Things for tiny people.

I've been busy this Easter weekend buying and making gifts for friends who are expecting or who have little ones. My favourite 2-year old's birthday is coming up in 2 weeks, and I wanted to find her a few practical things as well as something little and wonderful. I found this tiny mouse, who makes her bed in a wooden matchbox. Eeee!

She comes with a little mattress, pillow and knitted blanket. Handmade in Denmark by Maileg, and purchased in Toronto at Kolkid. I would have loved this little thing as a child. I still love toys that have their own little accessories.

Maileg makes other wonderful (and expensive) toys, like their Brothers & Sisters collection of rabbits. My favourite are the swimming rabbits:

Water-wings.

I also spent the better part of yesterday making a baby bag for one of my sweetest friends who is having a little girl this summer. I used striped & sturdy fabric from Ikea, made outside pockets on the front of the bag for little things (like this bear rattle with a hoodie) and tried my hand at embroidery for the first time. Not bad, hey?

There are tons of projects to finish. I'm going to try my hardest to finish a dress I started and then got stuck on and then put aside and looked at longingly for a few weeks. It's made of Nani Iro Fuccra fabric which I love love love.

Isn't it beautiful?
Cross your fingers for me!

Oh no, I've been away for so long.

It has been a while. It's strange, but there's a certain sense of blog-related guilt that I feel when I don't write. But there have been many new and wonderful happenings since January that have delayed my writing. So let's see, what's been going on?

1. I got engaged! This is really joyful news for me. We've been really busy sorting out details now rather than later, so that we can now relax, and do fun things like making paper flowers and invitations.

2. I've been sewing like mad. I have some pictures, so I'll post them soooon. Lately I've been making baby bags, as everyone I know seems to be expecting.

3. There have been lots and lots of little projects. A piece of mine was selected for a juried arts fest called Escarpment: On the Edge, which runs in St. Catharines from April 22 to July 24. I'll also be performing an excerpt in a new piece written by a most talented writer friend in the In The Soil Festival.

Okay, so at least there's a little bit of news there, right? And more to come, promise.

Sweet Junebug and the New Years Dress.

Well happy new year! What a nice little year I've had so far.

Last week I made my first official visit to Frank Gehry's newly redesigned AGO, and it's ding-danging amazing. Not the collection, so much, but the space itself is beautiful and some of the curating is really very effective. It makes me like the city just a little bit more.

AGO Walker Court, Photo by Sean Weaver

Mostly, though, I've been sewing constantly, thanks so my new machine ,Junebug, and her mesmerizing charms. Oh! And after doing a bit of research, I found a great shop in Parkdale that offers classes and the best little fabric selection in town. I was nearly apoplectic. It's called The Workroom, and it's definitely worth a visit.

So far I've made a skirt (which I'll post about when I have a decent picture) and this dress, made from what I consider to be some of the most beautiful fabric IN THE WORLD. EVER. It's quite heavy, and probably not really appropriate for a dress, but I couldn't resist and made this little structured thing with it.

The fabric is grey with hand-drawn blossoms in light grey and gold metallic. And love. By Hinemosu Notari.

And next: a dress made with seahorses and octopi. For real. I can barely contain myself.

I'm finally posting some of the awesome shit I got.

Let's start with new shoes & necklaces.

No, actually, let's start with Happy Holidays! And very best wishes to you. Today has been a blissful day, and there's a steak & guiness pie in the oven, and a new sewing machine (!) under the tree! For me! I already have ideas for more projects, now that I've got a sewing machine to fiddle with again.

Okay, back to new shoes. Here are three lovelies that I'm so excited about.

i. The Camper oxfords. Chris bought them for me - by the way, Camper is having a sale until the end of Feb, which hardly ever happens. They're simple, practical and gorgeous.


ii. Les Prairies de Paris grey oxfords. I've been looking for great grey shoes forever, and with the amazing craftsmanship on these girls, and the twist on classic oxfords with the elastic, I couldn't resist. I think the elastic makes them sort of ballerina-y, no?


iii. Dries Van Noten boot-shoe things. Kick ass and comfy. Very good for toughening up my girly dresses.

I had been looking for a magnifying glass forever, and UO is selling one, and even though it's mass-produced I love it. The sweet peas-in-the-pod necklace was a beautiful anniversary gift from Chris.

Tomorrow or Saturday I'll finally pull out all of the ding dang clothing I've got recently and document it. Finally!

By the way, the Les Prairies shoes were from Jonathan + Olivia, a Vancouver store that just opened here in Toronto a few months ago - on Ossington. They've got great designers (they're the only store that carries Les Prairies in Canada, I think) and they're really, really nice. Which is appreciated when I'm spending a bit of money.

Photo by Zoe Bridgman

Michael Govan almost made my head explode.

I spent a recent Friday night and most of Saturday at a symposium on museum and exhibition design called From Jurassic Park to Rothko's Chapel, sponsored by U of T's newly re-named faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.

Leading American curator Michael Govan was the keynote speaker, and there was such a buzz in the air while he was speaking. He led us through his experience bringing art to post-industrial spaces - like Dia Beacon - and how working with artists like Robert Irwin and Walter de Maria changed the way he thought about 'the gallery' and 'the object'; he became more interested in the way that the actual space changes and affects how the visitor sees. He worked closely with Irwin to renovate the Dia Beacon from an old Nabisco factory to a contemporary art space, and the results are, of course, remarkable:

Photo by Listen Missy! on Flickr.

Photo by Darrell Silver.

Photo by tud5000 on Flickr.

His experience working with an artist (Irwin) as opposed to an architect to shape the space made him realize how alienated most artists are from the very spaces in which they show their work, and how he wanted to break that model.

And I say: ROAD TRIP.

As a side note, Govan collaborates with Irwin extensively, and if you're interested in Irwin's work, or even if you're not, I urge to read Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler. I actually encourage you to read anything by Weschler. Have I written about this book before? I think so, maybe.

Anyway, Govan's experience as Director and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is quite the counterpoint to his earlier work. He has always resisted working in the white box of the contemporary gallery space, and now he is finding new ways to be inventive within that frame. Exhibits like the Magritte exhibition designed by John Baldessari and Jorge Pardo's highly controversial Pre-Colombian installation have challenged the traditional view that exhibition design should emphasize the object, not contribute to the meaning of the exhibit itself.


I nearly squealed when Govan talked about Chris Burden's Urban Light installation, which features solar-powered antique streetlamps that Burden collected from all over Los Angeles in a design that recalls an ancient temple.

There were so many more ideas and images to process, but I imagine I'll have more to say in pieces over time.

Any exhibits/artworks that have been inspiring you lately?

Suggested reading.

So, you know how I feature awesome book titles from The Monkey's Paw from time to time? Well, this one takes the cake.

Cauldwell, D.O.:
NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS -- A STUDY OF WET DREAMS
Haldeman-Julius Publications, Girard, KS, 1948.





And this one's pretty fantastique:

Rodale, J.I.:
THE ITCH AND WHAT TO DO BESIDES SCRATCHING
Rodale Books, Emmaus, PA, 1971.



Available just in time for the Holidays! You're welcome.

Some new pictures.

I developed some new pictures from a little jaunt we took a few weekends ago and I'm quite please by the results. So I'm sharing them. With you!

We spent a Sunday morning at Balls Falls, which is a most beautiful badly-named place. You can walk right out on to the top of the falls, and if you take a little hike from there, you meet some horses frolicking.



This is from a nearly-demolished old church. It's being torn down to make room for some more condos. Yay!

I took this a while ago. Beautiful sweets from The Red Tea Box.

More trees in Vineland.


I'll be posting soon about my new best friends, which happen to be a pair of Dries Van Noten shoes I scored. Uh-huh.

My cheap little necklace is a bit of a star.

Months and months ago I bought this crafty necklace for about $9 at Forever 21. Shopping at Forever 21 is always in the moderate - high zone of painful for me. So much snottiness! and so little fabric! Certainly not enough fabric to cover my important places. But I can deal with their jewelry selection.

Anyway, I've really enjoyed this little necklace, and I was happy to see a similar sort of spirit on the cover of British Vogue during the summer, no doubt an inspiration for my piece:

Then - then! - just last week I spotted the exact, down to the very same bead, necklace on Anthropologie's site. For $48.50. Getting a deal is so satisfying, especially on something that I really like. The end!

Something to keep you warm til I get my shit together.

I'm still trying to get back to some sort of normal schedule, what with my new job and side projects taking over. But I think I can actually see the end of the tunnel!

In the meantime, how awesome are the Fall 08 Virginia Johnson scarves? Answer: very.

Owls = wonderful
Peonies = beautiful
Elephants = best

All made from Merino wool and love, I'm sure.
I'll be back soon, promise!

One thing that's kept me so busy.

Yeah, okay, so I've been really busy. But I'm sort of settling back into things now. I've got a new job working with an amazing commercial/editorial photographer, and I've been working on a number of projects over the past month.

Here's one of the many projects: our submission to the Toronto Film Challenge. The challenge this go-around was to create a horror film in 24 hours (from start to finish). We also had to incorporate a phrase ("Welcome Back"), a prop (the jar of horror) and a theme (suspense).

While some of the other submissions were of very high quality, not many groups actually tried to make a scary movie. Most made satires of cliche horror films. So we were doubly proud of ours. Here's our effort!

We've also just received a grant to continue working on a theatre project, and will likely be contributing a theatre/film piece to a festival this summer. It's such a relief when hard work pays off a bit.

But more importantly, I need advice. Which pair of shoes would win, if they were in some sort of eternal battle?





I like the snaziness of the first pair, and I like their asymmetrical front profile, but I also really like the simplicity of pair 2. Both are campers, which mean they're the most comfortable things ever. Please advise.