One Week Down!

I've almost survived my first week back to work. It's gone surprisingly well - and quick! (the parts before and after work are kind of dragging though.. The house is quiet and boring! I of course have no motivation to pack or clean!)

This past week I got to meet a fellow knitter/Ravelry member while she was on her way home from an adventure of a lifetime - a trip to the north of Banks Island. We went out for dinner and I took her and a fellow research team member on a tour of Inuvik then we went and hung out by the river and got eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Fireweed close-up

I saw a grizzly bear in the back of a pick-up truck* (ENR I think?) drive through the first half of town on Wednesday. Of course CBC North hasn't updated on why that would be. Hopefully the newspaper has some juicy info this week. I was walking from my doctor's appointment to work when it passed me - it took me a couple seconds to register that it was 1. a bear and 2. not normal! I first though "dead thing in the back of a truck, nothing new" and then "!!!!!!! That's a grizzly!!!!"

(*to clarify, I'm pretty sure the bear was dead because it was just in the back of the truck - no cage or anything. I don't think they'd drive a sedated bear back into town.)


Temperature: +16C
Sunrise: 4:30am
Sunset: 1:25am

March: In like a lamb out like a lion/in like a lion out like a lamb.

What happens when the middle of March is lion-like?

We are having a pretty intense cold-snap at the moment. The wind chill has been in the -40s (closer to -50 at some points!) and the ambient temperature isn't much warmer! (Cambridge Bay has been outrageously cold -57C with the windchill for the last few days!!)

I had to keep two of the residents home yesterday (due to the cold) and let me tell you, I was insanely unpopular last night because of it. The main issue is that it's SO sunny out - not a cloud in the sky - and for people that don't understand how the weather works, they think we're having a lovely winter day. Not so much. So I got to hear all night "It's sunny out! It's not cold!!" "I'll wear a coat! It's NICE out!" when really, it's minus a bajillion degrees.

I really hope we don't have another 2½ weeks of this...


Temperature: -34C
Sunrise: 9:21am
Sunset: 8:46pm

Craft Fair Wrap-Up and Arctic Life

Well! The craft fair is done for another year. If I wouldn't have ordered prints and cards (it was a last minute decision to do it) it would've been a raging success this year. But because of that up-front cost... Not so much. I just barely broke even which is pretty disappointing especially because I have to find somewhere in my tiny place to store 14 canvas photos (I didn't sell a single one) and I need to make about 150 friends to send Christmas cards to.
My ornaments however, HUGE hit. That's pretty much all I sold. I counted up my totals and I sold 49 items - one table top snowman, 4 baby sweaters, 3 or 4 packs of cards a pair of mittens and the rest was ornaments.

Small rant and one example of the few rude people I had this weekend:
I had a lady come by about 4 times looking at one of the little sweaters I had - I had 4 different sizes - the largest one was $50 and the one smaller than that was $40 (I also had two smaller ones for $30 and an even smaller one for $20). She was looking at the two and then rudely commented "$50?! What's the difference!?" so I explained to her what the difference was (size and different yarn) and she walked away. She came back a few other times to look at it and once brought her husband by to look at it. She came back today to look at it AGAIN and then was pissed off that I hadn't lowered my price on the last day (I'm not desperate to sell everything so I didn't lower my prices today - and plus I feel like it rips off the people that buy stuff the first day). Then she came back again and looked at it and was asking me about it (etc) and then starts to take out her money. Once she paid for it she still bitched about how expensive it was! Like I'd twisted her arm to buy it or something... sheesh...
Also - I still can't get over the people that will stand at your table and talk about your stuff (negatively) when you're sitting RIGHT THERE... I can hear youuuuuuu!

And now for a segment on Arctic Life... Or at least Inuvik Life and what happens when the road is open (kind of - I think it's still only light traffic) and the stores haven't lowered their prices.

Exhibit A: Bananas

Exhibit B: Beef Jerky

This looks like pretty tasty beef jerky - I hope someone looks at the price before they buy it... Get ready for a shock!

Yikes!!!!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!


Temperature: -14C
Sunrise: 12:46pm
Sunset: 2:39pm

Our Trip to Whitehorse

We're back and our trip to Whitehorse has been declared a success on all levels. We left Inuvik a little later than we wanted to on Friday evening and didn't get in to Eagle Plains until 11:30pm (Yukon time). We hit some funky weather on the other side of the Peel River ferry that lasted pretty much into Eagle Plains. We woke up early and head breakfast and got back on the road by 9am. Lots of fog and snow but also LOTS of mud.

The fog and miserable weather lasted until Engineer Creek and then it cleared off for the rest of the drive as the weather got nicer, the temperature got warmer - we cheered every time it went up a degree.

After a long drive, we arrived in Whitehorse at 8:30pm on Saturday. We checked into our hotel and went and had some A&W then drove around to see what time stores would be open the next day.
Sunday was spent shopping. Mostly Wal-Mart, Superstore and Canadian Tire. I stocked up on a lot of things that are going to be pretty expensive when the road is closed (and things that are already expensive now). So things like toilet paper, paper towel, kleenex, laundry soap, kitty litter and pop. Pop was SO cheap in Whitehorse! For a case (12 cans) it's between $10 and $12 here, at Superstore, it was $5.98. I also found a soup that I had while visiting my mum and stocked up on that.
Sunday night we went out for sushi - yay! Then went and saw a movie - Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2. I think I enjoyed it way more than the first one.

On Monday we woke up at the crack of dawn so we could take the truck in for some minor repairs (stuff that needed to be repaired before the trip). I got to meet up with Jo's sister Teri. We went and had tea/hot chocolate and then went to the yarn store! I had a lot of fun and wish we had a little bit longer. (I hope you had fun too Teri!!).
We finished our last bit of shopping, packed up the truck and got on the road. We got to Dawson City Monday evening, had dinner and then spent a few hours at Diamond Tooth Gerties - they do three shows a night and we missed the first one which ended up being the one I wanted to see the most (the Cancan girl part).

We got up on Tuesday and went and got some old time pictures done and got back on the road for the last leg of our trip. We arrived in Inuvik at midnight. We didn't see a lot of wildlife - three foxes a bunch of ptarmigan and then a mother grizzly and two cubs.

Here's a link to the pictures on my Flickr set - I don't have time to caption them right now so I'll try to do that when I get home from work tonight.


Temperature: +6C
Sunrise: 8:22am
Sunset: 9:10pm

Knitting & Berries

Finished the Emily doll I started at the beginning of the month. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I would've gotten it finished sooner but I didn't have a chance to knit at the arts festival like I thought I would (wayyyyy too many people coming by to talk and there were a few sections I had to keep count of rows/stitches/etc).

I forgot that I didn't post the sweater that I made for Glen's sister's new baby! I made a BSJ and some booties. They really liked them and I can't wait to get a picture of baby Jai in his new sweater!

I've been taking so many pictures this month that my July folder is getting angry with me every time I open it (all my pictures are hyper-sorted too so it's not like it's ALL the pictures I've taken in July - it's my July 2008 Arctic Pictures folder that's getting grouchy!).
We went out on Tuesday and took some Cloudberry/Aqpik/Bake Apple pictures for a top secret project. Here's one of the pictures I took:

I know a lot of people really love these little berries but I think I'm missing what makes them so good. The few I had were good at first but had a really gross taste after the initial taste wore off :-/ bleh... But they're kind of pretty and they're hard to find (no one will tell you where they pick berries!) so it's kind of worth being massacred by mosquitoes to take pictures of them.


Temperature: +16C
Sunrise: 4:31am
Sunset: 1:23am

Gardening

Inspired by Bezzie's container gardening, a few weeks ago I went and bought some pots, dirt and seeds and planted my own little container garden:

I'm worried that I might've planted a bit late but I figured our 24hrs of daylight will make up for it. On the package of corn it said it's specially selected for colder environments with shorter growing times so we'll see! The only things sprouting right now are my peas (woo!) and my morning glory. Sometime this week I'll go pick up some netting for my peas. I wasn't sure if the landlady wanted to put anything in the raised beds in the yard otherwise I guess I could've used those.

I've been trying to get out and take more pictures lately. It's a bit hard because I've been going to bed fairly early and during the day there isn't really anything remarkable happening (a photography book I just got said that the only two times a day a landscape photographer should be out taking pictures is dawn and dusk --- dusk here is 2-3am!). Anyway, we went for a walk around the lake yesterday evening and I got a few nice shots and then around 2am I noticed the light was doing some pretty cool things outside so we took a drive. I don't normally put my "professional" photos up on here but I really wanted to share this shot:

Robin Update:
Mum said the baby robins have left the nest so unfortunately there aren't any more pictures :-( That happened faster than I thought it would!



Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a