Easter Break and other holidays

In Newfoundland, March Break is referred to as Easter Break, and the schools attach the 5 day recess to the Easter weekend, making it 6 school days and two weekends long. If Easter is late in the year, the week off is the week before Easter weekend and the extra day is Easter Monday. This year though, the extra day was Good Friday and the week off is this week. While this seems like poor Newfoundlanders get shortchanged out of that extra day, in fact they still come out far ahead of the game.
The week before Easter included St Patrick's Day, and that is a civic holiday here. Not to be unfair to one founding group of settlers over the other, I'm told we also have a holiday for St. George's Day which happens in April. (I don't even remember celebrating St. George when I lived in England, but there are none more British than the British abroad.) Also we get Orangeman's Day in July because cultural and religious oppression is still OK here.
Other provincial holidays include Discovery Day in June (sometimes known as St. John's Day) , and Regatta Day in August. July 1 is called Memorial Day, not even Dominion Day as to used to be called in Canada, despite the fact that we still have Dominion Stores here. In fact Newfoundland has more holidays that any other province in Canada by far. We have an extra 6 altogether in addition to the National ones, while the rest of the provinces get only two, or in some cases only one. It's true look it up here.

Yes, it snowed a little

The other side of the street was blown clear by high winds, but we had a 4 foot snowdrift across the door this morning when we got up. Now we are getting freezing rain and the snow if getting heavy. The plow has only cleared these side streets in one direction so far, so we are hoping he will be back later to clear our parking spot and we won't have to.

Happy St. Patricks Day

Which, in Newfoundland, is an actual holiday. And also a great source of consternation to Newfoundlanders I am told, because it comes in the middle of Lent when everyone is supposed to be giving up the drink. No one seemed to realise that you could celebrate the day without getting pie eyed. None of the legends and stories associated with Patrick have anything to do with drinking as far as I can tell. There is another tradition here about the weather called Shelagh's brush. It is 'the last' storm about the time of St. Patrick's Day. Tradition states that if it is before St. Patrick's Day, the spring will be long and miserable, but if it is after, it is Shelagh removing the last of winter with her brush or broom and the spring will be nice. Last Thursday we had a bit of a squall that dumped a lot of mixed snow, ice, rain, sleet, and freezing ice pellets on us for 15 hours and people started talking about Shelagh and a long miserable spring. Yesterday we had a blizzard with high winds and a foot of snow. Studyboy remarked that Shelagh must have brought the whole cleaning cart with her. Tonight we are forecast to get two more feet of snow. Apparently she's contracted out to a Merry Maids this year.

"I ain't ded" - Granny

Yes we are still here. And yes we are well, but too preoccupied with ordinary activities to write anything interesting here.
And Studyboy has monopolized the computer area with paper writing and is only now emerging from lock down in the lair.
Last weekend I attended a workshop on tile making and decorating given by visiting artists Deb Kuzyk and Ray Mackie from Lucky Rabbit Pottery in Annapolis Royal. They had a new show opening at the Craft Council Art Gallery called the Relationship of Bees to Flowers and graciously consented to do an afternoon workshop and a talk on their work. You can see some of their beautiful stuff at their website.
Attending a workshop like this is a bit like watching the Brier on TV. You can see how it is done. You pick up some really good tips. It totally jazzes you up to try it out. And then you get depressed when skill doesn't match understanding. Like I used to tell my students "Knowing is not the same as doing."
Deb introduced us to some underglaze techniques that when she demonstrated them, looked so effortless. And she left behind some small samples of underglaze for us to try out. I had the privilege to play with them on Wednesday morning, and quickly realized that no matter how forgiving the media is for a pro, the results of my trials still looked blobby and childish.
This weekend, despite my blobby and childish efforts I have been asked to demonstrate pottery making techniques at the Multicultural Fair for the studio. Lately I have been mad for a type of hand building called coiling. The whole point of which is to make it look blobby in a three dimensional sense, like this teapot.
(If you can't beat it, perfect it.) And in case you are wondering, yes it does hold water and pours quite nicely too.