A tad busy

I love this picture as it looks like a watercolour painting. I
gather the lens got a bit fogged up in the cold.

With last week's blog finally published I can now get around to this week's. Last week's blog would have been posted sooner but I was a bit busy and had some rather long days. It was a long trip to Lithuania and the following day was another long one too, but in the opposite direction to Estonia. I had a late request about two weeks ago to represent our department at the annual conference for PhD students at my university, I needed to head up there at some stage anyway and so decided to accept. I also fitted in a few meetings along the way. It turned out to be almost a military operation, with a great deal of flexibility and some people going above and beyond their call of duty. It worked anyway.

Mr. P. doing his best to disguise himself as a white alpaca
to fit in with the others

Joesfs glowing in the sunshine

The first meeting was in a lovely cafe, with some gorgeous cakes in Old Riga, (Bake Berry Konditorija) there I met a lady who is friends with our Polish felting tutor Galina. This lady does some wonderful work herself and I had wanted to meet her for a while. She doesn't speak much English and my Latvian is not great (mind you my Russian is even worse) but we managed. She gave me a few useful tips through by sketching her ideas and I gave her some alpaca fleece to experiment with. She was lovely and insisted that when I came back through Riga she was going to buy me a coffee and cake, which is what I did on the Thursday. 

Just in case you haven't guessed yet. Winter has arrived

The wooden trees my friend
made

I was meant to be dropping off some letters that had arrived at our old apartment for the new owners. as well The idea was to meet me in Old Riga, but on the day the lady was sick. After changing plans twice more I managed to drop them off with her husband at a bus stop just outside the National Library where my next meeting was. I then put my academic hat on as I was meeting someone from one of the Latvian Universities who I've met before. We had a nice lunch and a great discussion. It was nice to finally get to see the wooden trees that decorated the National Library restaurant where we ate. A friend of ours had made them in his workshop in our little town. He is the one that made our kitchens for our two apartments too.

Mother and son, Marie and Jakobs

A crystal oak tree

The meeting with the academic was arranged last minute as she didn't see my email until I was heading down to Lithuania the day before so it threw off my planning for the trip up to Estonia. On the bus into Riga I was trying to work out the best route and the bus and train timetables were not helping. I wanted to spend as much time talking with this academic as possible and so opted for a later bus, only it meant waiting in Valga on the border for a long while and getting in very late, which would have meant another very long day. I explained all of this to my friend in Estonia via Messenger, as you do and she offered to come and pick me up, a drive of about an hour. She said it was only fair as my daughter had driven all the way to pick her up from the airport when she joined me for a holiday in the UK. It was much appreciated though.

I think this is Valeria, but I could be wrong. I still haven't got
their names straight yet. (Update: I was wrong, it is Vanessa)

I asked if I could have a hand held mike because there was
no point me standing behind that lectern. No one would
have seen me. Well maybe a pair of eyes or just the top of
my head.

The following day was the presentation at the university and I was the third presenter of the morning. It was a good job I was able to get most of the presentation done on the bus journeys the day before, as I hadn't had much time to prepare beforehand. I was therefore really pleased with the response I got. Quite a few folks commented afterwards how much they had enjoyed the story. It was fairly easy for people to follow, especially compared to presentations on genetics or dissolved organic matter in Estonian lakes, important though they are, they take at least a bit of technical know how on the subject to follow along or understand the importance of the research. One person commented on the way I delivered a quote from one of my interviewees, as he felt it was a touching way to speak about isolation. It is one of the benefits of having read stories to children many times, that I can read with expression.

We've had a glorious few days

Vanessa's crew enjoying the spruce trees. Lots of vitamins
for them

During the first presentation the lady had a list of universities that she attended and one of them was the same as my friend, who I was staying with, had retired from. I messaged my friend during the lecture to see if she knew her. She did and very well. I was told to pass on my greetings, which I did. Later on in another conversation with my friend she said she wished she had known she was in town, so I suggested she come up for the coffee break. I had actually left the conference because I needed to get some work done downloading papers using the universities internet and I was sat waiting for my friend to turn up when the lady who had presented appeared to collect her coat. I leapt up to tell her that my friend was coming and wanted to say hello and fortunately she agreed to stay on for a few minutes. It was really neat to see them finally get to say hello to each other in person. You could tell they had had some good times together and I saw my friend's face light up at the thought of all the stories she could write about her friend's work. You can't take the journalist out of that Texan gal.

We had a rearrangement of chickens so they have more space
now. We culled the older cockerels when I got back. There
is no point feeding them over winter and they were taking
up space that the hens need. The older they get the more
aggressive they tend to be and so it is best for them to be
culled before winter. 

These are gifts from the lady I met on the Tuesday and
Thursday. Here you can see some of the wonderful things
she makes (link), if you are interested in any of her work
she can write in English.

The following day I got another lift down to the border so I could talk with my supervisor about various issues that needed sorting. He added an extra half hour onto his journey to a seminar so that we had a chance to talk and it meant I didn't have such a long time on the bus. So the good news is that I am further along with having a part time job on a collaborative project with other universities and I now have my work planned out for re-writing papers that need to be submitted. Plus I managed to get an earlier bus down to Riga and so went to the library again to have lunch and do a bit of work before meeting the lovely lady I met on the Tuesday, along with two other folks. One gave me back a scarf that she had taken to show her mother who had owned a shop at the time. Sadly that had to close shortly after and so that meant a potential collaboration came to nothing. The other was someone actually buying a scarf from me that I had made. 

It was a bit surprising to wake up to snow. This is from our
new apartment window.

So with my work planned out I had the Friday to read through the project description and add my questions to it and do some catching up on marking work for GCSE students who I tutor online. Saturday was spent out on the land to do some alpaca pedicures and refreshing my memory on what is needed for taking over from Ian when it comes to looking after the alpacas now he is away. Sunday and Monday I got a start on re-writing a paper that needs resubmitting before January that no one else has got time to do. Well that should keep me out of trouble.

The wild boar have been back too. Not what we want. We hoped the numbers would stay lower for a while or at least stay in the forest more. Perhaps the dry summer has forced them out as there may not be as much to eat. Hopefully the ground will be too frozen soon anyway.

This damage was mainly done on
Monday/Tuesday night

his damage was also mainly done on
Monday/Tuesday night

More from Monday/Tuesday. Ironic that the hunting tower
is at the top there in the distance

This was Tuesday/Wednesday night. Not good! We had only
just got that bank nicely sorted out after the damage done a
few years ago and now we have to start all over again. The main
problem is all the weed seeds that germinate from these. If it
would just turn up grass or herb seeds we would be fine, but
usually docks, ground elder and nettles seem to be the result