good gravy.

last week my friend ken asked me if i could spend a slice of my family day (new ontario civic holiday) at a bar in kensington market to help out with a movie his band, the gravity wave, is making. he describes it as "signing in the rain meets the gravity wave musical." while i'm not exactly sure what that means or they are doing, i was charged with the task of creating the best merch table ever - a heavenly display to dwarf and shame their paltry table of free cdr's - and happily accepted.

i think we did a pretty good job with old shirts and postcards from iron cobra's touring days, sweetie pie button sets (spinning display racks are extra shaming), rural alberta advantage merch, some unknown cd's and those framed illustration brooches by carly ogonek.

carly is someone i have been supposed to meet for some time now. our mutual friend paul has been trying to coordinate this meeting for almost a year but out ladyhawk-like schedules have kiboshed his best efforts.



look, paul, it happened. there's carly! we met! and of course, we got along like gangbusters and immediately started chatting about busting her out of her organic grocery store job for a weekend so she can finally set up at a craft fair. for those interested in her fine work, i also found an esty shop of carly's. it seems inactive, but at the very least you could contact her there.

thrift score (play on words stolen from al hoff).

it seems like everyone i know in toronto is getting the february antsies and going to st. lawrence market on sundays. pickins felt slim this week (or maybe we were just too groggy), but i did manage to get these stamps which will find their ways into prints and button sets soon. i even bargained! i get scared sometimes and just walk away if the price is too high. apparently, this is effective.

cheap dates.

i have finally gotten my act together to photograph the newest sweetie pie press commissioned artist set, cheap dates by tara bursey. these have been kicking around for a few weeks, have been traveling to craft fairs with me and a few even made it out to bruno, saskatchewan, in my first shipment to my first (and best) saskatchewan shop, all citizens. but now that i managed to take pictures, they are also available to the whole world via etsy.

i am very excited that tara mobilized so quickly on my invitation to make a set. and i'm excited on a number of levels - i really like tara as a person; i think she is an exceptionally talented artist of many disciplines (see this); and on top of being thoughtful, her illustrative work is also quite pleasing to the eye. i know tara collects yearbooks, so i am assuming these cheap babes are inspired by her archive. take 'em home. they're lonely and low-rent.

but back to saskatchewan...i discovered the all citizens shop this past month through the recommendation of jen from the toronto craft alert. actually, she recommended that i read going rural, the blog that eventually tracks the inception of this small coffee shop/gallery/gift shop on the prairies. it's a winding tale. and an inspiring one. and at times it gets a little harrowing (well, i don't know if i could go through cold months without hot water). and you know what's great about the internet? you can read a blog, send an email, start a conversation and wind up driving out to oakville a week later to meet a stranger, go to their art opening and deliver a bag of buttons and neck warmers. i guess the c.i.a. knew what they were doing when they made this thing. clearly, they had the support of independent culture on their minds. who knew?

post-millenium tension

a little tasteful valentine's flair. heart medallion by jen anisef.

yesterday was my birthday and valentine's day.

after years of avoiding parties, i just decided to throw anxieties to the wind and have one this year. it was great! i even forced my visiting mother to make me my childhood birthday cake (banana cake with chocolate icing), which was a big hit. other than just being able to see a bunch of my friends, a real highlight of the evening was watching my mother hold court with her graphic retelling of the circumstances of my birth (which included drinking czech liqueur, a game of risk, driving a sports car, a semi-racist film and winning a due-date pool). the late seventies were a different time. i thought my friend leah was going to barf when the c-section stuff started to crest. even better than that was my mom getting peels of laughter out of a table of comedians.

birthday cakes my mommy made. served in a shoe box.

i also cleaned up big. jen and karyn gave me cuts of my favorite fabrics from the workroom. i got a new (much needed) tea pot from aitor...organic bon bons from jola and dan at good catch, bowls from aitor's family, a mix cd from steve...and...well my friend levi made me a little piece of art (pictured below). it came swaddled in a bunch of kleenex and kind of totally blew my mind.

stool made by levi.

give a man a typewriter and this is what results. he even broke off one of the cross-braces and weakened another for maximum subtle effect.

fabric from the workroom from jen and karyn.

very exciting fabric. i guess this solidifies my undertaking of the quilt of my dreams. can anyone say hexagons? i can. i can totally say that.

happy birthday.

well, my initiation into blog culture has been swift.

after just a few days, my friend claire over at needle book tagged me in some sort of bloggy tag game. my first reaction was the way i felt about chain letters/emails. after i got over actually believing in curses, i would always just throw the things out (having made one exception a few years ago for a chain letter that involved sending strangers new panties). but then i read claire's entry after having been tagged herself and thought i should stop being such a crank and do this thing.

so.

seven things about me:

1. at 9:50pm pacific time tonight i will have been on this planet for exactly thirty years. at that time, on this date in 1978, my mother was having a ceasarian section and, being in vancouver, i imagine it was raining.

2. i have two parents, one parental-type and a brother.

3. the only formal post-secondary education i have is a diploma in physical theatre from a school housed in a converted odd fellows hall in california.

4. i have a problem differentiating the words otter, oyster and olive when speaking. i wrote my only ever stand-up bit about that. this lead me to put down my pen and never try to write stand-up again.

5. fake teeth.

6.

7.

i'm sure there are seven things about me, but somehow i stalled at five. i guess the last two are mystery items. i am also going to have to tag every blogger i know. except for carl wilson. i think i fear judgement from him. oh, and no tag-backs. this is a one-time deal.

tagging:
1. smogdammit!
2. torontunian
3. little dog monday
4. tara bursey
5. girl number twenty
6. creampuff revolution
7. rhya

rules:
1. link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

february stitch n' bitch at the workroom.

there's something really fantastic about trudging through a blizzard to go make crafts. for this vancouver-born lady, wobbling around in snow storms makes me feel like i can lay claim to being canadian for real. then all of a sudden it's warm and there are people around and everyone is making stuff they like to make. and there are snacks.

i worked on more neck warmers and sipped a bit of wine. life's really hard.

the rubber ducky incident.

okay, so i have a million rubber duckies. i used to buy some cheap one every time i had a bad day and i guess i began this at a tumultuous time in my life and was suddenly a collector.

well, i am now on the brink of thirty and am reconsidering my large collection of rubber ducks. i think all those house cleaning shows are shaming/scaring me into wanting to get rid of things. also, real estate in the bathroom is hotly sought after now for our growing collection of epiphites.

this ducky, however, stays. i think it's the oldest one in my collection and is made in ireland - an erstwhile hotbed of rubber duckdom, no doubt. there are a few more that have to stay for reasons of sentiment or kitch, but i think i can whittle the keepers down to five or six.

so that leaves at least 50 assorted rubber ducks that need to go.

make me an offer?

i will consider money, things and services.

you have to go in for this sight unseen (to keep it interesting) but i can tell you the rules i maintained for my collection:

1) no doubles (although i may have ended up with a couple as gifts).
2) no clothes (ducks don't wear clothes)
3) no anthropomorphism (barf. duck + human = barf)

leave your offers in the comments section. let's see if we can get a crazy bidding war going on, which would be amazing considering nobody knows this blog is here.

i will abruptly announce the moment when i decide which offer to accept.