Denise

Got to -10C, +12F today. Warmest its been for a couple of weeks. Woo-hoo! Spring's a-coming...

Better make lots of scones. The rumours about the doughnuts around here explain why they are plain and stale... Something about Clay's dog licking the icing off. I'll join you with the tea as well. I'd drink coffee if it just didn't taste so much like... well, coffee. Welcome to the forum.

I suspect that the program for shipping only checks the most common method within the US, and when you start shipping overseas by that method things get very expensive. I am sure that if you contact people directly they can figure out other shipping methods that are cheaper. Where there's a will there's a way.

Syvle, Welcome to the forum!! Your English is more than good enough to be understood. We have people here from all over the world and English is not always their first language either. You'll fit right in. A couple of people who post a bit a are Pella and Patrice. Both are from Quebec and have French as their first language too. We have few others from Europe too, where more people are multilingual. So if you have problems understanding something, just ask for another explanation. Us English-only speakers will probably try to re-word it or maybe some of the others who speak French will be able to help you. It's a pretty friendly place overall.

Carlb, My post is in a different font and size than what is normally here because I wrote it in Word and cut and pasted it here. I don't think we will get everyone to do that, but you can make the type larger on your own computer this way. 1.) Press and hold the Control key. 2.) Turn the wheel on your mouse. One way makes everything larger. The other way makes it smaller. 3.) When you let go of both, it will stay that size till you change it again. You will have to go back and forth a bit to get the whole width, but the print will be larger. All the best, Denise

Wonderful stories about wonderful people. In reading them, I got thinking that overall people are just people, regardless of how skilled they are in their area of endeavor. And while we are all amazed that they would even bother talking with us, I wonder how many of them inside themselves are amazed that others would think that way about them. They are just people enjoying other people which makes them so human and so likable. Some of the people I respect the most are the most down to earth people you would ever want to meet.

As we are in the middle of a deep freeze (that is actually a lot colder than our actual deep freeze keeps things) our radio station has been having a contest: Finish the sentance "It was so cold that..." The winner was "It was so cold that when I woke up my teeth were chattering. They were on the dresser beside the bed." My personal favorite was "It was so cold that the teenagers were actually wearing jackets." (Rod's comment, "Yeah, but are they wearing boots yet?") Minus 44C (-48F) yesterday morning. Only in the -30s last night, so its warming up!!

snallen, There are lots more old posts from the last year and a half still buried under the remains of the crash of '08. They are intact, but the people at computer central (you know, the ones that feed the squirrels that run on the wheels that keep the whole internet going) aren't used to the amount of manual labour it is taking to dig them out from under the rubble. Sounds like it will be a few more days till things are up and running, but at least Johanna and Kate marked the spot of the vault for us and held firm with things crashing all round them so we know where they all are. Its just a question of getting to them now. Once they are back up - you won't leave your computer for days!

Snow is beautiful, but the pool in the backyard sounds awful good right about now, with the heat to go with it, that is. Beautiful gardens and trees in these pictures. I've heard of the great colors out east. Ours are pretty too, but mainly yellow and orange, not that gorgeous red. Regis, we are in Northern Alberta, about 10 hours north of the border, 7 hours north of Calgary and 4 hours northwest of Edmonton. (And there is still quite a few hours driving north of us till you hit the North West Territories border.) HorsehairBraider - is that an alpaca I see in your backyard?

Looking out my window last week I was enjoying the scenery, so I thought I would share it. The temperature had dropped overnight and given us some beautiful hoar frost on the trees. The pictures don't do it justice (they never do), but it gives you a taste. The first one is looking west out our kitchen window. Our shop is on the left. Bald eagles have been known to land on the top of that big spruce tree you can just barely see sticking up on the far side of the bush. This one is looking south over the yard, the well traveled path to the shop, the garden (with our moveable greenhouse behind the tree) and the fence to the horse pasture. (Note - this was taken about noon. The sun is noticeably higher in the sky now than it was three weeks ago.) And I cheated on this one and took it out the door of the shop looking east. Those are our raspberry canes in the foreground, with the garden behind it. The fences, the chute and the corral system farther off to the left have all been built with our own hands. Gives you a good feeling. And the horses just top it off. Then I got thinking that there are people here from all over the world and I wondered, "What do you all see when you look out your windows?"

Skipknives, If you go to the leatherworker.net home page you can read some of the details. Also the Restoring Old Posts topic under Announcements and Administrivia will give you more information. Sounds like they saved everything up till December 27th except for the pictures posted since October sometime. They will get them back up, but it will take time as they have to talk nice enough to make the computers happy again after they got so mad on January 3rd. (stupidcomputers) (Oops, that set us back another few minutes. Sorry!)