Two little videos

...from our trip to New Orleans. Iain you're famous at last!

This week I have been at the IADR conference in New Orleans. Apart from spending most of our time in a chilly conference centre we have also had a little time to explore the city. On Wednesday Iru and I took a stroll around the French Quarter for the first time - there was lots of live music being played and we sat and enjoyed a quartet complete with their own dance couple!! For lunch we have also been trying out various little spots - one of the best was the unprepossessing Louisiana Products on Julia Street. We got there a bit lat for their usual lunchtime crowd but we managed to have the end of their fried chicken with salad, sitting at the little rickety tables and enjoying the company of the locals.
For dinner we headed into the Crescent City Brewhouse on Tuesday night and I started the trend of having lots prawns for tea - very tasty! And on Thursday we made our way down to Snug Harbour, a fantastic jazz club, to hear Badal Roy playing the Tabala - magic!
Yesterday, in a search for an electronics store, we took a cab out to Walmart and caught the local bus home. We got a little trip through the Garden District, glimpsing the old houses, much like the balconied French Quarter houses but more spread out. Getting off in town I walked up to the Superdome and was really very surprised to see the mall just next door still looking fairly destroyed. Much of the 'touristy' areas seem to be doing fairly well, certainly full of punters. But there is a strange ghostly feel to the whole city and there are many for sale signs on the shops. Even to other Americans, who I talked to at the conference, the city seems strange - a bit like an over looked corner - I can only imagine that the areas that were devastated are still in a fairly bad way and that the people living here are still struggling enormously, which seems monstrous as it has been quite some time since Katrina came to town. I had expected that things would be looking up. We never did find an electronics store selling what we wanted - but we did find several selling what looked like the older models of cameras etc. May be there's a booming internet delivery business here or may be nobody is buying anything.

The Northern Lights

Mum, Dad, Dougal and I were all in Kiruna, Sweden for the most fabulous trip - to visit the Ice Hotel! What a fabulous place to visit - spectacular and so many things to do! We arrived from Stockholm in the afternoon and went straight off to see the Saami reindeer herders, who cooked us up some exceedingly delicious smoked reindeer meat with lingonberry sauce. And that night we stayed in the Ice Hotel itself. Every year a new one is made so its a really unique experience - snuggled up in our enormous blue sleeping bags! And there's also the Ice Bar where the drinks are served out of ice glasses!!! And the ice suites that are sculpted out of ice and snice (thats snow and ice mixed together) by anyone who submits a proposal that gets accepted (a bit like Chelsea I suppose). The next day we did ice sculpting, which is fantastic fun, to the tunes of Moon Dog. And the crowning experience - we went off on skidoos to look for the northern lights!!!! I could hardly believe my eyes as they rippled across the sky, green curtains of light, more spectacular than I could ever have imagined! Having dined on moose stew we had a night in a warm cabin before heading off on a moose expedition. And we saw about 15 without really trying - as they were all basking in the sunshine near the road!!

At the Ice Hotel

Germinating ice plant!!

Stockholm

Divine dining at the Strand Restaurant in Stockholm

I can't believe its the beginning of March already! What happened to February? As we're nearly into spring I thought I'd post a few of the early flowers out in the garden - captured in the gorgeous early morning light.

Nuno felting

This may look like an old hanky but in fact it my first effort at nuno felting. Emma, my tutor down at the Mac, showed me this evening how to felt onto silk - fantastic - just like normal felting but now I have even more felting fun to look forward to!! Those little bobbly bits are called neps and are also made of wool - even more new and exciting things!!