Beading

Every Thursday the women of LK are invited to come to the 'Matrix House' to sew. I have mentioned before that a woman named Hanna, originally from Germany, is the teacher but she invites the elders of the community to come and share their expertise. Sometimes there are just 4 or 5 of us but last evening there were seventeen people present. Many of them were older, experienced beaders and sewers. When I say sewers, I mean hand sewing with animal hide. The band supplies the beads, the thread, the snacks (last night it was chocolate covered digestive cookies, yum yum), the beading looms and a MOOSE HIDE!!! My pictures for this post are from last night.



This is Madeline, she does amazing work. She is really old and speaks very little English. I think she is about 90. All her kids, including one of the teachers I work with, were sent away to residential school. She is working on the gauntlet for some mitts. She sell her mitts for 400 dollars.


She was the oldest woman there. She doesn't always attend but I always look forward to her being there. She is an inspiration.


This is Faith. She came with her mum last night because she didn't have school the next day and none of her five brothers would babysit! She made herself a long necklace before the evening was over.


These are the moose hides. The light coloured one is about a half a centimetre thick. The other one is the one we will use to for our moccasins. Caribou hide is used for the baby moccasins because it is very soft and flexible.








These are the uppers for the moccasins. These ones are made by some of the elders. Their work is incredible. They often sell these for $60. I have an order in for a pair of uppers like the blue flowered ones.









These ones are are mine. I went with a quilt motif. I would like you think it was because I am a quilter, but really it was because I thought it would be safer to stick with straight lines.


This is a first attempt for one of the young women. Her work was wonderful, especially seeing as it was her first project.


This is Faith and her mum.



This is Mickey's butterfly.


I'll keep you posted on my progress. I hope to start sewing on the actual moccasins next week. I have to finish my uppers first.

The Canadian Shield

I don't know about you but I remember learning about the Canadian Shield in Social Studies. In my mind's eye I could visualize the rocks jutting out and I also remembering thinking I'd like it.
Back in 1999, David spent 4 months in Haliburton, Ontario and when I visited him, I finally got to see the Canadian Shield. Now we are in the NWT and we are living on the rocks of the shield. And what a wondrous sight it is. We have taken so many pictures and so this blog post is my opportunity to share some of them with you.




A view from the top!




I don't know if you can see it bit David is huddled by a fire circle.


Walking is easy up here because the trees are so sparse.


Lots of rock!


And MORE ROCK!!

The Harvest

I know that when some of you see that title you are thinking... Harvest? In the NWT? I know some of you are thinking this because I have been asked too many times if it is dark all the time yet!). It is light at 8am and dark by 7:30pm. Pretty much just like home.
When we were in Yellowknife at the end of August I was really impressed with the flowers. Remember, there is lots of sunlight in the summer! Here is an example of some the annual flowers we saw.


Our friend, Edwouard, has a vegetable garden here in LK. His garden is about 15 feet by 40 feet and he had an amazing harvest of turnips, potatoes, lettuce, beets, and carrots. He has enough to use all winter and lots to share!

But really this blog post is about my harvest. I was not sure how hard it would be to get salad greens and fresh vegetables. I came prepared to grow sprouts and shoots to supplement our salads. Interestingly, so far, there is always romaine lettuce available. (It is expensive but it is always in the coop store.)

So here is my harvest:

These are pea shoots, ready to harvest. (After 7 days)


Here they are harvested. You just cut them close to the seeds.


This is what they looked like after two days. (I know, these pictures are not in a good order, this one should have been first.)


These are my sunflower shoots.





These shoots are delicious and really healthy too. I have also been growing an assortment of sprouts. I use the Mumm seeds and I am growing both the shoots and the sprouts in sprouting trays, also available at Mumms. You can check out their site at
http://sprouting.com
That's my harvest. Happy Thanksgiving.

Flora of LK

David and I have been tramping all over the ridges of Lutsel K'e. We have seen some fantastic scenery and interesting plants. The rose hips are so numerous that I can't wait to see all the roses in the spring. The countryside must covered with them. Here are some pictures of the plants that we have seen in the last month.

Prairie crocus


The last rose of the season, maybe....


Rose hips


I have no idea what this plant is.


Fireweed


Tiny ferns, some of these are only as tall as your baby finger.


Reindeer lichen


Some kind of mushroom, maybe?


Some strange looking stuff


Labrador tea


It is easy walking up on the rocks. The woods are fairly sparse with birch as the only hardwood. There is mostly white and black spruce and tamarack so the woods have splashes of yellow but the under bush has lots of reds. It's beautiful and quite different from NB. I have to say I miss the maples!!


Until next time...

Our New House

This is our new house. We are about 8-10 minutes from the school. In the other house we were 5 minutes from the school. The comment the local people make is, 'you live way out there?'.


This is the back of the house. As you can see from pictures it looks like we live on the second level and actually , we do. The house is built above the ground, you could actually crawl under it. Beneath our floor is a crawl space that is completely insulated. The water tank (which is filled as needed) and the sewage tank (which is emptied 3 times a week) is housed in this space.


This is the kitchen and on the coach is the chief cook and bottle washer. David has been baking bread and muffins regularly.


From the kitchen end this is our living/dining room.


We have three bedrooms which is more space than we need but we have turned one room into a work room and one into an exercise area. Our bed was not made when I took these pictures so I didn't take a picture of our room.


This is another picture taken from the kitchen. The window looks onto a bay of Great Slave Lake.


Here is a sunset from the deck. There are lots of beautiful sunsets here.


Here is a sunrise from the back deck.


And that, folks, is our new place! We like it a lot.

Cultural Day

Today was a PD Cultural Day for the staff. All schools in the NWT have two of these days each year. Cultural events are to be planned for the staff by the principal and the Aboriginal teachers in each school. So today we headed off to a lake to pick cranberries and to cook fish with some of the elders from the community. Here are some photos of our day.


This is the crew. Front: (lft-rt) Mary Rose (elder), Emily (elder), Loretta (gr456), Jenny (gr23) (sister to Loretta),Christine (visiting elder), Sheila (principal)
Back: Elizabeth (grk12) Vanessa (m&r), James (aboriginal culture&PE) and me.


These are the cranberries. People are wild about berry picking around here.


Relaxing by the fire.


James cooked the fish.


And James served it on a bed of spruce boughs.



The lake trout was cooked with the skin on and then the skin was lifted off after it was cooked. It was delicious!


Here is Sheila and the elders chowing down on the fish, potato salad and bannock.


This lake was surrounded by a sandy beach and a few camps.


We saw moose and caribou antlers.


The Dene can build their camps anywhere if they are treaty Indian (they call themselves that).


Most of the camps have a tipi beside them for smoking fish and meat. These camps are used all year round.





Here is a partially built camp.


It was a beautiful place to spend the day.
David and I picked about 2 quarts of cranberries. We'll freeze them for muffins and desserts.

Honestly, these are pelicans. They are called American White Pelicans and this time of year they come to the Slave River.



We could stand right on the rocks next to them and they didn't mind. We even saw one pelican catch a fish.


These are three of the other Literacy Coaches. They were all born in Nova Scotia!


We have a new house, which is fabulous. This little guy and many of his friends join us every morning and eat the Kibbles and Bits that David feeds them. David's goal is to have them eat out of his hand.


More about our new house soon!

Location:Pelicans