more of that small northern town thing...

Doo doo doo lookin' out my back door...

Spring is coming, you can tell because the days are getting longer by leaps and bounds. It's easier to get up early now and sun comes through windows it hasn't touched for months. It's still very white out there so I thought the flower in the header would be a nice addition until some real ones appear.

Interesting dilemma here in the Chilkat valley, in this great big temperate rainforest that we call home. We're running out of dry firewood. The woodcutters were selling the beetle kill trees as dry seasoned firewood and we've run out on the U.S. side of the border. Now they're driving into Canada to harvest the trees killed by the spruce bark beetles up there and bringing that wood back to sell. The price of wood is skyrocketing and there are two major projects in the works to use wood as the primary source of heat for large buildings. What will the small time wood users like me and my neighbors do? Will the price of wood be higher than the price of heating fuel? When I build a fire in my woodstove I wonder if I should switch my thinking to 'conserve wood' instead of 'conserve oil'. Do I have enough wood to buy green wood for the lower price and season it for a year myself? mumble mumble...buy a cord of really expensive Canadian wood and 3 cords of cheaper green wood...and plenty of fuel oil. Thank goodness I have Toyo stoves!

laughing...I just clicked on the picture to biggiefy it: the stove is burning in the yellow zone, according to the gauge on the chimney, so there's no creosote building up. That's what having seasoned dry wood is all about, no build up and no chimney fires.

BJP for February, keeping up with the cuffs

I don't "do" Valentine's day stuff often...single with out Mom to send me the annual heart card makes the day a little not-so-much, ya know. This time around I felt the urge to make something with a heart on it and although I like that typical winged heart image, it's a little over done. I changed that image up a little and came up with this:


That's a bus token from Juneau (the old home town) in the middle. I like the "Good For One Fare" words...take them as you will, I've got a couple of different ideas of what they mean here.

Since the wings extend above and below the line of the cuff, I needed to line it with something that doesn't fray or do some seriously fancy needle turning on fabric. I chose the "doesn't fray" option and went with some nice soft chamois leather ( found in the auto parts store under 'buffing up the shine')

I like this one a lot. I like the bug wings, the breaking of the frame and the sort of super-hero look feel it has when it's worn. The bus token gives it a sort of steam punk touch too.

Weather or Not

Sitting in front of the woodstove thinking about this blog and how I've sort of let it turn in to just where I show my bjp stuff. Thinking about life in a small northern town staring at the flames licking around the wood I realized it gets sort of mundane mid winter. There is a lot going on but it's hard to share my daily 'geez it's beautiful here' with out repeating myself over and over.

The big thought I had was this: (for me at least) Summer weather makes a person while winter weather breaks them. Sort of drastic but here's the rest of it...I can handle a crappy summer as long as the winter isn't totally dark and rainy. A rainy summer is tough, but dark and rainy in the winter is wrist slitting bad. Weather in a small northern town is what we have in common, it's our conversation at the store, it's our answer to "hey, how's it going", it dictates our clothing, the car we drive and the distance we walk each day. We may or may not know what's going on in Washington D.C., but we certainly know which way the wind is blowing...from the southeast brings warm rain from the north (that's Canada!) brings cold sunshine. If there is a high pressure zone over the Yukon, we know it.

Paddling back over to the "big thought" lots of people leave town for the winter, but this winter makes me want to stay here. It doesn't rain as much as Juneau, but there's enough water to go around.

catching up with myself

I got my January Bead Journal cuff done today. People that know me even just a little shouldn't be surprised at the subject, you probably expected a fish sooner than this. I kinda like this one, but the face of the fish is too square and the finishing totally challenged my hand sewing "skills". The inner fabric reminds me of fish eggs even though the dots are the wrong color.

I did a fish because they really matter to Alaska's economy and to me personally (I just really like fish). There are some villages up in northwest Alaska that are having serious hunger and heating problems right now because their fishing season was cut short by regulations and overfishing by big trawlers. They need their salmon season to pay for heating fuel and to provide food for their families.

more bead storage

I'm getting faster at the shelf building, the edges are nearly straight on the 3rd set too! I think one more set will finish the project until I go shopping again.



With this wider angle shot you can see a few of the empty plastic drawers and a few that will be empty soon. I like getting my beads out and available to inspire and intrigue me!

Hey, see that orca painting up above the right corner of the blue and purple shelf? Dad did that when he was in his early 80's, just goofing around at a little class they had at the old folks' home. It's awesome, I wish I had more of his paintings.

hack carpentry and happiness

Jill of all trades, master of none? I can thug my way through a lot of stuff, but that doesn't mean I'm good at it...the right tools would help, but when I have an idea I just want to DO it. Bead storage where I can see the colors has been on my list for ages. I've been using those translucent plastic drawers for ages, but they're not very good at holding heavy loads (yeah, I have a lot of beads)


I built the shelves I've been imagining! The cut edge on the plywood isn't straight and a few of the nails are poking out, but the wee shelves are level and I can see the colors! Now I need to make about (guessing) 3 or 4 more of these to get the whole array out in the open. Magic is afoot!

Spring is over but it was terrific while it lasted.

It's back to fairly normal here in terms of the weather, down to 10 last night and the wind is whipping down from Canada again.

While it was still warm, I decided to get the oil changed in my faithful car steed (who refuses to be called "Daisy"). I wanted to do it while the weather was decent because there'd be a couple of miles of walking involved in dropping it off then going to work. I also decided to have them put in a block heater so I wouldn't have to bundle not "Daisy" up with blankets and a heat lamp when it gets cold.

So...Wednesday came along and I dropped the car at Bushmasters, the local trustworthy mechanic, walked home with the dog then walked back to town to work. If this is starting to sound like the short story made long regarding the magnetic block heater, you're on the right track. So...I walk over to Bushmasters during my break, expecting to fork over some 400 bucks for a newly oiled and electrified car. The (very) nice lady at the desk said..."you already have a block heater" to me! The cord just wasn't routed out the front of the car. Yes, after ALL that drama and worry...the car already had a block heater where its frost plug would be found somewhere deep with in the bowels of the engine compartment. Mmmhm. I got out of the mechanics shop for $102 bucks, about 1/4 of the amount I was expecting to spend! Crazy. Any embarrassment was wiped away by the savings.

Today, I was hoping to go to Juneau again for a visit and a little side job as a sewing machine courier. My former landlords down there run an electronics store with sewing machines as well as audio/video equipment. I was getting all excited for a round of thrift store shopping and some drive through coffee. Was. The fast ferry that's really for tourists in the summer couldn't sail again today. The same wind that brought the cold weather back stopped the boat...again.

Here's how I feel about having to stay here because the ferry can't sail:

Inauguration Day

Listening to the beginning of the new presidency on the radio, thrilling to the hope and new found pride. Mr. Obama has a rough road ahead of him, but it's a new road that doesn't lead to further isolation and humiliation. Thank goodness the times have changed.

heat wave!

I never thought I'd be so excited about rain. I mean, it's not like I'm a dry land farmer waiting to see if my years' crops will survive. It's not like I live in a desert, we make jokes here about "it's a rainforest, what do you expect?" It rains double, sometimes triple digits in southeast Alaska, I never thought I'd be so excited about rain. It takes temperatures in the mid 30's at least for rain to happen, it's a heat wave! I was sans long underwear for the first time in (what?) 2 months! The woodstove is able to keep the oil stove from clicking on and the floor is warm (ish).

Yesterday, at the store, the guy that fixed my hot water pipe back in September was looking haggard. He's one of those incredibly rare plumbers that will charge you less than you expect and do more than you asked. He has been crawling around under houses repairing frozen burst pipes for days. I'm almost glad the insulation under my floors is so scanty, it kept my pipes in tact.

December bjp offering

I didn't even start this cuff until December 15th or 16th, for some reason I lost momentum after the November one. I think it happened because I finished November so early, maybe?

I liked the way the paw prints on the November cuff sort of splashed in the dark blue beads so I tried to use that technique again. I'm not so sure it worked here except around the orange slice itself.

Maybe I should explain why an orange slice! Every year we get cases of Japanese mandarin oranges or California Satsumas here, really good, juicy oranges in the middle of winter are the best Christmas treat ever and one of the few traditions I've kept from my childhood. Tangarines/Satsumas/Mandarins all say "Christmas" to me.