Progress, or production at least.

So here's the latest picture to get finished, at least in principle. It needs fixative and maybe a little more attention when I have the patience to return to it. There's no greater stymie to my ability than feeling the need to create a "masterpiece" every time I touch a pencil, brush or chisel. Not only is it annoying to those around me, it creates what is best known as writer's block. In my case, artist's block. I have thus far mentally acknowledged it and am making efforts to enjoy myself, that way I don't drive myself nuts thinking I can only make something if I think it's going to sell. Which points to the ludicrous nature of that thought process because I almost never manage to keep a picture long enough to ever sell it, it usually gets given away or traded off for favors instead. Thus protecting me from noteriety or fame.

*cough* Right then, here's the picture. By the way, cameras have an amazing ability to wash out and make 2D art look pitiful, especially graphite pieces, this one looks much better in the room.

Sunday! Heeyahh!

Been  a fair day. I feel like I've accomplished some stuff today. Went to church, made goat biscuits from scratch, got the barbecue going and then barbecued chicken, shrank a few snapshots down to blog size and here we go. This week in pictures (click on picture for larger one):

This is our nice, roomy elevated deck/back porch. Complete with freshly unburied barbecue. Beneath that pciture is the other half of the deck on the neighboring townhouse. That really is 6 feet of drifted snow stacked up there. No, it wasn't like that at the door, it was only 4.5 feet deep when I got it open. About as high as the railing. I really wanted to start BBQ season.

This is me barbecuing in -10 C outdoors. Why not? If you let a little cold or snow stop you here you'll never get anything done.

These are a new Adam favourite(<= check out that Canadian spelling!), goat biscuits. They're just biscuits, but made with predominantly quinoa flour, so as not to let the gluten monster eat me, but for fun and variety that also have feta cheese in them. It's a nice dry cheese and it only adds a layer of flavour here, not in anyway overpowering. They were delicious, what you see here is what I managed to get a picture of before they disappeared.

The recipe? sure:

1 1/4 cups quinoa flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup of butter

1 tbsp of sugar(I used splenda)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp of baking powder

3/4 cup of milk

3/4 to a cup of crumbled feta cheese

Mix dry ingredients well, cube and cut in butter with forks of knives of something until you have it pretty fine, add milk and feta and mix to make a sticky clumpy mass. Then lightly flour a flat surface and your hands and press everything together into a ball of dough. Flatten it until its about a 1/2 inch thick and use a floured cookie cutter to make biscuit rounds, gather and repress any spare to make more biscuits. I wound up with about 2 dozen. Lightly brush the tops with a little milk and put in a 400 F oven for 18-20 minutes on a lightly greased pan.

On to other things. They were having a spring festival this week. Much of it was for the kids, but the snowmobile drag races and dog sled races were cool. I was looking forward to the seal skinning competition, but it didn't happen, I was bummed out. This was us waiting for it outside of Nakasuk grade school for it to start. It never did, I don't think they had any seals to skin for the competition. Oh well, I'll probably catch something during the summer festival.

That's all, later folks!

Said the raven, "Nevermore."

We went walking some more with a lady we know who grew up on Baffin island. She took us down around a trail on the beach (right, beach. for a couple months at least). The sea ice was spectacular of course, but the birds were the hardest to ignore. This may have been the biggest raven I have seen in town to date. It's on that rock next to the shed with the standard 6 foot tall door. That raven is almost 2 feet tall, and probably between 15-25 lbs. They carry off puppies and cats when they get the chance. They also sound horrible when they caw, something like a golf ball rattling in a coffee can.