This Week

Well, I'm sad to report that my region is back into Covid lockdown as of Monday morning. All non-essential stores have to close but can offer curb pick up or delivery. Restaurants and coffee shops too, and gyms, hairdressers, museums, theatre, everything that we all used to consider part of normal life. But the big stores like Walmart and Costco can still open, because they sell food, but can also sell everything else, while the family owned shops have to close. It's not right!

I cut the Christmas cake I made into quarters, and covered each one with almond paste, or marzipan. There should be a layer of royal icing on top, but that's even more sugar which is just too much. Family will be getting some of these.

We had an overnight snowfall a few days ago, and the trees looked very pretty for a while, until the temperature rose and all the snow melted. You can see where the treerats have knocked the snow down along the squirrel highway.

Last year at this time I took part in an ATC trading event.... ATC = Artist Trading Cards 2.5"x3.5"..... I wrote about it here and showed pictures of the cards here. We met at a local Art Gallery for the afternoon, it was a bit crazy with everyone exchanging cards and trying to add the best cards to their collections, but so much fun.

Of course, 2020 and Mr Covid has put a stop to any in person events, so one of the artists organized a physically distanced remote ATC exchange . 18 people agreed to make cards, and we dropped them off at her house, along with a small donation to the local food bank. She sorted them, and made sure everyone got at least one card from each artist.

Here are a selection of the cards that I received, already filed into their plastic storage pages. Little tiny works of art.  This was such a welcome creative distraction in an otherwise gloomy time. I hope that by next year we can do this in person.