Knit & Ski or Ski & Knit

A traditional Norwegian drop shoulder sweater using Bartlett sport weight yarn, EZ's percentage system, and motifs from a variety of sources.

2/16/18 Time for a blog post.  Our ski race for this weekend was postponed until next weekend due to our charming weather out here on the edge of the Bering Sea.  It never fails . . . when I felt the most organized for a ski race ever!  Bering Air said, "We haven't flown into Koyuk since last Friday, we are not flying in now due to weather: snow, blowing snow, and the death of airlines: Freezing Rain!  Now I will be honest, the last place I want to be stuck with 16 middle school kids is Koyuk!

2/17/18 Staying home and weathering out the storm in my HOUSE sounds like a grand idea.  Only the storm hasn't been bad other than a lot of wind today which is Saturday.  Our first ski practice of the day was with the elementary ski crew grades 1st through 4th. A competent group of young skiers had the great joy of tackling winds over 20 mph.  UGH!  No matter what this is one of the hardest places to try to be skiers.  Between, winds, overflow, storms, cold, and lack of new snow for long stretches . . . we keep the village kids skiing.

Groomed and skiers skiing up Picnic Hill a long climb that is really fun to blast down!

The girls sitting and listening to the kids who are way down at the bottom that came out to ski on their own.  As you can see we groom and ski the drifts as the tundra doesn't hold much snow in winds over 30mph.

My husband who grooms for us.  We use an Arctic Cat BearCat and a YTS groomer.

This is Round About that we ski out to most days. I have started to call this "Candy Land." It looks like the game board when we get all the colorful cones and hoops set up for the skiers to use for games which build skills.

This would be "overflow" usually we ski across this area but on Wednesday we had a water obstacle to add more fun or is that challenges to our skiing.

Our older skiers which we call race Team.  This is part of the crew we travel to ski races with.

Knitting . . . I am loving my sweater which I named Winter Solstice.  The motifs are coming together nicely and I enjoy planning as I knit.  The overall theme of this piece is winter, snow, mountains, and cross-country skiing.  Each motif has a meaning that relates to the theme.  I have tried it on a few times and I can not say enough why this is so important!  I place the body on two long circular needles and slip it on.  I have been able to correct most sizing errors using this method. Trying on your knitting and measuring it all the time is really important I think to have a successful and wearable knitted item.

Village Happenings:  We have clean running water again.  Some major leaks have been found and work will be done on those in the spring or summer.  There is still a huge hole out by our place and that will be there for some time I know!  We have the Iron Dog Race about to arrive early this week.  The largest event the Iditarod Dog Sled Race will be arriving in March.

Our daylight is lengthening to over 9 hours of daylight and increasing daily.  Our daylight even seems longer as sunrise and sunset are rather exaggerated this far north.  The daily colors that greet us in the sky are just stunning!  We are lucky to have these stunning northern colors close our days, too.