bottles and jars.

pictures here are some tiny bottles that i have prepared for a mysterious future purpose. i will give you a hint: it has to do with crafts, small towns, and hotel canzine.

today (and most days lately) was mired in relatively boring but very important computer work. i did get to make it out of the apartment once, though - bank (stupid), post office, salvation army (a distraction). on the way out into the world, i did manage to stop into coriander girl - parkdale's newest (and only?) fancy flower shop. i had noticed it while it was in the works but just managed to shove my nose in the door yesterday. what can i say? i am a sucker for window orchids. while peering at them yesterday, i discovered that the shop is owned by alison - a lady i had met through the workroom.

today i was able to take a better look inside (my thursday babysitting charge had his own needs yesterday that didn't include flowers). i was happy to discover that alison had a huge jar of lavender for sale by the scoop, too. i have been meaning to make sachets to combat my constant moth scourge but didn't manage to grow lavender this year. what's better - i live right around the corner so i can bring my own jars in for filling! she'd probably be nice enough to scoop into your jars, too.

i have to say, my preconceptions of the nouveau parkdale fancy flower shop were challenged by alison's business choices. pre-made bouquets are $20 and she offers mini-bouquets for $3-$5. they make use of small cast-offs from the bigger bouquets and put forward more affordable shots of life and colour for budget-constrained neighbourhood homes.

so here we have it - out urban village's first florist. go stop in.

double dose of craftland.

craftland illustration by jen corace

from the city of craft right into craftland, i am so devoured by my own craft show that i almost forget about my involvements in others.

when it comes to news about providence, rhode island, i am happy to be able to announce a two-fold blessing for the sweetie pie press.

#1) we were happy to stock the new perpetual craftland shop (ie. a full-time, year-round bricks and mortar shop in downtown providence) with loads of sweetie pie button sets for their soft opening this august. well, now the opening has turned hard with a grand opening hooha party scheduled for this very evening (friday). i don't know, they promise pinatas. it sounds kind of rad.

#2) i also just found out on tuesday that i will once again be shipping off a pile of my goods to their annual pop-up shop. i had such a great experience contributing to craftland last year and i am totally thrilled to be involved again, especially as my bones get older and the thought of making buttons with cocoa in hand at home seems much more appealing than braving the ice and snow of december show-hopping. oh, i will be hopping enough in my own apartment come that time of year, to be sure!

so shimmy on downtown, quahogs, and get your indie craft fix at providence's shiniest new shop. congratulations, gals!

all things city of craft.

today was mostly devoted to getting notifications out for city of craft and revamping the website with amy borkwood's lovely 2009 artwork. how can that all fit into on sentence when it took an entire day to tackle? i'm not even done.

thank goodness for orange pekoe.

time to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and water our container garden on this seventeenth rain-free day in toronto. the plants seem happy but the city feels eerie.

i am quite looking forward to making buttons into the night and not being on the computer anymore. my eyes are watering.

sleepy days.

this image has nothing to do with anything. i just wanted to apologize for not updating the blog during my weekend in atlanta. but it was a quick trip and i was very busy living my other life. over the past two days, the good times have been threatening to kill me and i have been trying my best to take it easy (which, for me, is not saying too much).

don't worry, all kinds of plans are cooking.

yum! plans!

paper work.

a small update to show you, dear readers, the fate of my grandfather's heaps of mixed paper.

in the absolute madness of our home (do not let the carefully framed recent images on this blog fool you), i have found one more corner to bring my kind of order into. i loved the way my grampa's paper looked all stacked up so much that i decided to find a way to keep them as is and out in the open.

of course, this little 'project' only really makes sense if you happen to come into a great mass of uniformly sized mixed papers, but i thought i would share it. i like that it is also a large amount of usable material (the bane of my apartment) arranged in such a way as to be decorative - in my opinion, anyway.

leah came over last night and said "there's more wood in the paper than the log." i guess this makes my arrangement profound as well. paper + log + doily + fire = choose your own meaning.

other paper work of note:

1. an interview with me went live today on vancouver's got craft? blog. i am so flattered to have been asked to be profiled.

2. karen and i have agreed to do a 'pure rummage' sale at the workroom on sunday, october 18. this is all i can let you know now, but i can assure you that it will be a healthy feeding frenzy of vintage goodies and supplies.

3. city of craft has a blog now. as empty as it may be at the moment, it may be worth following for future purposes.

songs of the darned.

oh, this is a bit of a gross post in that it begins with a shot of my cat hair-laden dirty slippers (this is what they look like after a wash), but i am proud of the work i did darning these guys late into last night. also, i think this is just what hardwood floors do to pale-soled footwear.

the slippers were a little cursed to begin with. they were made at the workroom's slipper making class, with instruction and design by the beautiful and brilliant reva quam. but i used a fulled blanket that didn't quite felt properly (chosen, clearly, for aesthetic reasons) and they started unravelling immediately. i've always meant to blanket stitch their edges, but never get around to it.

the blanket was also a little thinner than it should be for walking on. remember, i mostly work from home so these are part of my daily uniform.

i snagged one rather quickly on a nail poking out of the floor boards (another drawback of my beloved hardwood) and it frayed wildly. but i like these guys and i am trying to stretch my possessions to the limits of their usefulness, so i decided to pull out the old darning supplies and practice the ancient art of woolly preservation that my grandma johnson once taught me.

i admit, this is a much more "folksy" rendition of darning. it had been a while and my skillz have vastly diminished. i was also using thrifted lengths of wool tapestry yarn that had come to me precut and preseparated so there were lots of ends to deal with. but the work does its job pretty well. besides, i wanted to dive back into darning as fall looms and i am faced with the task of squeezing another season out of all my wool knee highs.

ideally, i would like to progress to a more finished and clean technique (it is my way) but i was happy to practice on these old reliables. darning can even expand into seamless mending of knits and purely decorative practice. for now, i am happy my slippers will last a bit longer. maybe the pattern of my feet will eventually be replicated thereon in woven yarns.

paper cuts.

i spent a few hours yesterday going through my grandparents' things with my mother. the nonagenarians have finally made the leap to a swanky care facility after my grandmother broke her hip. they are outstandingly happy there but their room is much smaller than the apartment they just vacated and there is much stuff to go through.

my grampa had been an accountant since he finished his military service in world war two. he only retired a few years ago so the accumulated paper hoards were considerable. much of these ledger papers and report forms have been obsolete for years if not decades. but, as hoardings go, his were very neat and organized.

it really is an impressive amount of stuff. this, with all the stamps and staplers and rulers i could ever want, amounted to a formidable amount of stuff to bring home. i knew aitor would choke when he saw it all. we mostly plan to use this huge collection of old papers for book and art projects. i wouldn't be surprised, though, if leah ends up with some for her work. she's been back on canadian ground for all of two days; it's time for clutter to start sticking itself to her.

but honestly, all the family deaths and downsizings i have been dealing with over this past year have left our home totally overstuffed with things. in some cases, i have inherited superior versions of things i already had; in other cases, i have been saddled with family heirlooms that must be kept at the expense of my less sentimental possessions (my grandmother was a talented artist who painted and sculpted large things); and in still other cases i was just forced to take collections of bit and bobs because...well...somebody had to.

i think this is all coming to a head and will have to result in a major ejection of stuff. i have some unofficial plans in the works to offer selections up to the world (by way of toronto). some of the things i plan to put back into circulation are suitcases, paper ephemera, vintage buttons (both pinback and otherwise), tea sets, grooming supplies, linens, housewares, books and craft supplies.

stay tuned for details...

are any of you looking to stock up these days?