“Linda, it is a SUGAR bowl.”
“So?”
“So what would you use it for?” I asked her looking at the $40+ price tag.
“Uhhhhh…..” She gave the little one shoulder shrug, “Sugar?”
“And the last time you used a ‘sugar’ bowl?”
“well…ug….it’s really pretty.” I stared her down and she said, “A few years, okay!”
I had to see this bowl (bottom right) which she went on and on about when I had given her money to go and buy some pottery from Katy Fogg of Living Earth Pottery at the James Bay Market. She had bought stoneware vases and a small vinegar dispenser. I still ask her, as she takes it out to admire it, what she was planning to use that for. Spending spree was one of the gifts I gave her for her birthday. But it seemed that Katy had more pottery Linda wanted to buy than she had money. Katy had used the winter to make lots of new and nice mugs, vases, decanters, plates in a variety of colours: lots of new and wonderful things like the milk jug pictured below.
The two vases, blue and green in the original picture above were newly shown this week and only because it was a cloudy day did they not sparkle (like the milky way, when in the sun or the right indoor lights) with the iron and other crystals in the entire body of the vase. The tops of the vases are coloured by geodes of Willemite (made of silca and zinc and grown through 16 hours of 1000+ centigrade heat. The top of the milk jug uses a glaze of Rust Crystals which during the 14 hour constant heat firing turns into different colours and strands flowing slowly over the surface.
After travelling around Europe and driving down to San Diego, I realized that Victoria has so many artists that those here are under appreciated. I write this after having my Amarillo and brandy in cherry heated over my vanilla ice cream, another mix by Whimsical Jams ($5 a jar, and make diabetic flavors on demand – hand picked organic berries) picked up at the same market.
I had tried for a month before I could get out to see Katy Fogg, because the Market only runs in the summer and I wanted Linda to have the largest selection of choices she could. Towards the end of summer tourists and locals, find buying a $20 stoneware mug pictured below crafted with clay from Medicine Hat Alberta and Northern California is better than one from ‘tourist alley’ at the same price.
Katy uses local beeswax (Salt Spring?) in the glazing, all of which are non-toxic. They are durable for oven, dishwasher and microwave (not the iron ones please!). Remember these pictures do not show how beautiful they are, due to poor lighting. The large pieces and vases are the kind we saw in Oregon and California for two and three times the price (or in Laguna Beach for five to ten times the price) without the elegant and functional ‘cool’. Much less the durability of being used and washed by different care workers daily.
Essentially there are so many good artists, organic growers that we are spoiled an used to seeing eight pottery artists on a Saturday. For me, I am exacting. I need pottery which is like a swiss knife, a waterman fountain, a Thermarest or Danner Boots: it needs to be always work, it needs to be something made beyond profit: functional obsession. In pottery that means Good clean throws that are consistent and easy to use. To find someone who has spent 14 years going beyond that, adding the beauty but keeping the basic form and firing which made Stoneware so popular in the 18th century and sells them for $12-75 is astounding.
Before I was ill, I slept on the floor because of the scoliosis (using lung pressure to stop my spine from locking while sleeping) using only the Therma-rest lite. I used Therma-rest for over 14 straight years. Every night for over 5,000 nights whether camping, in open air, in bedrooms. And if it failed, they replaced it (the lite didn’t fail, through it did fray in fabric after 9 years so they replaced it free). And that’s what I experience in Kate’s work. And that's why I keep coming back.
With the summer here the flower and organic food sellers had come out with stalls. 
Linda and I we picked up some basil for the small window garden we are going to try. We also saw Laura Victoria who does handcarved and handsculpted soap (all soaps without artificial perfumes for those sensitive or with skin conditions) had created a new flavor, the lime.
It was delicious in scent. Laura-Victoria has been making soap for 28 years. Linda took a lemon of hers into work, to help create a nice aroma in her new office (those who work with her couldn’t believe it was soap, actual all natural, hand-milled soap). I got some bars to send out as presents.
Linda’s work? Well, while it doesn’t quite cover the costs it does have some advantages like going off to check out a light-house. 
Linda works with the Islands Trust, the go-to person for asking questions about the 400+ islands in the ‘Inland Passage’, the space between Vancouver Island and the Mainland (and 400+ is only half way up the island). So if you want to clear trees, you have to apply (someone clear-cut too many trees against regulations and later there was a landslide – that’s why there are regulations). Each inhabited island has their own rules and regulations. One of her first questions was whether there should be a blue badge disabled spot in a parking lot on Salt Spring (one of the Islands nearest to Victoria). The answer was yes, 5% of all parking lots need to be blue badge. In contrast with Victoria, BC there are 28 designated parking spots in downtown Victoria’s multi-thousand spaces (in James bay there is….one, in Fairfield there are none): “The City recognizes that the demand for the 28 new dedicated spaces may, at times, outstrip supply.”
As a perk, Linda gets to go to any island for free once a year (no ferry charge), but also there are trips to islands for meetings or lunches. She went last week on an office trip to Salt Spring, then a boat to Galiano, on which she saw two eagles.
Here is one, you can see him on the top of the tallest tree, the water far below and he is a bald eagle, the dark form and white head atop the highest branch. In Galiano there was a trip to Montague Bay, a park leading to the ocean.
Some officers in the Island trust work with residents who want to turn the land they own into a heritage of a park. Remember, this is the ‘new west’ out here and while the government is still selling off parts of islands, first and second generation people who bought government land on islands are still figuring out what to do with the land they bought. So new parks all the time.
This is VERY different from our last home in Cardiff, where the nearest notable park was Roath Park donated and built by the Marquis of Bute in 1887 (with odd clock tower in midst of lake with boating and all). It also has a very small conservatory with horny turtles (we came in upon a turtle orgy…in slo-mo).
The Marquis not only owned all the land (including where our Victorian House was built) but many older widow women spit after saying his name. From the 18th to the 20th century the Marquis grew vastly wealthy on ‘black gold’ and still runs trainloads of coal right UNDER the university down to harbor. Since so many died in the mines that during WWII accidents you had a greater risk to casualty as a ‘conscripted miner’ in Wales than you did in the Armed Forces (which created a huge strike). The Marquis, simultanous to Roath Park built Castle Coch, a fairy tale castle which, in the end, was never lived in.
So you can see how different it is when you buy 5 acres for a few thousand and 60 years later there is so much development you can leave a park as a legacy (thankfully no wacky castles except the two in Victoria, Hartley Castle, also built through coal money was covered in a previous post). And with lots of neighbors, someone has to answer the questions and settle disputes. Linda is that first step.
The next day we worked on Postcards, and passed the next 100 mark (6,200?) with 22 postcards and 8 presents.
I have been using up some of the stickers from Japan, Sinapore, France, Brazil, and parts of the USA including those bought in Hawaii. Here is a combo of stamping and stickering for a summer festival look.
I have a lunch date tomorrow so off to bed with me. Hope you had a good weekend also.
Snow Day! The AVERAGE temperature for this day over the last 30 years is 8 degrees C (50’s), but it is blowing snow hard, accidents abound, it is with wind, a temp of –17 C., and the library as well as most offices have closed early. It is an official ‘snow day’ and not the kind of NICE snow days I remember as a kid.
I remember snow days where lots of snow fell and the snow plows couldn’t plow all the roads so school was cancelled. I don't remember THIS kind, where the roads were snowed over in an hour, then frozen by the wind while the wind blew light cars and trucks into the oncoming lanes and traffic.
Here is a Victoria Transit Bus which slid backwards downhill causing a 12 car pileup (weather network: you think I wheeled out to verify?).
This is one of the hazards of working in Transit, that regardless of weather, you don’t show up for work, you don’t get paid AND you get a mark on your record. But then, since Victoria is essentially a mountain top which sticks out of the sea, almost all routes have hills, and some very severe hill slopes (particularly near the university). On an icy road, it is impossible, particularly with a double decker bus to make it up the top of the hill, regardless that the number 14 and number 11 are the two most common bus routes. A crash is a suspension as is flipping over a bus (which happened last time it snowed like this here, I saw the bus).
Linda and I had planned to go to the library as I wanted to go wheeling. Linda told me when giving me my pills that there was no point, as it was snowing and she went at 2:00. So here is Victoria a month ago, and the 'good sun days',
while here is poor Linda by the time she got towards the library: the major road she was on had disappeared under the white.
And while there the library announced it was closing due to snow. Since to get to the library I have to go up and then down a hill, wheeling there is a worry. Going up is not the worry (if possible) so much as the short and steep hill near home, as little skinny wheels can make a great sled downhill, with just about as much control and yelling as I had when flying toward the road on a sled as a kid.
I was up late today due to a 3.5 hour nap to try and make up for the lack of sleep on the weekend when I did postcards.
I had tried to ‘push’ my body by shaving hours of sleep and working mostly through the night. It seems that the pain may be under control but not my health as what I could do previous, I cannot do now: I had a seizure and was paralyzed for a while and had to sleep and try again in the morning. But we did get 71 postcards done, and with the 39 done last week that makes for 110 postcards in two weeks.
Postcards in winter are a good thing (summer for those down under).
This weekend was all postcards, but last weekend we had gone to the Award Winning carver of soap, often written up in newspapers, as she has a two weekend Xmas sale. She had her usual lemons,
pears and Asian pears but also some Xmas tangerines as well.
Plus she sells bars of her all-natural soap in blackberry, kiwi-lime and a host of other delightful scents (the blackberry sells out quickly while the kiwi-lime is very addictive, Linda got us both). She carves the clams and seashells of the seashore we are used to seeing, as both soap carvings and right into her bars of soap.
And because she lets me come early, so I avoid blocking the whole Xmas house she has made, I was able to get one of the carved vellum books, with a seashell in the cover, all carved from soap.
I am a bibliophile, even when it is soap, all things books related make me hum. I also got one of her ‘mini fruit’ samplers, which have a mini pear, lemon and tangerine all in one as they smell lush and look great.
The soap sampler makes a great Xmas present for putting by the bathroom. I estimated that the sampler and the carved vellum books (of which there were only four) would go quickly, and not be seen until next year (not that I am a 'hoarder' or the like). I have done most of my shopping for Xmas presents, I just need to be able to arrange to mail them out now.
I can see why many Canadians go south for the winter, particularly if this very atypical weather continues. While many would blame global warming, I prefer to use the ‘buzz phrase’ from 10 or 15 years ago and blame ‘El Nino’ which, if flowers turned out smaller or the plums were lopsided, everyone would go, “El Nino!” which made no sense to me then or now. Global Warming makes more sense to me, but since it involves several hundred million people dying, I prefer to live in a fantasy about that; though with wheeling, and my cycling and running before that, I actually clean the air by sucking all that smog into my lungs and breathing out clean carbon dioxide. If I could stick a tree in the backpack of my wheelchair, I think we would have an oxygen balance….if I could ever wheel anywhere with a tree attached to my wheelchair.
Good day for staying inside and watching the snow
while holding some mulled wine, going to use that mulled wine mix we picked up in Chatto’s in Pasadena (Linda made us a cup of red mulled wine last night with it and it was Yum!). And hopefully it will soon return to the 'kind and feathery' snow that is associated with 'white Xmas', cat girls
and Robert Frost poems as opposed to 'The Cremation of Sam MeGee' style snow, which is blowing in our window cracks now.
Now that I have had sufficient Virgin Smoothies (add a bit of rum and you have a Virgin Daiquiri!) my blood level allow me to be awake and aware again. Cheryl is off again on a Government mission (I can’t say except she is taking her blowdarts and jungle cameo) so will not be over next weekend. I had been working on a plan called, “Don’t let anyone down” which has been created by Guilt Inc. Seriously, I wanted to get a lot of nice postcards done
because I kept passing out last week and got very few done (hence I am BAD, if I am unconscious and do not keep to my own inner voice quota, I am 'bad Beth!'). Also, I prepared to send the rest of the ‘Winter Gifts’ which I guess those who keep Xmas call ‘Xmas Gifts.’
Some things I do need to wait on arriving but I sent out about 23+ packages this week and a bunch last week. In two weeks, the lines to the post office and the slow down of service means everything is difficult. And I have enough self esteem issues that I believe if I send things to arrive Dec 20th-24th I will be lost amoungst family and friends and just be, “Shall we open this envelope from that crazy internet chick?”
Now while I can’t get the big presents, I do try to find something both unique and that will make people happy or improve their life. So I want my gift to have space to breath, so I send it early. Of course that Aunt who gets you Thomas the Train Ear Muffs even though you are 35 ALSO thinks she is getting just the right gift for you. See how insecurity and Guilt Inc. are having fun with me!
Thanks to Linda, we were able to go see Lynne who is a locally renown carver and soap maker. She spends way too many hours a day carving and in the summer I showed you her stall at the local market. Well, for two days she has a ‘special’ event where she sells what she has been carving over the time since the summer market. She told us to come early in order to have full accessibility as she gets crowded.
First we weave through a tended garden with lovely flowers,
a pathway and painted out- buildings before arriving at the kind of door which appears in Fairy Tales, and it opens to a sort of winter celebration land, smelling divine from all the hand made, organic and good for your skin soap (sadly she doesn’t sell online).
I wanted to get there early so I could see all the new things she had carved. There were additional clams and shells but also full cooking onions as well as this garlic. As I was loading the picture, one worker said, “Oh, I love that purple garlic, it is so delicious, where did you get it?”
This is why when I send the soap out I have to put a note saying: “This is soap, do NOT eat” as even I forget. The baskets to shop with were Walton’s General Store style depression fruit baskets/boxes
and here you can see the fruit she normally has (plus pears). Even I go, “Well, once it is pitted, that peach will be good to use.” Before I remember that the pit IS carved and it is all still soap.
Another new item were these Amaryllis bulbs which is traditional to grow for some people’s Xmas.
Since I am new to all this 'tradition' and more of a ‘lets have a party to celebrate not being dead in winter’, I tend to drift from Wicca to Christian and toward anyone else who will give me cake. I have to admit the Christian Xmas is wee like being on acid when there is the ‘conception day’ celebrated three weeks before the ‘birthday’ and while I am thinking ‘So Jesus was…an insect to be hatched so quick?” Then I remember the great American Xmas Tradition: Killing People on Xmas Eve after dinner and drink! (I am SO locking my doors)
Yeah, remember Washington crossing the River standing in his boat at the dead of night on the way to glorious victory? Well he was going over to the Prussians/Hanoverians who owed the British from the help in that seven years war I talked about last week. George Washington, a British Officer during that war KNEW that the most holy day of the year (and the one they get most drunk on) for the Prussians was Xmas (Indeed, the tree, the punch, the whole traditions we have arrived with Queen Victoria when the Hanovarian arm filled in the British Royal line, spreading Xmas to the British Empire and then now, to the world). So Washington snuck over to where, on the holiest day of the year, where the troops celebrated and were too drunk/asleep to resist, he slaughtered them, thus creating the first colonial victory! Oddly, most classes and pictures focus on Washington leading the troops across the icy river (because it was December) and so far, have found no pictures of troops bayoneted or throats slit while holding a bit of fruitcake mumbling, “It looks like normal food…but you can never finish it…so thick and heavy!”
Um, aside over, back to gift buying, here is a table of all the bars of cocoa butter based soaps from Blackberry to other lush scents.
So smooth. What made me go, “I wanna, I wanna!!!” was the finding of these carved vellum covered, gold leaf books.
Amazing no? She said that years ago, with better eyesight she had put titles on and everything. I wanted to hand one to her and give the Bambi eyes and go, “Put Titles on?” But she was already giving me special treatment. Here I am looking youthful and happy.
“That’s because I’m not just a spokesperson for this soap but I use it regularly!”
She also had made gingerbread men, which looked so edible, and smelled of ginger. I didn’t get one as I thought the gingerbread man had endured enough than to be cleaning Area 51 and the other delicates.
After the soap we headed up to the university with our bag of a bit of left over lettuce to find the ‘wabbits, I mean rabbits. Over a decade ago, a few pet rabbits ran away, across the road and the rest is history. Now people come and dump rabbits here as they think with so many, they won’t be noticed. Much like the squirrels, once they heard the bag, the rabbits found US.
And now, for my NEXT act, I will attempt to feed TWO rabbits from the hand at once!
Ta-da! Not as impressive as tigers, right? Oh well. Even Linda was getting heavy attention as the holder of the bag from rabbits and fed them.
I noticed that the rabbits or at least this one must be a Literature Major as he had the whole Oliver Twist, “Mum, may I please have a bit more gruel’ look down pretty perfectly.
This next picture of me feeding the rabbits is a bit of a test.
Okay, done!
If it took you up to three seconds to notice there was a BUNNY in the picture, then you are male/lesbian/bisexual/interested in my breasts.
If it took you more than FIVE seconds to notice then you are sexually frustrated and WAY too interested in my breasts.
If you never noticed a Bunny in the picture, then you are the male who they make those reports about, the ones which they say that 16-21 year old males think of sex every six seconds (How are they able to complete sentences? And why are they allowed to operate motor vehicles?).
It was cold, I had frostbite and we were out of lettuce. We headed home. Over the next 36 hours I had a FEW incidents which required extra sleep or suddenly being in bed on the concentrator mask for oxygen as my weaker state meant that my heart or lungs were not working properly or as happened one time, my blood pressure went from 120/70 to 178/164 in a few minutes. Also I had a lot of fevers. BUT (lets ignore the spiral of downward health and focus on what is IMPORTANT, so says Guilt Inc.) I got some postcard done, about 59 in all, which brings me over 100 so far this month and over 3,100 in total.
I really like the stamp of the girl reading. I also, of all the postcards we brought back from Hawaii have a couple favourites: one is the set of the ones of Turtles
which are sold out in Hawaii and online so this is the only pack (if you have a love for endangered turtles please let me know!).
The second is this picture of the spinner dolphins in Hawaii doing a group dive.
It is so beautiful. The old picture of the moon taken through an early telescope is pretty cool too. We stickered, we matched, stamped and I wrote and wrote and wrote and I really hope you can understand my handwriting. Here are some of the postcards which we sent out, from Magic Eye to Polar Bears,
there are gifts of postcards from the postcard project here from at least six different people plus postcards I bought from Hawaii, Japan and online from three places. But for the quality postcards you send me as a gift, I honestly do send them out again just as fast as I can around the world. This posting went to four continents and one subcontinent (or two - how many subcontinents are there?)
Next time we are doing a ‘kids posting’ (shh don’t tell them) which is where we send a postcard to every teen or child on our list. So if you have a child or teen or 2 or 3 year old who likes animals that I don’t have on the list, or have forgotten please let me know. Last time it was Polar Bears, and this time there is another cute primary animal which I managed to get the postcard book of, which is good considering it goes for between $20 and $60 (I got in on the swing and paid a rational price). So I am looking forward to that, it is always fun in terms of stamping and of stickering. We know there isn't going to be post back but we also remember how good it was to get post/mail when a kid.
I hope you had a good weekend, those were my small pleasures. Please comment on any soap that delighted you, or children who need postcards or anything that comes to mind, except for very long and detailed comments of my breast, even (especially) if they start with ‘Like the beautiful smooth, cool and white round alabaster breasts one sees on a statue or a corpse, your breast was the fullness of beauty. It made me long to work in a mortuary near you so that one day I might fondle them at my leisure!”
Katy uses local beeswax (Salt Spring?) in the glazing, all of which are non-toxic. They are durable for oven, dishwasher and microwave (not the iron ones please!). Remember these pictures do not show how beautiful they are, due to poor lighting. The large pieces and vases are the kind we saw in Oregon and California for two and three times the price (or in Laguna Beach for five to ten times the price) without the elegant and functional ‘cool’. Much less the durability of being used and washed by different care workers daily.
Linda and I we picked up some basil for the small window garden we are going to try. We also saw Laura Victoria who does handcarved and handsculpted soap (all soaps without artificial perfumes for those sensitive or with skin conditions) had created a new flavor, the lime.
It was delicious in scent. Laura-Victoria has been making soap for 28 years. Linda took a lemon of hers into work, to help create a nice aroma in her new office (those who work with her couldn’t believe it was soap, actual all natural, hand-milled soap). I got some bars to send out as presents.
Linda works with the Islands Trust, the go-to person for asking questions about the 400+ islands in the ‘Inland Passage’, the space between Vancouver Island and the Mainland (and 400+ is only half way up the island). So if you want to clear trees, you have to apply (someone clear-cut too many trees against regulations and later there was a landslide – that’s why there are regulations). Each inhabited island has their own rules and regulations. One of her first questions was whether there should be a blue badge disabled spot in a parking lot on Salt Spring (one of the Islands nearest to Victoria). The answer was yes, 5% of all parking lots need to be blue badge. In contrast with Victoria, BC there are 28 designated parking spots in downtown Victoria’s multi-thousand spaces (in James bay there is….one, in Fairfield there are none): “The City recognizes that the demand for the 28 new dedicated spaces may, at times, outstrip supply.”
Here is one, you can see him on the top of the tallest tree, the water far below and he is a bald eagle, the dark form and white head atop the highest branch. In Galiano there was a trip to Montague Bay, a park leading to the ocean.
Some officers in the Island trust work with residents who want to turn the land they own into a heritage of a park. Remember, this is the ‘new west’ out here and while the government is still selling off parts of islands, first and second generation people who bought government land on islands are still figuring out what to do with the land they bought. So new parks all the time.
I have been using up some of the stickers from Japan, Sinapore, France, Brazil, and parts of the USA including those bought in Hawaii. Here is a combo of stamping and stickering for a summer festival look.
