cake.

what i have been helping do for the past two days. i am too exhausted to write much.

this is cathy.

this is nuit blanche.

put them together. giant cake!

happy birthday.

happy birthday, aitor!

the celebrations began last night with an outing to see our favorite yodeling country crooner, petunia, who just happened to be passing through town and playing the dakota tavern. if petunia is in your town, you should see him.

today we celebrated with roti from mother india and cupcakes from our corner cupcakery, yummy stuff (he chose bacon chocolate while i went for a classic red velvet).

gifts had to be minimal this year as it has not been a flush one for us, but bourbon and coffee always seem to sedate the reverend's baser needs. he seems happy. and full.

welcome to another year on earth, sweetie!

a moment at home and forced wanderings.

look! there are my most rugged orchids. they have moved from the misty bathroom to the bedroom for a brief moment (until the deadly radiators come on) so that we can contemplate them in the mornings while trying to lurch out of bed. i guess feeding them this summer had an effect. this is the most successful bloom i have ever lead them into and it has lasted months now. good work, guys.

i have been trying around the house, i really have. a few pictures and paintings have found spaces on walls. it's slowly coming together around working hours. but there is still a lot to do and a lot of rummage to tame. aside from a few vanquished corners, this place looks like a rubble heap.

i am thankful, therefore, for a weekly excuse to escape it when i go hang out with willy after school on thursdays. these engagements afford me a justified reason to wander around and see things like this in my neighbour's yard:

...i have a general envious respect for that particular neighbour's garden. it is full of beautiful flowers that seem to bloom in perfect sequence over the year - but it always looks kind of untamed as well. i wish i could have a yard. maybe someday.

on yesterday's cross-city after school walk, we also happened into bookhou on dundas street. i am ashamed to admit that i had never been inside it before (confessions of an overworked shut-in) because i have been a big fan of arounna's work for years.

her new collaborations with roisin (a new city of craft conspirator, too) under the name repeat studio are on my wish list, too. imagine using this yardage for a dress. or even just a bit in a quilt.

the shop is lovely. i especially like that they live upstairs and that there are kids in tow during shop hours. it may be a handful for arounna but willy liked making them laugh, too. and look at all the house motifs in her collection. there must be something in the air. i can't stop thinking about drawings of houses. i think i am working towards a whole village on one of my walls.

if only time were hyperbolic...

...and expanded out into infinite directions from any given moment in time. maybe it does. i'm not actually that smart. i don't know.

but i certainly feel overwhelmed by projects, emergencies and drudgery these days.

this post, though, is about a project - the nicest of the three activities mentioned above. i recently found out that the toronto hyperbolic reef project has been accepted to city of craft's installation programming. yes, even we organisers need to apply under the iron-fisted regime of new installation coordinator, tara bursey. that's not true; tara's not a tyrant by any stretch. she's just more organised and thoughtful than we had managed to muster in previous years.

but, i digress. the greatest part of our hyperbolic news is that tara secured the fly gallery on queen street for our reef. and we get it for the entire month of december! the fly is a (relatively) small window gallery but still presents a lot of space to fill. and, although the call to contribute is open to the entire city, i am too panicky to allow our collection's growth to rest solely in the hands of potentially unreliable unknowns (no offense...please feel free to prove me wrong). so i have been busying my hands during 'off' moments (read: while i watch the news) by constructing a few new models.

pictured here is a new pseudosphere/anemone-in-progress made of crazy novelty yarns. it is going to undergo a few more metaphorphoses before it is done but so far it is coming along nicely. weird, but nice. it also serves to consume a little bit of my nightly stress.

a few things.

well, it is official, in just under a month, city of craft and the workroom will be teaming up for another trunk show. this time, though, we are taking the impending holidays, the shaky economy and the urge to hand-make things into account by offering up a pure rummage trunk show. it is a chance for a small sampling of toronto's most artful hoards to open up their stashes and collections for reuse by the greater populous. pictured above is the modest first preview of the things i will have up for grabs. it's just a little collection of beads and sequins. although i keep seeing myself festooning something crazy with them, it hasn't happened in years. i bet someone else out there will make use of these things more quickly. maybe you?

getting out.

this afternoon, aitor and i made it out of the apartment in time to catch the tail end of the queen west art crawl at trinity bellwoods park. it was overwhelming, especially for two caged animals like ourselves, but the day was beautiful and it was so nice to stroll around.

i got camera shy (or maybe taking pictures made me feel like i was working), so i only snapped a few pictures of the tent of artist heather marchand. she wasn't there and i felt like a thief taking pictures without asking. apologies, ms. marchand. but your work is lovely and i wanted to share it with a friend.

i also picturelessly appreciated the tar and plexiglas wild west outlaws of neil klassen; and the architectural/portrait/nautical prints of gillian wilson. i think i am dreaming of living in a two-dimensional screen printed town now, thanks to ms. wilson.

getting sorted.

today was a day of postal servitude and computer work (always, always). even with an endless work week, i have been trying to commit at least a few minutes a day to sorting something in the apartment. with the holiday craft fair season looming, i know time is not going to become more relaxed and this place is a sty!

today's victories were small but satisfying.

...a sorted drawer that houses our totes, rags, tea towels and bag flags. there is a lot of craft scene represented in my collection of totes. accepting that i am a billboard when i shop for groceries, i like to choose my advertisers carefully.

i also got a new bread box at the parkdale sally anne yesterday. for some reason, aitor has been asking me about bread boxes and i have resisted them until now. then i saw this one and, presumably, sensed its perfect match to our travel percolator. i have to be honest, we don't eat much bread so it is mostly devoted to teas, strainers and mate supplies. it certainly tidied up our fluid enhancement station. oh yes, this area is clearly deigned for a microwave but we held strong and resisted having one. i am glad we did. i know myself; i work too much and if we had a microwave i would never actually cook. also, they scare me because i am basically old.

this next part is kind of gross, but informative...

we bought some hormone moth traps in the spring in an attempt to combat our wool-eating interlopers and i found this one tucked away on top of our cupboards. turns out they only worked on the brown food moths (we had been given false hope by a well-meaning friend) and about a dozen of them have come through our place in the last six months. sure, i am happy to not be eating moths but we were really excited at the prospect of defending our woolly winter coats. it's back to the lavender sachets and prayer, i guess.