Whirling, dancing diamonds

Ice crystal tree in the morning sun

It sounds so pretty to say it: the scene outside our window this morning was a whirling, dancing shower of diamonds, sparkling in the early morning sun and it looked amazing too, but - and there had to be a but didn't there - it meant it was chilly and windy, with the wind sending the fine, dry powdery snow careering off the rooftops. The low evening sun now gives a warm glow to the snow but the temperature is dropping rapidly with the sinking sun, already it is -12C out on our balcony and the sun has not even set yet. Meanwhile in England, apparently in some places the shops are empty of teacakes, here life goes on, although the workmen might not be working outside if it drops too low and the children might get to stay home from school.

Snow blind

Cabinet regulations stipulate that children up to the age of 12 years should not attend an educational establishment if the temperature is lower than -20C degrees and children from the age of 13 when the air temperature is lower than -25C degrees. (LSM: Big freeze ahead for Latvia)

Pine trees in the snow

Pathways cut for the girls to get out and about in

I went out to the land with Ian once this week, but he brought me back straight after I had helped him sort out the girls. I had made up some dry shampoo to dust on their fleeces where they had got oily from previous treatments. They needed their fleeces as fluffy as possible to prepare for the drop in temperatures. I put just a bit of cream on Chanel, but didn't want to use too much, otherwise she might end up worse in this cold weather. At least the cold might kill any mites off, or at least put them into hibernation for a bit.

But do they go outside? Ian made this new feeder to entice
them out, but someone worked out, they don't need to go out

Mari's fleece from last year, that Ian is busy preparing to spin

It was a bit too cold to sit in the caravan and work, it's not so bad if you are more active, but I needed to write, which is why Ian brought me back. Instead I went to our other apartment, which I have done a couple of times this week, to light the fire. This is partly out of necessity and partly because our neighbour below is doing some renovations. I half wonder if he knows we are going and is getting some renovations done to get back at us for those early years when we did a lot of renovations. It mustn't have been much fun for him at times. Having said that, I don't think he is really the revengeful sort of person and is probably just getting on with his own much needed work.

Icicles

Freddie hiding

I got the last of my papers written to a point where it now needs input from my supervisor and I got the brochure finished for the Latvian Alpaca Adventure (you can see that here). I even got a couple of outlines for abstracts for a conference done. So all in all not a bad week from the writing point of view. I am now at the frustrating point where I am waiting for replies. I can of course get on with writing my thesis, but it feels a bit pointless until I know for sure the direction I can take it, as the thesis is entirely based on my published works and to do that they need publishing, or at least to a point where they are accepted by the academic journals.

I love the different layers in this photo, with the most frosted
at the back

Untouched snow - until you look closely that is and see the
trail of footprints

With a bit of time on my hands, I got another cupboard sorted out. I even emptied out a few clothes from my wardrobe to make room for a hanging shelf to organise the space better for when we have less room. Now of course all the extra stuff is sitting in the hallway waiting for a new home. The more I sort, the more cluttered the place seems to get. I did find a nice pair of boots though, I think the reason they were put to the back of the cupboard is that they let in water, so I will take them with me to the UK to get them fixed. I know it seems a bit of a trek and there are places here in Latvia, but not in the same village, so not so easy as popping them in my suitcase - I might need them after all.

Natural lacework

This will be the last winter we see this scene, as this is from
the apartment we have sold

Time on my hands also means more time to do some thinking, it feels like a long time since I have had time to let my mind wander. Mind you at the moment it seems to be wandering onto the practical aspects of moving into an even smaller place and trying to figure out such things as how to fit our things in and what do we really need. The kitchen is narrower in the other apartment and has less workspace, so we could do with something to take the place of our table, that will not fit in. We will need it eventually, so don't want to get rid of it - so that is another problem in itself. The solution in the kitchen is probably a mobile kitchen island with a drop leaf on it, but that will need constructing from something and I don't think we have anything suitable to construct it out of - or have we?

This will be the view from my office window

A view of the skiers too on the cross country ski trail

My faith took a hammering last year. It was nothing I can put my finger on, but only to be expected at some time. I remember reading a few times about the dark night of the soul, when God seems so far away and was considered part of the Christian journey. I felt at times like I was barely hanging on by my fingertips and that is not a comfortable feeling. I wouldn't say that everything is right yet, but I have the feeling of walking out on a day when you know the winter is on its way out, the signs are rising, the sun returning, but life is still buried in its winter sleep. Something is stirring. So I hold on and keep plodding on, trying to figure out my place in the world.

Winter is so beautiful when the sun is out, that there are just so many photo opportunities

A view from our smaller apartment

Love the atmosphere of this photo, but shows
one of the issues we may have of parking

Frozen in time

I think they may have some help keeping this
driveway clear

Eating, eating, eating! You can see Chanel all covered
in frost

Brencis meditating on life

Mr. Herkules is looking particularly sprightly these days

Sunbathing as you do

Mr. P does photograph much easier in the winter. Look
at the red highlights he has

Keep it simple

Our Christmas tree, complete with the
parcel I tried to post before Christmas

Christmas is an emotionally challenging time as everyone knows and such was the case in our household. The first challenging time was the christmas tree! Not sure why this is an annual ritual for minor irritations, but it is. First there is finding one, not so hard now we have our own land and plenty of weed seedlings to choose from of various sizes. The challenge this year was finding one that was not too big. Isn't it funny how they look much smaller out in the field than they do in the house. I remember once earmarking the tree that was growing in the middle of our hedge outside our house one year in Denmark. It was part of a bush where it seemed like it was starting to revert to a different type of tree - hard to explain, but there it was growing out of the middle of a bush and I cut it out and brought it inside, only then did I realise how tall it actually was and it touched the ceiling. Fortunately in this case we had more than enough room for it and it looked rather splendid in our large Danish lounge. Now we live in an apartment the room is smaller and not so much room for a tree, not without blocking the light from the window anyway and that is too close to the radiator anyway. This year we got it just about right and hauled the thing home. Our white and very cold start to winter though meant the tree was covered in a thick layer of ice and there began our troubles. Ian was stood in the hallway with a now dripping tree and we couldn't think where to put it for it to melt. We have a basement, but didn't really want a puddle down there and so in the end we decide the shower cubicle would make the perfect place to put it, only the tree was wider than we thought - well something had to be wrong with the size didn't it! After removing the shower doors and much huffing and puffing from a certain someone we had the tree in the shower and I mopped up the floor from ice that had already melted.

Made by some ladies from our Danish Church

Another Danish Christmas ornament

A Latvian walking stick and a wooden ornament from the UK

One of the angels I bought whilst in America

Oh yes and he makes an appearance
every year too now. A freebie
from Denmark during a shopping spree

Well the saga continues, we had intended putting up the decorations on Christmas Eve, as I mentioned in last week's blog and my traditional day for putting up the tree, but as it was a Monday I decided my blog came first and got that done and dusted, then the problems started. As I mentioned before our electric supply has had one or two issues just lately and this day was another such day. I had just started to finish off making some croissants from the dough I had started during the day when the electric went off and I ended up finishing them off by candlelight and putting the ones I wanted to freeze outside on the balcony under a box as we didn't want to open the freezer while the electric was off. At least there wasn't a huge amount of difference in temperatures to a freezer at the time. It took a little longer than anticipated as it is not easy working in candlelight and there was no way we were going to be able to sort the tree out in the dark and so abandoned the job and went to bed a bit earlier. On Christmas morning we gave each other our presents and when I gave Ian his, he opened it and said "Oh a toaster!" My first thought was, "oh he doesn't seem to appreciate it as much as I thought he would" and I was a little disappointed. He continued to open the box and he exclaimed "Oh it really is a toaster!" and then the penny dropped. He thought I had done a common trick in our household of wrapping something small up in a lots of wrapping inside another box. Not sure if he was secretly disappointed that it wasn't a Tupla bar (chocolate bar) though. At least when we get electricity out on the land, he can have some warm toast to eat. Still waiting for that, but it is Christmas after all.

No Christmas is complete without a nativity scene is it,
with of course a few onlookers like Dally Llama, some
rather oversized fluffy sheep and Bagpuss

We also had a poorly pussy cat! Mind you she deserved it entirely. She is in the habit of eating too fast, if you put something down it hardly even touches her lips as she hoovers it up. We resorted to giving her the largest dried cat food we could find in order that she doesn't wolf it down in three scoops and actually has to crunch at least some of it. Well she got in the kitchen and wolfed down half a small margarine tub of turkey fat. A little later she was a bit antsy and then proceeded to do a projectile vomit, narrowly missing the embroidery I have been working on, on and off, for the last year for my parents. It was all cleared up but the sofa cushions needed a wash as she puked on one of them and then walked through the greasy patches and onto the furniture - or she had it on her feet anyway not sure which. It wouldn't come out with sponging and so I had to resort to putting the covers through the washing machine with the worst cushion taking two attempts to wash it out. The floor needed two further washes as I could see little greasy marks all over it! Not what I planned to do with my day. Question is, will she learn her lesson? I doubt it, although she didn't eat anything in the morning - guess she didn't need any extra calories after all that. Whilst cleaning the furniture though I also managed to spill half a pint of cleaning fluid over the area with Ian's computer on and to say I was panicking would be putting it mildly. Fortunately nothing actually got to the essential components and it was fine, but not my heart I think! Oh boy! I can do without shocks like that.

The embroidery that the cat narrowly missed. This includes
all sorts of textile memories from grandmothers. There is
even an unfinished bit of hairpin lace, still on the hairpin

I mentioned last week that the post office was shut for longer than I anticipated but finally this week some books I had ordered had finally turned up, but the one ordered at the end of November didn't. We are still waiting for for my Mum's present to us as well, although that might have turned up Friday but guess what! The post office is shut until Wednesday. One of the books that turned up and was ordered from The Book Depository was not in perfect condition when it arrived. It had four loose pages in it and yet no other obvious signs of damage. I decided to email them right away and see what they would do and, to give credit where credit is due, within hours we had an apology and promise of refund. Pity I can't say the same for the book ordered from Eurospan, I haven't had a reply from them as to where the book is from my November order, despite sending two emails now. I have tried again today using a different way of contacting them, so hopefully I will get a response soon.

This close up shows the hairpin lace (top right), a crinoline
lady, one of many to grace tablecloths and mats as well as
a reminder of the crinoline lady cakes my Nan used to make.
There are also some bits of embroidery done by me at the
age of 16 and some of the multitudes of lace crocheted by
my Gran (or at least I think they were done by my Gran)

We did get a little Christmas present from the wild boar again, fortunately not as bad as the last time and the hunters have been notified but since the wild boar haven't been back and it is Christmas we haven't hassled them. We weren't really wanting to receive presents from the wild boar but I don't think the melting snow has helped. Deep snow keeps them in the forest but the receding snow due to the increasing temperatures tempts them out. We went from  a nice but chilly -15C during the day on Christmas Eve to a rather horrid wet rain hovering up and down around zero for Christmas Day. Not nice at all and that has been the pattern for the week and means we now have some rather slick conditions.

A gift winging its way to the UK for the arrival of a
grandchild due ever so soon!

Well our Christmas was quiet and wasn't without incident, but really it wasn't too bad at all and we can laugh about it. In fact it went rather well, not only was our Christmas meal rather tasty and mostly local grown from the free range turkey from one of our good friends, to the sprouts we unearthed from under the snow during our extreme gardening expedition last week, to the parsnips, carrots and potatoes from our stores. All went down rather well with our Yorkshire puddings followed by a sticky toffee pudding. We got to talk to friends and family over the Christmas period too, thanks to the wonders of Skype but best of all we got to hear of our youngest's engagement to his lovely partner.

With a teddy in a knitted cocoon. Well every child should
have a teddy

So what do I hope for in the next year? One of the issues I picked up on this week on the internet was the issue of healthy farms. The answer is not necessarily to go to a meat free diet, although a reduction on the amount might not be a bad thing, but to get back to grass fed meat, where the animals are part of an integrated system on the farm. Animals are an important part of the ecosystem on a farm and reduce the need for bought in fertilisers that then pollute the water table. Animals in large industrial units lead to their own problems of waste, which would be far better utilised if they were spreading the waste themselves evenly over the grass land they were feeding on. A study by Iowa State University has shown the value of a more integrated system, not necessarily a return to old fashioned farming, but close. Farming that integrates animals is not a step back if used intelligently

The results were stunning: The longer rotations produced better yields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts of toxins in groundwater 200-fold and didn’t reduce profits by a single cent.

Another blog argues that animals are needed not just for our emotional well being, but also our spiritual well being. Well we have introduced animals into our ecosystem this last year and it has meant some huge changes, but not the sort of changes that we would want to do without as we have observed and laughed at their antics. Hopefully our animals will also improve the fertility of the land with their waste as well as the chickens providing us with meat and eggs and the alpacas with wool. We are already planning on increasing our chicken stock for next year and seeing where we are going to go with the alpacas. We have much to think and plan for next year, that's for sure. At least we had progress on the egg front, we got another egg this week, the first since our debacle of managing to cull the only productive hen we had.

Close up of teddy made from an old
woolly scarf

What else do I see in the year ahead generally? Well I see more things coming to light that people have tried to keep hidden, but beyond that - not much! We have made life too complicated, something that seems to be a recurring theme amongst a few bloggers (Paul, Liz, Diane and here, Steve). We have looked to celebrity pastors/prophets etc., we have looked to them for words for us, looked to them for guidance. Jesus came to break down the divide between us and God, not institute a new hierarchy. If I have one word for any of you it is this, seek the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and love others as yourself. Unpack that and listen to the voice within. God has given us his Holy Spirit to listen to, he is closer than anything we will ever know, we don't need constant words from others to know what God wants us to do, although he may use others to speak to us, and sometimes he surprises us by the people he uses. Just as Elijah was surprised that God would feed him using crows to carry his food, don't despise the way God chooses to speak to us, it may not be as glamourous as we would wish but it will sustain us.

So on that note I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and my God bless you richly in love, and peace.