Kate smudges in earth, paint and life

In 1985, I moved to Ottawa to start a new job. It was an exciting time, although I was often lonely since I didn’t know a soul when I arrived. After settling into my work and my new apartment, I started studying French in the evenings and during my lunch hour. It was great fun to practice out my skills on the people I worked with. Most of them were fluently bilingual and enjoyed my efforts. During my first spring in Ottawa, I attended a three-week immersion course in Jonquière, Québec. It was wonderful and I returned to Ottawa with a renewed desire to become bilingual.

One of the people who gave me much encouragement was my friend, Hélène. She was a legal translator and did much of the translation for the organisation I worked with. It was Hélène’s belief that I should learn how to express myself when I annoyed or angry as well as excited and happy. She taught me lots of wonderful French expressions that I still use to this day.

I am often reminded of Hélène because of the bulletin board I painted and decorated with letters, cards and pictures from friends over the years. Yesterday as I was writing about letter writing and pens, I thought of Hélène and of all of the encouraging notes she wrote me throughout our friendship. The photograph above is of one that has prominence on my board. It was written on 22 May 1987.

Little did I know then that Hélène would only be with me for a short time. She had a recurrence of breast cancer and died in 1988. Shortly before she died, I visited her for the last time and I have always carried with me the lovely bits of wisdom and advice she gave to me.I was glad for the opportunity to say a final goodbye. Sometimes I can feel her spirit looking out for me and often I smile remembering her zest for life and her mischievous grin. Good friends truly are priceless.

Before I got my first computer in 1988, I used to spend hours writing letters to family and friends. During those times, I loved using different pens, inks and beautiful papers. I suppose that is why I still have lots of different paper – it is coming in handy these days with doing collage. Now that I’m doing calligraphy, my interest in my glass and fountain pens has also been renewed.

My favourite pens were always my glass ones (see picture above). The only problem was their fragility. When my son was a toddler, I accidentally left one out and he tried it. He pressed down on the paper and the nib snapped off. Yet again, I learned not to leave fragile items anywhere within his reach. He was as agile and speedy in finding forbidden items as is Lytton, our dog, in locating any food left on the kitchen counter.

I used to always have ink-stained fingers depending on what colour of ink happened to be my current favourite. Here is a picture of some of my inks. While I love using email and the internet, sometimes I wish that I still wrote letters by hand. Then I could use up all those postage stamps that I collected in the 1980s and have the added bonus of receiving handwritten letters in return.

I was most excited when a package of Christmas cards arrived from Linda, who has a lovely blog at Abby Creek Art. Linda’s blog is a treat to visit, because she paints wonderful animal portraits as well as abstracts. Just last week, Linda became a new mum of a lovely dog named Maisie Rose.

Recently, Linda opened an Etsy store to sell some of her paintings. When I saw these cards (pictured above), I couldn’t resist purchasing them. This is a reproduction of Linda’s painting of Bianca, a cute white Boxer. Click here to visit Linda’s Etsy Shop.

While I was photographing the card, Lytton, my big, brown dog, kept coming up and nudging me. It was near impossible to take a picture without the shadow of his tail showing up. Well, I ended up taking a close-up shot of Lytton’s adorable face. Once I did that, Lytton seemed content to go off and chew on one of his rawhide bones.

For the past few days, my son and I have had great fun watching Lytton carry his new rawhide bones around the house. He hides them in plain view, and then moves them about whenever he gets up from a nap. I don’t know who is getting more sleep these days, Lytton or me!

I would like to thank everyone who has left comments on my blog these past days. Your comments always cheer me and give me the motivation to continue posting to my blog every day. I promise to reply to your comments – I intended to do so today, but then off I went for a nap.

And now, I am off to sleep!

It was another day of knitting since there was a football game on. And an exciting game it was – the western CFL semi-finals pitting the Saskatchewan Roughriders against the BC Lions. The Roughriders were the underdogs going into the game, but they came out the winners.

I spent the entire game knitting a scarf and hoping that it will be the right colours for a friend.

Earlier in the day, I was feeling pretty listless and so I melted the beeswax and did some collage. I love using scraps of Japanese papers … the colours and textures of the paper make it so wonderful to work with.

Pictured above is a collage piece I’m working on. I didn’t have time earlier to fool around with the pressed flowers beyond the single Pansy in the window. I’ll do that just as soon as I read the new story at The Created Wor(l)d – the writing blog I’m participating in. It is exciting to be working with an amazing group of creative and fun people.

Here’s to a good week for everyone from chilly Regina, Saskatchewan.

I wish I had a picture of the simple dessert that I made for my son and I today. We are both feeling under-the-weather and in need of a treat. I pulled out my favourite cookbook, The 1978 Kids’ Cooking Contest Cookbook, published by the Regina Public Library.

This cookbook contains simple, but delicious recipes. The drawings in the cookbook are adorable.

I tried to imagine what the lives of children who submitted these recipes have been like. Do they remember entering a cooking contest and having their recipes published? Do they still live here?

Here’s the recipe for Butterscotch Oat squares. I used to make this recipe regularly years ago, but had forgotten about it. A few weeks ago, my younger sister called and asked me for it. Since then, I have made it twice and found out that my son, Benoît, loves them. This is quite something, since he usually prefers store-bought cookies. (I think that is because I make cookies regularly and so cookies from a store seem exotic. It reminds me of my older sister who used to want to take store-bought white bread sandwiches to school in grade one. My mum used to bake all our bread way back then.)

Butterscotch Oat Squares

1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups large flake rolled oats

Combine sugar, baking powder and rolled oats. Add butter and vanilla. Blend thoroughly. Spread in a square, ungreased pan. Bake at 375 degrees fahrenheit for eight to ten minutes or until golden brown.

Let stand for five minutes. While still warm, cut in squares with a sharp knife (that is, if you haven’t already eaten a bunch of the mixture as soon as it had cooled a bit!!) . Let cool and then remove from pan.

My head felt as if it was spinning for much of today, just like in this picture. When I signed up to post every day during National Blogging Posting Month (NabloPoMo), I didn’t realise what a commitment it is. Can it only be Day 16?

I feel as if I’m coming down with a cold so it’s been one of those lazy, do-as-little-as-possible sort of days. Those little Hallowe’en chocolate bars kept me company along with Fritos.

Now I have that heavy bloated sensation. If I can rouse myself enough, I’m going off to bed. Yes, tomorrow will be a better day.

And that’s the end of my whine for the night.

I hope you all have a good weekend.

Tonight I went to my first meeting of the Regina Calligraphy and Paper Group. We spent part of the meeting working on weathergrams. Here is some information on what a weathergram is.

We wrote Haiku poems, or lines of about ten words, and then printed them on brown kraft paper. After we finished writing, we punched holes in the paper and then tied string through them. I am planning to put one in my garden and give the other two away.

This is what I wrote on my three weathergrams:

It is rather late because I was editing my story for the new blog, The Created Wor(l)d, that I mentioned in my post yesterday. I have titled the story, ‘Hummingbirds’, but that will likely change. Most of today, I read about the Kootenay Lake area of British Columbia because that’s where I decided I wanted my character to live.

At first I thought I would write just one story, but as I started writing, more ideas came to me. I have a feeling that I’ll be writing several stories on the same subject.

The picture above, is a canna lily that grew in my front garden. I quite like the colour, especially at this time of year, when browns and greys predominate.

I hope you check out the new writing blog – there are now four stories posted. They are all different, which I love – I’m really pleased about how well the blog is doing.

As the snow flies, I’m glad to be bundled up in a cozy down comforter and dreaming of flowers. I have spent the evening working on a story that hopefully I’ll finish in the next day or so for a new writing blog, TheCreatedWor(l)d .

I am excited to be part of this collaborative effort with a group of wonderful blog writers. There is Aria from California, with her always unique take on food at Passionate Nonchalance, and Bindi from Melbourne, Australia, who writes on a variety of interesting subjects in her blog, Epossums. I wish I lived in Australia these days, since it is spring there.

Closer to my home, Diana gives us glimpses of life in northern Alberta in her Granny Fiddler blog. I’m hoping we’ll hear about her new harp soon.

Then there is Ingrid, a screenwriter and movie buff from London, England who entertains us with excellent movie reviews and posts about life in London in her blog, The Girl in the Café.

Kate, who lives relatively close to me, in Minnesota, shares her incredible culinary expertise, along with her extensive knowledge of wine at Kate in the Kitchen.

And finally, Katie, who lives in Virginia, totally inspires me with her garden and her incredible gardening knowledge and photographs at her GottaGarden blog.

I hope you will all come and visit The Created Wor(l)d and read our latest fiction pieces.

Let’s hope that the snow will soon stop falling here!

Pressing flowers has been one of my favourite things this past summer and fall. There are still pansies blooming in the garden and so I’ve continued on my pressing frenzy …

Usually my flowers end up in books carefully preserved. I love opening up books and finding flowers that I remember from my garden.

This year, my pressed flowers are getting used at a rapid rate. Collages and altered books seem to be using up many of the flowers. I like working with them since it feels as if I’m still working out in my garden (well, at least in my imagination!)