On the scaffolding shaping the front of the owl’s head
We are exhausted after spending about 12 hours at the block today. We managed to get to a lot of shaping done and removed several tons of snow. Included in this total was a crazy 3-hour period after supper when we removed more snow than we ever have at one time (at least that’s what Terry thinks). It really felt like we had moved more snow than the average person in Saskatchewan would remove from their driveway in a winter.
Shaping the top
Temperature-wise, we didn’t see any extremes. It started out being cold in the morning and warmed up as the day went. By the end of the day we were all feeling a lot warmer than earlier. Perhaps it had to do with the type of work we finished up with.
More and more people came by the site to view the sculptures. The first two days are slow for visitors, but as we get closer to being finished, which is Saturday at 10:00am, we find that we are answering more and more questions. Where are you from? What are you carving? How long have you being working? When are you done?
Early on Day 2
Here is a front view of the sculpture after all the snow had been removed from the lower front.
All that snow came from our block that we removed in 3 hours
Friday morning we are going to start working on the finishing aspects. This means that we have to repair any holes, smooth the block by scraping and sanding and then, hopefully, we will put the final push on the final details later in the day and if we have to Saturday morning.
The block doesn’t have a lot of holes, but it does have many ice chunks that as we carve tend to pop out. Then we have holes. Fixing these holes is a very time consuming part of snow carving. We have to get fresh powder and sweat (heat up the snow so it’s like snowball snow) and get it on the block before it freezes and becomes more chunks of ice.
We have a little over 26 hours left to finish as this blog is being written. The last time we were here, 2009, we went almost 27 hours straight with only a couple of 1-hour breaks for meals. We really hope that doesn’t happen this year.
So, the question we have you readers is, how much snow do you think you have moved this year? Are we out to lunch in what we are guessing?
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