup window on the east side of the house. With the space gain there will be room for a bathroom and a library as well as the master bedroom. There will also be a double support beam under the bedroom end of the loft, where the stairs will be.

It was only minus twelve but I was freezing. I couldn’t feel the under floor heating in the basement. Gaping holes in all the walls waited for windows, stacked against the walls. The floors were covered in sawdust and only one of the doorways had an actual door in it. The house had been built mainly out of spruce. The support beams were fir. I recognized the reddish rings where the logs had been beveled. Fir is stronger than spruce and pine and Nordik Log Homes have lots of it in their yard. Fir also costs more. We want pine because it has character. If you know of any fat, straight pine logs let me know. We need two truck loads.

Christmas Decorations

This month the theme for a month of softies is "Under the Tree". I made this tree ornament years ago. It is one of a collection of ornaments I made out of scraps of felt, lace and embroidery floss.

How to Fix Stuff

When something goes wrong it usually happens in threes. When the transmission in the car began sounding funny we solved the problem, sort of, by deciding we would drive the car until it dies. Thus putting off the expense of a new/old car.

Earlier this week my ibook stated having serious issues, resulting in numerous complete erasers and partial erasures of the hard drive, multiple installations and reinstallations of the system software and several attempts to fix whatever was wrong with the apple care CD and Tech Tool. What a mess. I'm still not sure if it is really fixed.

Yesterday I put some frozen chili into a microwavable bowl to warm it up for a pot luck Christmas party. The microwave has been making a lot of noise lately anyhow I pressed the start button and went to get dressed. Even though the bedroom is some distance away from the kitchen I could hear the rattley noise it made. I willed myself to ignore it. When it stopped I took me a few moments to notice. I ran back to the kitchen. Sure enough the microwave looked dead, a dark silent box sitting on the end of the counter. "Oh well," I thought, "a microwave is a lot cheaper to replace than a car transmission."

Back in the bedroom as I slipped into my party clothes it occurred to me that maybe it was something to do with a fuse. There aren't a lot of plugs in my thirty year old kitchen. One has to be careful not to plug in any other appliances when the microwave is on because a fuse will blow. I went downstairs. The fuse box looked quiet, no tell tale lights as I flicked the fuse in question back and forth I felt hopeful. Upstairs again and back in the kitchen a green light was flashing on the microwave. When I touched the start button it roared into life and finished defrosting and warming up the Chile. Now, I thought, If only every thing in life was as simple to fix.

Be the Envy of your neigbours and friends, Build a Snowboard Run on your Front Lawn.

Outside everything is covered in a white shroud of hoarfrost. Snow lingers on, covering the lawn and the flowerbeds, helping to protect the crowns of my precious perennials. Leafless tress extend dark branches up into a steel grey sky. The road, in stark contrast, furthers the dismal notion of a black and white winter world. The gas furnace comes on way to much, but one look at the plunging mercury outside forces me to forget the expense. I snuggle up in my sheep skin slippers and wool sweater, cradling my cup of tea and my latest book, more on that later.

Outside again the old wooden skateboard half pipe sits proudly in front of the large picture window, a misnomer since there is nothing picturesque about a busy urban street. this summer the half pipe graduated to "mountain bike jump" and has now been redefined as a device on which to do rails ollies and other snowboarding tricks. The kids spend hours outside in the dark, shoveling the snow off the flower beds and piling it up on the half pipe and around in front making a long smooth run across the lawn.

These days being outside in the dark is becoming easier even if its minus fifteen and you have to wear a sweater under your down jacket two pairs of mitts a toque pulled down to your eyebrows and a scarf wrapped around your mouth and ears so that the only body parts exposed to the biting cold air are your eyes and your nose. Doing ollies under a street light has never been so much fun. The only downer is when your mother comes outside and tells you to pack it in because she wants to go to bed.

Photos from Grizzly Den

Reading my post from yesterday it sounds like I had a lousy time this weekend, not true despite all my angst I had a great time and I want to go back. This picture was taken on Sunday on our way back for lunch. The cabin is at the end of the ski tracks. To see more pictures of this trip go to my Grizzly Den page on flickr. Remember you can click on any picture to see it larger or view the whole set as a slide show.

Grizzly Den Weekend

I took another step and swore under my breath. My skies, firmly attached to my ski boots, were getting heavier with every step I took. The sticky wet snow was balling up under my bases. The only way to get it off was too lift my leg and bang my ski pole against them. I tried waxing my skins but the snow still stuck. We had hoped to arrive at the cabin three hours ago, at noon. I was feeling a little pissed. Apart from the horrible snow conditions, god knows why I can’t pick a cold weekend when the snow is powdery, to go out skiing, the fourth member of our party was having knee problems and feeling a little unsure because this was his first time on back country skis and I was beginning to realize the trip wasn't really shaping up to be a skiing weekend but more a bushwhack/slog on skis.

At 7AM when we left town we didn’t know that. At the highway turnoff to Grizzly Den we unloaded the sled and rode twelve kilometres up the snowy, logging road to the trail head. It had been raining off and on. As I climbed the steep, waterlogged, snow covered trail I tried not to think about what the return trip would be like. After ten minutes we reached Eight Mile cabin. Here we picked up our male companions. Now we were walking on our skin covered skies, through trees. Despite having resigned ourselves to the possibility that we might be forced to drop "Down Hill Skiing" off our weekend want list we felt exhilarated and glad to be outdoors.

Realizing we weren't going to make the Grizzly Den cabin by noon we stopped among the trees for lunch. The fourth member of our party wanted to turn back because his knee was hurting and he was worried he was holding us up. Eventually, dosed up on ibuprofen, he decided to continue. We forged on. It was like walking through Peace River clay in the springtime, something you only do once then try to avoid therafter. The second member was behind me at this point. Grizzly Den cabin was almost his second home. "See that clump of trees," he said, "when you come around the corner you should see the outhouse." I forgot about my heavy snowladen skies , sure enough there was the A frame roof of the cabin. Taking the shovel off the hook above the door I cleaned the snow off the steps. Someone chopped some kindling,someone else lit the fire and we filled all the pots up with snow. Within minutes it was dark. We lit the lantern, unpacked our down sleeping bags and settled in for the night.

The next day was full of blue sky, sun, three centimeters of new snow and the mercury hovered around minus one. Yay! It was not perfect but way better than the day before. In single file we set off towards one of the surrounding peaks for some skiing. But the fourth member had problems getting any kind of traction on the steep slopes, he kept sinking. Once again our pace slowed. I stopped to take photos of the fabulous view. The peaks in front of us, across the valley where the Fraser meandered by were in Kakwa park. I recognized Mount Ida and Mount Sir Alexander from the fabulous trip I took there this summer.

At the top we ripped off our skins in delicious anticipation of the ride down. We weren't disappointed. The shiny sun and blue sky more than made up for the less than optimum conditions. By the time we arrived at the pass over to teh cabin it was one o'clock. The thought of negotiating the icy lower slopes tempered our decision not to attempt the peak again for another downhill ride. We ate lunch at the cabin then set off for the bottom. The second member, determined to salvage the day, insisted we follow his old flagged trail from last December for an awesome decent. It would have been awesome if there had been more snow to cover up the deadfall, willows and devils club. Instead we spent ages hacking our way through. We put on our skins hoping they would slow us down on the icy steep stretches. I still fell down a lot. By the time we reached the bottom, where the sled waited, it was dark.

The sled, a tiny Polaris, could only handle the weight of two people. I decided to ski along the road with the second member catching the sled on its way back. We soon discovered the logging road had been plowed. Later we found out they had done it mere minutes after we zoomed through on the sled. If we had only known …

We skied about three killometres then the ice on the road completely disappeared. We took off our skis and started walking. Around the corner we came across the stranded sled. The fourth member had volunteered to put on his running shoes and jog the remaining nine killometres back to the vehicles, what a trooper. At this point all I wanted to do was go home. I collapsed on the sled to wait, snuggle into my down jacket and look at the stars. An hour passed then thirty minutes. It was getting colder. We decided to walk towards him. All kinds of scenarios, went though our minds, perhaps he had slipped on the ice and broken some body part or had difficulty backing up the SUV with the trailer attached. The moon played tricks with our minds, making us think we saw headlights shinning on the road up ahead. We walked almost two killometres before the light we saw on the road turned out to be the real thing. What a relief. What an adventure. On my next ski trip I want there to be champagne powder and lots of it. Surely it's time.

Publishing a Blog to your Own Website

I'm frustrated and annoyed. A couple of weeks ago I decided to switch my blog over from publising on blogspot to publishing on my own ISP. It has been one of the stupidist descisions of my life. About 30 percent of my blog got moved over then blogger's FTP software shutdown. It is like Blogger turned off the FTP publishing tap. No more for me. It's upsetting that in order to keep my blog updated I have to publish via blogspot. Sometimes, because I want it to happen, I switch back over to FTP to my webspace just to see if it might work. Hah I'd be better off hoping to win the lottery. Anyway the Piss off is that once I've switched over to FTPing my blog over to my own webspace It takes forever to convince Blogger that Caffinara belongs to me and its perfectly ok ( although I'd rather not have to) let me publish caffinara via blogspot.

Until Blogger can figure out how to fix their useless FTP software, regrettably I'm stuck halfway between Nirvana and Plebeland.

December Birthdays

As I've said before December is cake month in our family. It is also Christmas which means excess and secrets and spending time with family. This year because my son doesn't want to lose his part time job we are celebrating at home. He has to work on boxing day. I usually hide presents under my bed or secrete them in the closet or the office or spare room. This year because everyone knows where I hide stuff I've been forced to wrap the present the minute I get it home. Most of the presents are gone now. I shipped them off a couple of hours ago in an enormous box to my family in kamloops. My family don’t all live there it's just where we've tended to converge for Christmas, in recent years. I got my daughter to hide the birthday presents under her bed. Some of the wrapped Christmas presents are in plain view stacked under my chest of drawers. I'm hoping this will deter the present seekers from the other presents I have yet to wrap, hidden in the pantry.

Quilt

This Quilt was very easy to make. I cut big squares out of polertec and sewed them together. I used the edges of teh black fleece as a sort of self binding, turning them over, encasing both the quilt batting and the backing fabric and sewed it down.

Fourth Harry Potter Movie:Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy

Having devoured book six last July and before that reread book five to bring myself up to speed seeing Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire was all fun. As I watched it my memories came whizzing back and I was soon immersed in the mesmerizing magical world of wizardry. Director Mike Newell does an excellent job of cutting to the quick, revealing the main points of the story all the time staying true to its spirit.

Much to his friend, Ron?s consternation under aged Harry has been entered into the Triwizard Tournament. The goblet of fire spits out his name so compete he must in three magically challenging tasks and if that?s not stressful enough Harry also has to pluck up enough courage to invite a girl to the Ball. The special effects and computer generated images blend seamlessly with the story board sets and actors . The story has a darker plot than previous books. Many of the cute touches , whomping willows, Bertie Botts every flavour beans and the talking pictures, to name a few, are missing as Newel constructs a tightly woven tale, expertly threaded between the forces of good and evil.

The film is the best yet and if Newell is around to direct the next installments I for one can't wait.

Memory Quilt

This quilt is for my daughter. I made it out of fabric scraps left over from previous projects. Every piece will remind her of an outfit she used to or still has, a cushion cover or curtains that used to hang in her bedroom. It took me hours and hours to cut out all the pieces and sew them up into squares.The design is my own, loosely based on the log cabin pattern. It was fun to make. The quilt I'm making for my son is a lot simpler and unfortunately will not have the same memories associated with it.

Skiing in Powder

The cold weather we've been having lately and the snow which fell Saturday night and most of yesterday is good news for us outdoorsy people. Yesterday I caught a ride in a Subaru to the apr�s ski house. All the usual suspects were there. We drove towards Wells, to a place suitable for our different abilities. We all went off in different directions. The sky was grey and the snow kept falling as I stuck my purple skins to the bases of my skis and set off up the road. There wasn't really enough snow to cover up the clear cuts we were hoping to ski down. We kept climbing up, taking turns to break trail. The wind blew colder and we skied into a band of trees to shelter and eat lunch.

Afterwards we scaled the tiny peak. It was hard going because it was steep and the twelve inches of powder on top of a hard crust did not allow for much traction. Finally came the moment of reckoning. Time to take off our skins and demonstrate our skills. I didn't fall down once, despite the difficulty negotiating between stumps, windblown hardpan and pockets of powder. My calves still ache from the steep climb and I'm already thinking about next time.

FTP Your Blog. No easy Matter

On Tuesday I Paid my money to Baremetal for some web space to host my blog, Caffinara.ca. There are lots of reasons I want to get caffinara off Blogspot which we won?t go into here. I switched my publishing settings over to publish via FTP and clicked the button I was very excited. After about ten minutes the publishing page appeared to be stuck and eventually stopped. No problem I thought and clicked the publishing button again. This time 37% of my stuff transferred over. Then it stopped. I couldn?t get any more of my blog moved over again. I kept getting the following error message.

001 java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed outcaffinara/archives/2005_11_01_caffinara_archive.html

I emailed blogger and got the standard canned reply Using interarchy I can connect to my webspace on Baremetal no problem. I asked friends for help and I even left a message on blogger forums They all said the same thing make sure your directories are written right your ftp paths are correct etc. I've been tweaking my setting ever since. On December the first It wouldn't connect at all. It seems there are lots of others with similar problems

If anyone has any advice on how to get this to work. Let me know. In the mean time I'm back on blogspot.

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