Slopestyle Ski Photo Essay

Happy Easter!

We came across this sweet little rabbit on our recent ski trip to Red Mountain in Rossland, B.C. After enjoying some lovely powder turns we made our way down the mountain through the trees and there it was, frozen like a statue as we marvelled at her camouflage.

We haven't had a photo essay for a while, so I thought I'd share some more photos taken with my new iphone 6 (which is WAY too big and I'm so bummed that Apple issued a smaller phone with the same photo capabilities just a week after I got this one - the story of my tech life!).

No lift lines make for a sweet ski vacation!

This one is actually taken by B of our group after a little hike up for a back country run through lovely, untracked powder fields. I'm in the red jacket third from the right.

B dropping in for some sweet turns.

Dreamy...just dreamy. 

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It was a pleasure to bring D's friend along for the week - they had a ball!

With three mountain, Red has so much terrain it was like we had the entire resort to ourselves!

An excellent reminder with all of the glade skiing there is on Red!

Slopeside facilities

Classic ski town fencing!

You gotta love a ski lodge with serve-yourself mini marshmallows!

Our happy little ski family, (minus one son busy building robots at university).

They're Golden!

You may recall that in July my family attended a special reunion in Nova Scotia. My three siblings and I, our spouses and children all joined my parents to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.  The four families chipped in and gifted my folks a weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake complete with tickets to a musical.  I wanted to do something a little longer lasting, though.

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I made them a fun quilt for their 40th anniversary featuring hand drawn and crayon-coloured blocks by most family members. That quilt hangs proudly in our family cottage.  This time I opted for an embroidery project.  I hemmed a yard of white Essex linen and took it along to Nova Scotia with me for everyone to sign using a Frixion pen.

My parents are the original Sybil and Tom...I'm sure Downton Abbey fans will ask ; )

The middle dedication was prepared in Word, printed and then simply traced onto the linen. The flourishy thingies I found in free clip art online.  I first tried to stitch it with metallic embroidery floss, but that was a disaster. It looked awful, I couldn't knot it without huge lumps and the metallic threads frayed off the rayon core thread like crazy.  Luckily a friend provided this gold coloured rayon floss that worked beautifully.

My favourite 'signature' on the table cloth is by the youngest member of our family, my four year old nephew. After writing his name, he looked up at me and said "I'm thinking about a maple leaf". I asked him if he'd like to draw one and look what he drew, from his memory! He never took the pen off the linen and looked up at me after he drew each line. Adorable.

It is a difficult thing to photograph well, but you get the idea of this gift. There is a round table in my parent's front hall that I thought this would suit perfectly, and that's where my mom has put it. They are currently cruising in luxury around Italy, Croatia and France. That sounds like the perfect way to celebrate 50 amazing years!

A Little Post about a Little Island

This will be my last photo post from our family trip to the Maritimes in July. After our family reunion week, the four of us drove across the Confederation Bridge to visit my sister and her family in their Charlottetown home, in Canada's smallest province, Prince Edward Island.

I've been to the island several times, but this was our first time staying in Charlottetown proper, in my sister's new house.  We had a wonderful four days of relaxing, walking through the leafy streets of the city admiring the beautiful heritage homes and their gardens, dining al fresco on Richmond St. (Row Lobster House, Receiver Coffee), enjoying the theatre (Bitter Girl, Anne & Gilbert the Musical), visiting the beach and seeing my sister's Demi-Pointe Dance Shop, for the first time.

Here are a few pics for you!  Unfortunately, I didn't take many on this trip.  If you love Anne of Green Gables, golfing, beach walking, lush green countryside, lobster, kind and generous locals, step-dancing and fiddle music, then just trust me: get ye to PEI!

This beautiful historic All Soul's Chapel built in 1888 is rarely open to the public, but we 

got lucky on our walk into town!  The walls are PEI standstone and the chapel is a "masterful example of High Victorian Goth Revival architecture in Canada, designed by architect William Critchlow Harris, Jr."

I just can't get enough of the charming heritage homes in Charlottetown. I posted several photos on Instagram taken during our 'town walks'.

I got busted taking this photo as the homeowner opened his front door and jokingly told me he charges a dollar per picture. We had a nice chat and he willingly gave his wife 100% of the credit for their gorgeous garden.

Richmond St., alongside the Confederation Centre, is closed to traffic. It is great fun to dine outside and listen to live music - the jazz festival stage was just across from the restaurants and featured local musicians all day and evening.

A stunning new lobster mural,  painted on a wall in a downtown parking lot took my breath away! 

A gorgeous view along the boardwalk around Victoria Park in Charlottetown

The steeple of the church at Avonlea Village

This is so cool; all around the island these quilt block signs indicate the Arts and Heritage trail  More info about the sites are available by scanning the QR code below each sign!

A visit to Brackley Beach - swimming was not advised due to a proliferation of red jelly fish, but I did manage to wade in through the thousands of dinner-plate sized jellies clumped together in the shallow surf.

There's always plenty of real estate on a PEI beach! Miles and miles of red sand for walking.

PEI has done an incredible job of educating visitors about the importance of preserving delicate dune ecosystems, so almost all beaches have boardwalk access to protect the dunes.

These castles were just about at the end of their day.

We enjoyed reading this wonderful public chalkboard 'interactive mural' outside the Anne & Gilbert theatre.

It is so great to hang out with cousins! My two on the outside, with my sister's two in the middle on the set of Anne & Gilbert. It was a thrill to finally see them on stage, both have been in this musical, or Anne of Green Gables, in past summers.

In need of any dance shoes, tutus, tights, leotards, gymnastic suits, yoga pants? 

Check out Demi Pointe!

Okay folks, thanks for allowing me to indulge you in family holiday photos. Back to quilting action soon! 

Christmas Creativity - the Husband Edition

Christmas is the usually the only time of year that my husband B is able to carve out some creative time from his super demanding day job.  Every year we wonder if he'll be able to pull off another original design and get 150 cards screened in time and every year by some holiday miracle he succeeds. It is very important to him to continue a family tradition started in 1947 by his father (to read a more involved post about his process, check this out). This year he perfected the photo-emulsion technique that had eluded him in the past (thanks to a knowledgeable hipster at the art supply store). This is very happy news for me, because no harsh chemicals are needed to clean the screens, so I can breathe easy at silk screen time now!

Christmas card 2014: Our fireplace nook, complete with a lounging Flynn

B started his own tradition last year by writing everyone in the family a personal poem about their year (completed with beer or wine accompaniment on Christmas Eve). Read last year's poem about me here. Luckily his sister is even more prolific in the poetry department, so she writes one for him in return. I'll share this year's rhymes with you by way of giving you some pretty straightforward hints of the exciting year I have ahead of me. There is a lot of travel scheduled for 2015 and I couldn't be more excited....

 Back in the early 2000s
Bryan travelled on too many trips
It led in a roundabout way
To krista sewing up strips.

From the early days piecing log cabins
And other traditional blocks
Quilting gave Krista an outlet
More engaging than looking at rocks.

Fast forward to 2014,
Krista's hobby's a full blown career
With a glossy new book coming out
And trip to Loon Lake every year.

We know that her students love her
And retreaters would kill for a spot
To work on one of her patterns
With fabric that's cotton, and shot.

But of late there's another dimension
To the growing mystique of P-Print
She is going to travel the world
Due to an improvisational stint.

The offers are coming in fast
From the north and the east and on water
When she swings through our town the next time
We'll be lucky even to spot her.

What is it about this technique?
One might think it is just a glue trick
The Swedes from Uppsala know better
As does the Guild Inuvik.

Through it all you have family behind you
Though your fame may go up and down
I will always setup your tables
As long as retreats are in town.

I hope that you enjoyed your Christmas holiday surrounded by loving family or kind friends in front of a warm fire. All the best to you from our cozy blue cottage.

Capri

Here'a another look back on our trip to Italy in October. Our last couple of days were spent on the island of Capri. We were very excited to visit the island, where my late father in law Ted spent several months living in a villa in the early 1950's. Before departing, we looked at his scrapbooks (that included shots of Ted hanging out in clubs with Lana Turner and Lex Barker aka Tarzan!) and read his memoirs.  Apparently Capri was the happening spot for actors, poets, artists and Euro-playboys and girls after the war.  Ted was in the artist category.

It was fun to seek out the same views that Ted had photographed over 60 years ago. Here, a postcard in his scrapbook, of the quaint piazzetta in Capri:

And a photo I took last month:

True to guidebook descriptions, Capri is crazy busy with day-trippers who arrive at Marina Grande by large ferries from Naples and Sorrento, and smaller boats from various ports on the Amalfi coast.  Most depart in the late afternoon, so we found the evenings much quieter.  We ate in local 'family' restaurants recommended by our hotel, instead of the crazy expensive hotels and upscale 5-star spots. The service was fun and friendly and the food amazing.  The narrow alleys of Capri town are full with exclusive boutiques and fashionable Italians strolling with gelato in hand (and more often than not, a designer purse in the other one).  I fit right in with my dry-fit hiking outfit and walking poles.

Marina Grande, Capri

Maybe this is where Mariah Carey buys her bed linen? I saw a few photos of her in restaurant display cases enjoying her Capri vacation.

We made arrangements in port for someone to transfer our luggage right to our hotel. There is a funicular that takes people up to town but the line up would have taken hours. We chose to walk the winding steps up through the houses to the piazzetta (where we enjoyed a cappuccino) and then a further 15 minutes uphill  to our hotel. In hindsight, it would have been much more economical to hire a taxi for 15 Euro up to the town and then drag our suitcases up to the hotel...we were billed 45 Euro for the luggage transfer despite the message on our reservation that said "call the hotel when you arrive to make arrangements for luggage transfer". Lesson learned: always verify what's included! The morning we left the island, we let our bags on wheels pull us down the path to the piazzetta, where we hopped on the funicular to take us down into the port.

Shortly after checking into our lovely hotel Villa Sarah, we were off on our first walk!  The villa is located above town, so we'd already done most of the climbing and had a lovely stroll along the narrow passageways that function as roads in the Capri neighbourhoods. The only vehicular traffic are one- or two-seater electric carts.

Our walk took us quickly out of the houses and into the forests on limestone cliffs high above the sea. We chose a popular tourist route out to the famous Arco Natural, a limestone arch on the east coast of the island.  The route from the Arco continues along the coast with spectacular views before curving back into town from Faraglioni, the southeast tip of the island.

This remote home, Villa Malaparte, was built in 1938 for Italian writer Curzio Malaparte. Location, location, location!! Accessible by foot from the piazzetta, or by sea via treacherous stairs.

Faraglioni, where you can rent a lounge chair and recline on the concrete beach between the limestone stacks.

Looking west along the southern coast of Capri, Marina Piccola is center, at the base of the sheer cliff.

The following day was our only full day on the island, so we chose to hike the west coast from the Faro di Punta Carena lighthouse up to the famed Grotta Azzura along the Sentiero dei Fortnini (a path that takes you through three forts build by the British around 1800.  The path is very exposed and rugged in places along the rocky coastline, but hikers are cleverly distracted by handpainted tile signs grouted into the rock every 150 m, or so. These tiles are bilingual Italian-English and define the local flora and fauna in the most poetic way possible, relating flower names and scents to the Greek Gods and their lovers.

The trail begins here, at a tiny day resort beside the lighthouse - we reached the trail head by bus from Capri town, via Anacapri.

Here, you see the exposed stairs. This section of trail was not for vertigo sufferers!

Check out this villa with enormous (empty) swimming pool. The property looked abandoned, but it could be the owners had just closed it for the winter season.

I'm a sucker for a great mailbox

Our 3-hour trek ended at the Grotta Azzura - and a remarkable scene. Several Instagram friends following our trip had suggested we visit this spot and even take a swim in the grotta (a cavern at sea level accessible by a very small hole that only a tiny rowboat can fit through when the waves subside).  Arriving at the top of the cliff, we looked down to see this:

Numbered rowboat guys picking up people from tourist boats to take them into the Grotta once they had passed by the floating office (striped canopy) to pay their 13 Euros each.  The oarsmen then row up to the entrance, where they instruct everyone to lie down and they wait for the right moment in the swell before grabbing a chain on the wall and pulling the boat through.

It was an overcast day, so we didn't really get to see the incredible glowing blue (azure) sea that people talk about, but it was a pretty fun thing to do.  Once inside, the oarsmen break into song, thinking to increase their tips by creating a lovely feeling of romantica with the echoing strains of O Sole Mio. Ha!  I mostly had a view of our oarsman's butt.

It was pitch black in there, so I couldn't make any setting adjustments on my Nikon. Sadly, this is all I've got for you from the inside!

I'll leave you with a few more shots from Capri. In reading Ted's memoirs and looking through scrap books before our trip, there were several snapshots of he and friends enjoying drinks at "Number Two". Well, it appears the club is still there, however it doesn't open until 1:00 a.m. so we didn't have a chance to check it out.  We had fun finding the front door, though!

 

The view west to Faraglioni from Marina Piccola

An early morning shot of Capri town from the Funicular station patio

The main ferry jetty at Marina Grande, where we departed for Naples

My fabulous travel companion and husband of 20 years, on the ferry to begin our journey home. 

Bye bye Capri!

I think I'll do one more post from the trip with some more shots from the Amalfi coast, including a couple of beach days and a visit to the Roman ruins of Herculaneum.  All of my photos will be on Flickr, I just haven't made them public yet as I'd like to properly label everything first.  I'll be back with more Italy next week!