The confessions of a hoarder

Yes another of those impossibly serene landscapes.
I never get tired of seeing them but they do look
unreal I think.

I wasn't really sure what to write about. It's winter, which may or may not provide lots of nice pictures depending on whether it's blowing a blizzard, in which case not, or a brilliantly white landscape set against an impossibly blue sky that looks rather surreal and also staggeringly beautiful, so perfect for pictures but maybe a bit samey. It is funny being very busy and not really having much to write about. Working online means lots of contact with people from many different countries, many of whom are not living in the countries of their nationality. It's fascinating and their stories brighten up my day, but not really appropriate to share. One contact though did have an unexpected connection, as his aunt has an alpaca farm and part of a rural development network - that could be a promising networking opportunity. 

Ilvija looking like a bat with white nose disease
(yes it's a real disease, but not for alpacas)

A little bonding time? No! Not likely! More like,
"you're not coming in here".

Is this Brencis singing of the joy of winter?

So what do I do all day? Well slum around in my dressing gown, or so it may seem, but my nice thick dressing gown saves me putting on any heating until well into the afternoon, so that works out well. Just a bit embarrassing when the postie rings the doorbell and opens the door to hand me the post. I wish she would wait then I could quickly discard my dressing gown for a few minutes. I also wish she wouldn't open the door, it feels kind of rude, but I guess it's just I'm not used to it. It wouldn't happen in the UK for sure, unless you lived in one of those out of the way places where the postie is probably one of your relatives. 

What is that son of mine doing? 

And now here's Tellus' daughter playing peek-a-boo

Meanwhile, Ian is out taking pictures in our forest!
I still can't quite get used to saying, "Our forest!"

I spend a lot of time on the computer, trying to learn Latvian, keeping in touch with friends and getting work done - currently I'm working on three projects as well as preparing for teaching two courses, one in spring and one in autumn of this year. One project is looking at whether citizen science can influence how the environment is managed or policies made or does it just take the learned experts to get things changed? One is looking at lessons that can be learnt from plans to avoid harming biodiversity and feeding that information to some policymakers. Lastly another project is just trying to finish off a database that is taking longer than it should. Added in a bit of proofreading and working on developing the courses keeps me out of mischief anyway. 

Not such a frosty day, but beautiful in its own way.

Time to soak up some sun.

More white nose disease. Mari also soaking up
some sun.

Over the course of a few Saturdays though I managed to cut up old t-shirts that are in my rather large stash of fabrics and old materials waiting for projects to use them up. Ian was complaining of having to stand on a cold floor in the mornings and so I decided to make him a modern version of a proggy mat - well that's what he would call it, I would call it a rag rug, or hooked mat. This was the quicker version of an old method of using up fabric that was not fit for much else. I cut the t-shirts up into lots of scraps 3cmx8cm (or thereabouts) and then sewed them down the middle onto a large piece of old thick interfacing. I then folded them to one side and sewed on another row. Eventually I filled up the interfacing and it certainly looked like an old rag rug by the time I'd finished - so no more complaints of cold feet. 

Now Mari is sharing a bit of gossip with Aggie.

A different angle to our land for a change. Looking
through the trees at the wintry sun.

Tracks in the snow. A hare? 

I know there are quite a few half-finished projects in my dump room and there are so many potential projects that I get overwhelmed with what to do next. At least I did manage to make a pair of baggy trousers from some self-dyed fabric, which I'm wearing and they are surprisingly warm. I have cut out some fabric to make some more, but I want to see how these one work before sewing up the other pair. I think the pattern needs a little adjustment. I also confess to starting some felted scarves this last weekend and now they are added to my half-finished pile as I didn't have time to finish them. It did use up some of the fleece we had lying around the place though, so that is a plus. 

A more subtle scene with a cloudy sky, but still
amazing to see such frosted trees.

Looking at Lady V's residence for young ladies
aka one of the alpaca houses from another different
angle.

The snow is not deep enough to cover the 
molehills. We must have mole city under our
land. 

So while I am slaving away on my computer Ian has been doing lots of snow clearing, poo clearing from the alpaca houses as they don't go outside so much on the more miserable days and feeding Lolly. When he gets back to the apartment we eat and then he washes up. Quite a few days this week he has then been spending some of the evenings testing poo samples for parasites. Exciting heh! So exciting he fell asleep in the alpaca house. He needed a poo sample from a couple of the alpacas and it is a good time of the year to just spend time with them and get them more used to his presence, so he took up a chair to watch them. 15 minutes later (so he tells me) he woke up with two contented alpacas either side just chewing the cud. 

Karla having a bit of trouble with a long piece
of hay.

Such peaceful scenes

This freeze/thaw cycle is not much fun

The other news for this is week is my car arrived. It was driven from Riga along some quite icy roads to our village and then we had to drive to the big town to get it registered as owned by me and the bank. The only piece of paperwork we couldn't do electronically. Very annoying really as that was a couple of hours of my time, when most of the procedures in Latvia are going across to digital signatures, which I can do. Oh well! At least I'm now able to travel up to the university this week for staff training. The young guy asked if I had owned a car in Latvia before and the answer was no. We've had a car for 14 years but it has always been registered in Ian's name. I did once take it for its technical inspection because he was away, but other than that, my name has not been on anything to do the car. I have had a Latvian licence for 14 years but wouldn't have thought that would make a difference, but somehow it did. I have six months of full insurance for just over €50, I was expecting double that at the very least. I'm still conflicted though, as I would rather do without a car, I realise the environmental costs but I also have to get to work from time to time. 

A series of plants with their ice-crystal gowns

The neighbour's land.

Sun on snow

Cattails 

Vanessa in another of her contemplative moods

The snow is creeping up the greenhouse. Fortunately
it has melted next to the plastic so not leaning on
the plastic.

Much higher and it will be more like a rather large 
igloo.

Around the world in three days!

We've had some more gorgeous sunsets

In three days, I have been given insights into life in Nigeria, Ethiopia, France, Portugal, Iran, Pakistan, India, Czechia and Egypt and travelled virtually to Riga in Latvia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Australia, UK and Sweden, all from my little rural apartment. I've discussed the affects of climate change on coastal towns and how to begin to tackle the relocation process, to identifying areas where people can get involved in planning, to strategies to harvest water in a drought prone area using landscape adaptations, amongst other things. I've talked about an application to draft a workshop for an EU wide conference, to cold-water swimming and its benefits on health. I've chatted with family by email, WhatsApp and Messenger. Now I'm not sure my brain knows quite what's happening. 

No one is swimming here, but they do in the summer

Hello, kind sir! can I trouble you for some food?

Lockdown hair cut. Looks worse from the
front.

That isn't all either. I've been sorting through articles on citizen science, policies, living values and which organisations are bottom up or grassroots or top-down and what's the difference anyway. I've used Miro boards, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Big Blue Button, Moodle, Wordpress and Blogger. I've tried to access Zoom while someone waits on Microsoft Teams, I've rapidly had to search for Zoom links for meetings I've supposed to have joined and had to wait for someone to get the right link to meet up with me. On my computer I've been working in Excel, Word, Powerpoint and with Pdfs. I'm thinking I'm getting quite dizzy with it all. As I'm writing this I now realise that my calendar is not effective enough and I need to actually use an excel sheet to keep track of meetings. At least then I can highlight which format we are using. My calendar isn't just for me but also my department so gets a bit messy. I already try to keep a record of the hours I work in excel and now my list of jobs is on there too, as it's easier to keep track, so maybe just a note about the meetings might work too.

One of the differences between Chanel and Ilvija
her daughter, besides the haircut are the black feet
on Ilvija. Other than that, there isn't much to be 
able to tell them apart.

Turbjørn looks very suave in his coat. 

Boo! Says Valeria

It's kind of exciting to be able to meet up with people from all over the world, but there is also a part of me that wants people to go back to work and leave the online alone, like it used to be, but that's not going to happen. I love it and loathe it at the same time. Once the decision was how many meetings could I go to in one year and if one meeting was too close to another with a lot of travelling in between then it was just not possible to go. Now.... I can almost go to all of them, but I still need to work too. So many exciting things to learn, so many responsibilities to meet. So many opportunities to network, so many opportunities to be sucked into more work.

Antonia is looking portly, or she has a lot of fleece.
Unfortunately she isn't pregnant. Maybe this year?

Ginger Tom is just so ridiculously
cute.

Shows some of the recreational 
opportunities or not in our 
village. The ski track has been
well used, but not now of course, 
instead people play disc golf. 
I'm surprised how popular it is.

One of the jobs I had to do this week was to go for a walk around our village and take photographs for a presentation. As I was putting them into the presentation, I saw that the colours were a little subdued, mainly a palette of the browns and whites of late winter and so I had to find one or two spring and summer pictures just to show some contrast. It was refreshing to have to go for a walk as it got me out of the house. At least it wasn't icy. I found some interesting memorials I hadn't seen before, including one to a music teacher. 

A memorial for a music teacher

Creative Easter decorations

A bit cold for a song festival at the moment

Guarding the castle walls

More creative Easter decorations

Ruined manor walls

All mod-cons you know. Yes we 
do have an electric charging point
in our village.

There are a few versions of this on the internet,
but it seemed rather relevant

At least despite the busyness of online work I am now more disciplined to take the weekend off and spend one day out on the land and another day pottering around the house, mainly sewing at the moment. I'm not sure the weather knows what to do at the moment either as we've swung backwards and forwards between winter and spring. The snow just about disappears and another load is dumped. On Friday it snowed all day, but Saturday was relatively clear, if a tad cold, so I went out to the land to help Ian cut the boys toe nails and give them Vitamin A, D, E and C injections. Now all the alpacas are up-to-date. I also helped Ian shift some hay bales, although I did linger in the greenhouse a bit with a cat on my lap so only half helped.

More Easter creativity. It now has a 
candle to go with it too. I spotted this
on Facebook when looking for some pictures
for my presentation, a friend of mine has
made it and was selling them. Ian went
to pick it up from the little supermarket where
we had arranged for it to be dropped off

This came in a parcel our son and family sent
from England. It was full of goodies. A box of
broken biscuits (sounds bad but it's lots of
mis-shaped biscuits - should keep us going), a
box of tea-bags, an alpaca magazine with
pictures inside that our grandkids drew, as well
as other bits and pieces. Lots of thought went
into it and some precious gifts. 

I finally got two of the dresses washed and as I suspected the red dye from creating the purple fabrics ran. Fortunately I anticipated this and sponge washed the dresses while they were hung up so the dye did not run into the yellow of the rainbow dress. It will need a few more washes where it is hung up to drip dry and let the colour run downwards. The blue dress wasn't too bad as there were only a few patches of purple, just for a little contrast. The next job was to decide how to make the last dress. I realised the design would mean that the skirt was too short for my older granddaughter or far too much fabric for such a skinny one. I finally worked out a pattern that would work. So now I'm creating larger patches from the small ones then I will sew these together into three bands, instead of six rows. I think it will look okay, but still a work in progress. 

It I can just reach in and get those spruce needles

Oh! Hello! Didn't see you there!

Well someone's been here

We have a stream

A beautiful day but the clouds look ominous

Soon it will be covered in flowers

A walk in the forest

A lone pine tree

Soon these will be winging their way to a new
owner. Silla's fleece is a lovely colour with a
a great sheen. So soft too.