Love that free publicity

Today Mimi and I were interviewed for the Halifax Chronicle Herald business section. Of the two daily papers here, that's the better one ... the one that is comparable to the Toronto Star, as opposed to the Sun. It was for part of a series of articles featuring local small businesses, craft-based businesses I think. I'm not sure when it will run, but when it does of course I will place a link here! It's exciting because you can't buy publicity like that. (Assuming that they write good things about us!)

A word about my knitting. Right now I am doing one of many projects I've been doing with other people lately. I'm making a hat for a fisherman from New Brunswick who does a lot of good work for the endangered right whale. Among other things, he risks his life to disentangle right whales from fishing gear. Someone asked me to make him one of these hats that has whale flukes on top.

Here's one I made for someone else.

I couldn't say no. But once I'm finished it, and then finished that one thing for my Mom and that scarf for Bill that I started last year and then the sweater my 8-year-old niece asked me for - then I have all sorts of plans for things to knit for me. New Year's resolution - make things for myself :)

It just occurred to me that a more interesting post than this would be about my 90-year-old friend Gwladys. (Yes that's really how to spell her name.) But it's late now, so I'll save that for next time. Anyway I'm going to visit her tomorrow, so before too long I will write a little about one of the most interesting people I know.

Random control

By the way, I realize that the snowglobe link over there to the right is duplicated. This Blogger interface is kind of annoying, because parts of it seem to operate in a somewhat random way. The place where I can arrange the elements you see here on this page (profile, link list, etc) is not always visible when it should be. So sometimes I can't add a link in when I want to. Now I can't get it back to delete the duplicate. If anyone reading this knows how to deal with that, please tell me!

An embarassment of snow

Today Halifax had that embarassing first-snowfall-of-the-year when everyone realizes they should have put their snow tires on a couple of weeks ago, and all hell breaks loose. The city experienced the worst rush hour gridlock in its history, apparently, because of a few (10 - 20) cm of snow. The buses basically stopped running for a couple of hours. People were stuck in traffic for an hour or two, because of accidents and abandoned cars. I personally stood for an hour in a bus shelter as three schedules buses failed to show up. For most of that hour, no buses came, even though the streets were pretty much deserted. I was wondering if all of the buses had slipped into the ocean or the Bedford Basin or something. I was reading a book about Mexico, where it was warmer. My Value Village eskimo parka with the real fur hood trim was also helping to keep me warm.

This is my bike, in the snow. Not from today though ... this is a few years ago on Thanksgiving weekend, after I had ridden to visit friends in Mount Albert. Tonight my bike is out in the snow again, but with a cover on. I was worried the snowplow guys would knock it over, but no problem. I sure hope it's warm next Saturday because that will be the day I should take it away for winter storage. It will spend the winter in a barn in Upper Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia. Bill's grandmother's barn. It's an hour ride to get there. So I will likely become reacquainted with my electric vest.

I have sacrificed my personal digital camera for The Loop. My camera lives at the store now, because we often want to take photos to put on our website. So that makes it a little harder to have up-to-the minute photos handy. Hmm maybe The Loop should think about buying their own camera. Meanwhile, here is an older photo that represents what Clark, Ruby and I are doing tonight.