My other passions

When I started writing the blog I knew I eventually would want to share my other activities beside skating. I think most of the people look at these kind of activities as hobbies. I look at them more like passions.

Taken chronologically, from when I was a child I loved nature and animals, and to this day I'm passionate about green living and animal welfare. Then, in my teens my big love was fashion and I've learn to saw and later studied fashion design in parallel with my "real" studies. As I matured I discovered art. I love music (classical and pop), I love dance (ballet and all the others forms) and I love the decorative fine art (painting, sculpture, glass art, ceramics). My biggest love may be the snow and skiing. And you know I love skating...

Of course there is not enough time to emerge myself in all I mentioned. I find that at different points some activities take over. For the last 2 years skating was my main priority. And I literally arranged my weekly schedule around the ice rink schedule.

I'm helping the ally cats for a while now (probably 10 years). I've inherited from a neighbor that moved away a colony registered with the city. A nonprofit foundation organizes these colonies care, they help with the food and offer assistance for TNR (trap, neuter, return). This would eventually curb the number of feral cats and also would make the existing ones less aggressive. Last summer I've encounter two lost kittens (3, 4 weeks old) that I've brought in and bottle fed every 3 hours at first. It wasn't easy. Even harder was to see that the kittens cared by their mothers disappeared one by one.So this year, when I've seen a pregnant cat, I tried to take her in. Some of my friends adopted some kittens :) One friend help with some medical bills. One friend started to do what I'm doing. The nonprofit non kill shelter takes the kittens after they've reach 2 months and puts them for adoption. It is sooo hard to let them go, but I know it is the only way to have space to help others.

I mentioned last week that I've went to an outdoor concert and some art exhibition. In the summer I like the outdoor concerts a lot. A lot of the classical music was inspired by nature, and to me makes sense to be listened in the nature. This year, I really don't have the time to go that much. With work, errands and skating I'm away from home too much. The kittens need lot's of time...

I still occasionally sew, mostly for myself, but I've just made  a skating skirt for a friend that used to borrow mine for tests. Now she is moving away so she needs her own. I've also made a new (shorter) skirt for my moves test, the one that I didn't get to test.

The one think that I didn't get to do in 2 years now, is paint. I paint in watercolors and I am a selling artist. But as everything, it takes a lot of time for learning the technique, figuring out materials, finding inspiration. Plus that one room that I used as my studio is now some of the cats room.

I cannot do it all, but I love it all!