Heat Waves and Hurricanes

I’m sitting in my office absolutely useless as the humidex reaches 36 C – no air conditioning, just a sorry little fan that is moving the hot air around.  Luckily I’m self employed, so when it’s way too hot to work, I am quite free to just surf the web and obsess over the Canadian Hurricane Website and the latest proposed track of Hurricane Earl.   We’ve actually spent the last day or so making sure that we have everything we will need (based on our previous experience of Hurricane Juan) to “weather the storm”.  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

 

 

 

 

Hummingbird Art Journal Page

 

And now for something completely different!

I’ve been experimenting lately with Art Journaling and following some really fantastic blogs with some absolutely beautiful art journal pages that have been very inspiring. A new one that I just discovered is Wild. Precious. In her most recent video, Effy issues a challenge to create an art journal page based on the question “What’s the point?”. Up to now I’ve just sort of done my own thing but I thought it might be fun to play along, so the result of my efforts are below.

It was a really great exercise that got me thinking about why exactly I’m “drawn” to art journaling (pun sort of intended!). I kept a diary for awhile when I was growing up, and I’m definitely a list-writer and record keeper, and I also have a fascination with blank journals – everything from dollar store journals to wonderful handmade ones to Moleskine journals. When I was a kid I used to love to cut pictures out of old magazines and catalogues and play with them like paper dolls, and I used to like to try to draw but never felt that what I got on the paper did justice to the image that was in my head, so I guess I let my inner critic win for awhile.

So I think art journaling sort of brings all of that together and is a great place to play!

Hands of Time

I'm very excited to have the opportunity to exhibit a collection of textiles and furniture pieces made by my aunt, grandmother, great grandmother and great grandfather at Harris and Company Art Gallery in West Jeddore. I'll post some pictures of the actual items in the near future, but for now, here are some pictures of the "cast of characters".





This is my grandmother and grandfather Mary and Alden Hartling, taken around the time of their marriage in 1923 - my grandfather was 30 years old and my grandmother was 19. I could not begin to guess how many quilts she made in her life, many of which were made and sold, but I have three. I have many fond memories of sitting beside her in the evenings while she cut out quilt pieces using templates she drew on cereal box cardboard. She died in 1980, when I was 15 years old.









The picture on the right is of my great grandmother and great grandfather, Libby and Donald "Big William" Cameron, taken after the birth of my grandfather, William Hugh Cameron (the baby in the picture) in 1896. Libby outlived three husbands and one daughter, and died in 1945. I inherited an unfinished embroidered table cloth that she was working on at the time of her death, which is included in the exhibition. My grandfather in the picture, Bill, died three months before I was born, on December 24, 1964. My great grandfather, Donald "Big William", was a carriage and furniture maker, and made the spool bed, chairs, and spinning wheel in the exhibit.


If you are in the area between May 8 and June 12, please drop by the gallery, and drop back to this blog for pictures from the exhibit.

Hurricane Bill

Combine the awesome wonder of nature and power of a hurricane with the awesome wonder and power of the internet and instant satellite pictures, and as long as my roof stays on, it is actually very cool to watch the outer bands of this hurricane approach us on satellite and then step outside and watch exactly the same thing.   We just had a huge downpour that lasted maybe five minutes, and when I go out I can still see blue sky peeking through some of the wispy lower clouds and it’s not raining a drop, and the humidity is incredibly high (well, 100%).  You can just picture it as a wispy outer arm that must have passed over us, all spiralling in exactly the direction that it should be.

 

That’s all – just a moment of weather awe and geekiness.

Retro moth fashion?

Wow. Just…..wow. I have never seen a moth like this before. Nor can I find anything like it when I search Google Images. That pattern is amazing (and I also see that I need to wash my windows). Anyone know what kind of moth this might be?

Travel Fun

I love to travel, and I don’t get nearly enough opportunity to do so. However, I just recently returned from a great trip to Montreal to visit my sister, and during our visit we took a day and drove to Plattsburgh, New York and Burlington, Vermont. Armed with a GPS and my internal “yarn radar” (okay, and a little pre-trip Googling), we found a very nice yarn shop in Essex Junction, Vermont: Kaleidoscope Yarns.

The one thing I wanted to try to get, so that I could avoid having to buy it via mail order, was the previously blogged about KnitKit, and it was my lucky day that day – they had two. It’s a bit bigger than I imagined it was, but every bit as slick and ingenious.

Oh, and of course I bought a little bit of yarn too!

I'm not sure what I'll make yet - maybe mittens with the Plymouth and socks with the Jitterbug. I’ll check out Ravelry and see what cool things other people are making with these yarns. That is one of my favourite features of the Ravelry site.

Later!