finger thumb

small towns...

are not always my favourite. And here's why. 

Today I was celebrating. The naps went pretty well today. I managed to make an actual home-cooked meal, instead of something from the freezer. And I go on a pair of my old skinny jeans. Not my pre-pregnancy size, the size above that, but still, a pair of stylish pants instead of the same old wrecked pair of jeans I've been wearing almost non-stop for the last month. So I felt pretty good about life. 

And the new library was having its grand opening party tonight. I don't really have any friends out here yet (still) at least not the kind I can call up at the last minute and ask to go to a library party or anything like that. And my mom was busy. And one of us has to stay home with the kids, so Hubs said he didn't mind staying home, and I decided to go. Because really, the librarians are the closest thing I have to friends around here anyhow.

So I shoehorned myself into those good jeans, and pulled out my favourite post-baby fancy top. It performs the valuable services of both camouflaging my baby spare tire, and showcasing my nursing boobs, so its my go-to item when I need to look good. Which is not very often, but tonight it was on duty. And I put on makeup. Eye makeup. And lipstick. And larger than necessary earings. And I dug out my old favourite boots, and I was good to go. Feeling pretty fine about myself to, I might add. Hubs said "you know you're probably overdressed, right?" and I said "Honey, I'm always overdressed, its my signature look." and we laughed and off I went. It was already 8:30 and this thing was over by 9, so I assured him I wouldn't be long.

Pulled up to the library to see suspiciously few cars. I should have known, but hope springs eternal and I parked and got out anyways. Well, the doors were locked. I must have mistaken the date. But still. Bummer.

Literally all dressed up and no place to go. There must be someplace else to go in this small town to spend a half and hour doing something on a Friday night. You'd think so, right? Well, you'd be wrong. After really pondering my situation and driving around a little bit, these were my choices. WalMart or the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. I'm not kidding. That place was hopping. I almost stopped, but if I did they'd make me give my address and then I'd be getting visitors for the rest of my life. So WalMart it is. I went and spent a half an hour reading magazines. Sigh. Their magazine selection sucked. No art magazines at all, not even good decor ones like Dwell. Even the quilting magazines were boring. Finally I dragged my fancy ass home. 

Someone send me back to Montreal. Please. 

If I had the time....

Ok, here is the lovely crazy (and in some cases, crazy lovlieness) that was inside those knitting books and leaflets. Though really, this is only a small portion of the retro goodness; I just don't have the time to scan them all! I'll start with the oldest one, this is the inside front cover of the Lux knitting book from the 1940's. 
Love, Love, LOVE those illustrations. And there are patterns to match every single one of them! Someday I'm actually going to get around to knitting something from one of these books. I literally have hundreds of old knitting leaflets and patterns, but I have yet to knit an actual garment from them. Accessories yes (hats, gloves, the occasional ascot) but never a proper sweater. I'm usually scared off by the crazy small gauge, and the correspondingly huge number of stitches to cast on. Also, fit differers quite a bit from then to now, or so I'm told. There was much less 'ease' in garments from the '40's so you have to get your measurements bang on, or else your finished sweater will be strangling you and biting into your armpits. Not a huge fan of that. But I'll tell you what I am a fan of...

...somewhat surly looking curly-headed little boys! How awesome is this? Really, the resemblance between this reluctant knitwear model, and my own Little Dude is hilarious. But pattern wise, I'm also down with this. Really, I have no problem with little kids in head to toe knitted snow gear. For all of L.D.'s first winter in Montreal, he proudly wore an adorable knitted carriage suit (pants with feet, sweater-coat, hat and matching mitts that I had thrifted from the local Salvation Army store) every time we went out. Now granted, we were not exactly rolling him around in the snow, more like just walking across the street to the car, but still, it was a surprisingly cozy and functional outfit. Again, if I had more time on my hands.....

And speaking of children's wear, take a gander at this little number from a 1980's booklet: 
 Every single other item in this book was either boring or ugly, but I had to pick it up for this sweater. The shape and colour were not really much to get excited about, but Holy Crap! Check out the embellishment/focal point: 
 DUDE! Is that a three dimensional appliqued HAMBURGER? Yes, yes it is. Complete with crocheted lettuce and tomato hanging out the sides. Be still my  beating heart. I may someday have to make one of these for the Little Dude. Or maybe it will just be a decorative pillow. I don't want to express my ironic sense of humour/love of crocheted trompe l'oeil at my son's expense. I have a heart people. 

Ok, moving on to what I think of as the main event. The '60's and '70's. For those were the decades that brought us what I think of as the golden age of crocheted absurdity. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you......
...the knitted bikini. Or in this case, I believe that monokini might be the more technically correct term, as the two disparate pieces are joined into one insane whole. 

Ah yes, a clothing item as impractical as it is adorable. Really have you ever used a knitted dishcloth? Gotten it wet and then hung it up to dry? Great scrubbing power, but very little elasticity or resilience. Now, imagine using the same technique to make a bathing suit. Very, very impractical. Unless you plan to never get it wet. In which case, why are you at the beach? 

Oh. Ok, so you are not going to get it wet. Its just a SUNBATHING suit. Fair enough. And I suppose this one is not so bad.

I guess, this one is ok too. Alright, just don't go in that water, promise? I'm just sayin' that is going to take forevah to dry. By the way, one thing I also really like about crocheted bikini patterns from the 60's and 70's is the total lack of plastic surgery on the models. Sure these ladies are slim and mostly still conform to today's beauty standards, but hey, there is not an implant in sight, and I find that refreshing. They look like human beings instead of LA clone bots, which I think is nice. 

 I've accumulated quite a solid little collection of vintage bikini patterns, but I'm always looking for more, so if you find some, point me in the right direction, (or buy them for me and I will totally pay you back). Someday I'm going to scan them all and make a nice little photo album on flickr, so that they will be out there for the whole world to appreciate, instead of just here in my filing cabinet, making me happy. But for now this is all I've got. Enjoy!   

art in the afternoon

This weekend we took a little road trip to see some art. When we lived in Montreal, Hubs was part of an art-ideas studio/lab led by artist Ingrid Bachmann called IEL, which stands for the Institute of Everyday Life. Their work was being shown in an exhibit called FABRICation: Studio Production Textiles for Interiors. It was running at the same time that Fibreworks, the contemporary Canadian fibre art biennial was going on, so there were all sorts of textile/fibre events and things happening in Cambridge, which is a smallish Canadian city, with a really beautiful old downtown area (that you get to after you drive through a really ugly commercial area, its kind of like a reward at the end of a difficult hike). My mother-in-law is visiting us from Vancouver this week, and she is also a fan of all things fabric-y, so we packed up the Little Dude and headed out to Cambridge.

Our first stop was the Cambridge Galleries to see the art. 

These are some big coiled felt stools made by Kathyn Walter of FELT studio. How I love felt. I wish we had one of these big grey stools at home, and so does the Little Dude. 

 
 After having absorbed quite a bit of art, we went outside to burn off some energy. They have a lovely square there, with a war memorial, and a fountain that was built to commemorate the Centennial, I think. 

 
 There was a sort of metal medallion with the Centenial logo on it in the sidewalk that the Little Dude promptly sat on, which gave me this great shot. 

The big dramatic centrepiece of the Fibre Arts weekend was the Knit Bridge, which was an installation done by Sue Sturdy who is this year's Artist in Residence for the Cambridge Centre for the Arts.  
She covered the sides of the Main Street Bridge in downtown Cambridge with knitting. It was pretty impressive, especially when you consider that hundreds of people contributed their knitting to it. 

 The best part of it was watching the Little Dude interact with it. He seemed to love all the colours and textures, and that he was allowed to poke and prod at it (which, after an afternoon of being carefully shepherded around the galleries learning not to touch things was a great relief I'm sure).  

 He literally go into it at one point, tucking his head under a dangly scarf-y  bit. He was pretty pleased with himself for that. 

Then, he noticed all the confetti on the ground. It was probably left over from the opening ceremony.  

 He was very excited about it, especially after Hubs showed him how it worked. Gather it up, throw it in the air, and voila! instant fun.

It pretty much summed up our afternoon: experiencing everyday things that are beautiful or extraordinary when found out of their usual context. Which is a really art-catalogue-y way of saying we had a lot of fun, and slept like logs when we finally got home. 

snow couch

How lovely is this.

Snow couch! I'm always on the lookout for a nice abandoned couch to photograph, and I have also been complaining about the lack of couches to photograph in the country. I should admit that this one is not actually in the country, but in a near-by subdivision. And for some reason it took me for-ever to get this picture. That's another thing that's interesting about non-urban abandoned couches- how long they linger around.  

When we used to live in Montreal, a couch might be out on the curb for a day, maybe two. Often, they are adopted and taken to a new/less picky home (if they are nice and don't already smell like cat pee) Or, it could be that people in big cities know when the large item garbage pickup days are, and they leave them out near to that day. Or maybe large item pickup day is more frequent in cities. Whatever the case, if I seen a couch that I want a picture of in Montreal, I've got to act fast. Which in my pre-baby days of riding around on bikes with a camera in my pocket, suited me fine. At worst, I might have forgotten my camera, in which case I'd just have to pop home and then, cycle back to the couch for the photo. 

The pacing of my life is a little different now. First of all, there is the whole rural living thing. I don't bike anywhere any more. I drive. So when I'm out and I see something, it is usually kind of far-ish away. And of course, I now have a baby, so its a bit harder to be spontaneous about things like this. I saw this couch for the first time, like, four days ago, but I was out with the baby, and did not have the camera with me. By the time we got home, I had to get him out of the car seat, and feed him lunch and I simply forgot. The next day, when I passed the couch, I was on my own, but again, am out of the habit of taking my camera places. No matter, I thought, I'll just quickly get my camera pop back out here to take the picture. But when I got home, my mom was on her way out, and so I no longer had childcare back up. And it did not seem worth it to get the baby in a snowsuit and strapped into the car seat in order to take a picture of a derelict sofa. The next day, I never actually left the house. Today I was having a bad house-work karma kind of day. The baby took two naps (awesome) but woke up soaking wet and having leaked through his diaper and pj's and sheets and mattress cover both times! (not awesome) So I washed all those articles TWICE! Housework is not my favourite thing (though really, who loves housework?) and always has that feeling of something that you do, just to have it undone and do it again. But seriously? Laundering all the exact same articles, twice today? Sigh. So finally, today, when my Hubs came home for lunch, I really needed the break and I tagged off with him, and ran out of the house, sans bebe, in order to take these pictures. (ps: my Hubs is awesome)

It kind of seems funny, all that wrangling to take some pictures of garbage, but somehow, its about more than the fact that I find abandoned furniture both beautiful and forlorn. Its about my need to keep up with my art practice, despite the fact that I'm busy with my little guy, and am no longer in a city with a vibrant cultural life. And in my life as a parent its also about holding on to myself, and the things I do and like, and making a little bit of space for me, even if it is just to go out and take pictures of a snow-blanketed sofa that nobody wants anymore. Its important, and if you who are reading this, are a mom, take some time for yourself today. Think about what you need, and what you like to do. And then do it. I know its hard sometimes, but find a way. You'll be a better mom for having done it.  

new year, new hair

Actually, to be honest I got this haircut just before the holidays, but there was so much to write about leading up to the Christmas, that I've been saving these pictures until now.

One of my friends is a hair stylist. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. His most accurate title is 'Internationally Ranked Master Cutter and Stylist'. He is, as they say, kind of a big deal. Anyhow, he used to cut my hair aaaaages ago, when we lived in the same Province. Then I moved to Montreal. And he moved to Paris. And I spent a long, long time getting haircuts from nice competent sylists, some good, some not so good, but none of them an Internationally Ranked Master Cutter and Stylist. So you know, I suffered. 

But now I have returned to Ontario. And so has my stylist friend (hereafter refered to by the acronym IRMCAS). And just a couple of weeks ago my hair and his scissors met again. It was glorious.

 Here I am before the cut. I'd describe my hair as being long-ish, with long, sort of out-grown, all swept-to-one-side bangs that were about the length to reach my upper lip. Which is to say that my hair used to have a style and a cut, but was badly outgrown to just generally being long hair without much goin' on. Though obviously, I never wore it with the bangs combed down over my face, we just did that to see how the hair falls.

These lovely photos were taken by the IRMCAS' husband, whom I shall refer to as 'The Human Yoga Mat' as he is the person amongst my acquaintances to whom we all turn when we are stressed out and need to be talked down off a ledge. Also, he's very handy with a digital camera.

 As you can see from the above photo, the IRMACS cut out tons of my hair! Its always a bit of a gulp-inducing feeling to look at the floor and see how much of your hair has been sheared away. But it was totally worth it. This is the result.

I have bangs! Really nice, clean, sharp bangs. Its a look that I love but haven't had the conviction to wear for the last number of years. Bangs used to make me look about 12, but now that I am no longer in danger of being mistaken for a tween, I think I can risk it. I'm very pleased with this cut. There's a lot of interesting things going on that you can't see in this picture, but I'm kind of coy about having my face on this blog, so this is the only photo you're gettin'. But it's an awesome cut! I asked for a cross between vintage Stevie Nicks and Jane Birkin, with a little Teagan and Sara thrown in so I don't look too retro. Its been very thinned out in the length, and has a pleaseing bob-ness around the skull without actually being a bob (a straigt-up bob makes me look like a sunday school teacher, and not in a good way) Its sort of like a bob with long hair underneath it, if that makes any sense. I'm very pleased with it. 

Anyhow, since its New Years day, and I have new hair, I'd like to wish Happy New Years to you all, and urge you to take this opportunity to try something new for yourself. What are you going to try this year? New 'do, new food, new book? Let me know. May Twenty-Ten be full of new for you all!

so beautiful

Everything is beautiful today because I met my deadline, and no longer have to fill out forms during my free time. Today I spent the ENTIRE evening watching Season 5 of the Office. (I know, I'm behind). I didn't even craft while I watched it, not even knitting! I just kept my hands busy with snacks. It was awesome. But despite that fact that I was completely unproductive tonight I still have something beautiful to show you.
Isn't that the loveliest abandoned couch you've ever seen? And before you get all excited, I have to admit that this is not a new picture. No, its not the elusive rural abandoned couch, but instead, a gorgeous specimen of the urban abandoned couch variety, from the Montreal days. Look at that colouring. And the fading. Don't even get me started on that pattern!
This is really one of my all-time favourite photos of an abandoned couch, and I thought I'd lost it until the other day, when, in the midst of my frantic computer work to meet my deadline, my computer kindly informed me that it was full, and was no longer going to take any more of my crap. Or something like that. And so I was frantically combing through long forgotten and probably redundant files, to find stuff that I could delete in order to free up just a leettle bit more space on my hard drive, so I could just save one more revision. And then I stumbled upon these. Ah, the fabled silver lining to the inevitable dark cloud. Good stuff.

Anyhow, c'mon back tomorrow, because I'm posting for the Giveaway day that I told you about yesterday. I'm not quite sure what it will be yet, but I know it won't be a couch. (Too expensive to ship). 

someday....

I have a couple of friends who are film makers, and I'm always saying to them that I could never make art the way they do, because when you make a film, it takes years and years to go from concept to finished work, and I simply cannot delay gratification like that. And then I realize sometimes, how long my projects take, and I should probably reconsider that statement. This is a picture of a quilt that I have not finished yet. I haven't even started piecing it yet. And it has been in the works for, hmm, I'd say nearly TEN YEARS! I was looking though old photos and realized that I started cutting this out before I moved to Montreal. Now, I lived in Montreal for 8 years, and I had it cut out well before that. When I was in Montreal, I took all the pieces out of their box, and laid them out (note that this was back in the glorious studio days, when I had a huge workspace that allowed me to do things like lay out an entire quilt so I could mull over how it looked for a couple of days) and thought about sewing it together, but then some sort of show, or deadline or pregnancy loomed up and got in the way of completion.  And its funny, because when I originally cut it out, I imagined it would be some sort of crazy checkerboard pattern, which now feels totally wrong. I'm much more into this zig zaggy deal now. Anyhow, its back in its box again, but I'm wondering if this will finally be the winter that I crack it out and get this baby done. The nights are getting cold and it would sure be nice to have a wool quilt. Did I mention that this is all recycled felted wool sweaters. Yeah, I've got a bit of a second-hand sweater problem.

So does anyone else have this kind of UFO (unfinished object) lying around. Any completely cut-out quilts just waiting to be sewn together? What's your worst delayed completion project? Do tell. 

strongman

Alright, more Montreal love today. I'm working on all sorts of little projects these days, but I'm having trouble getting things done, or at least done and photographed so that I can show them to you. So instead, I'm going to show you something I finished a long time ago. Well, not a long time, but at least four months ago, and when I still lived in La Belle Province, so it feels like a long time ago.  Montreal has a lot of great public art, of both the old-school and contemporary variety, but this is one of my favourite traditional bronze figurative dealies. It is a statue of Louis Cyr, a famous turn of the century strong-man, know as "L'homme plus fort du monde" as it says on his statue (though I may well have spelled that incorrectly. My French is better spoken than written) I've been doing an intermittent, though on-going project in which I knit clothing or other adornments for sculptures. I knew it was only a matter of time till I knit something for Louis.

Et voila! Barbell ball covers. 

These were knitted out of the yarn from two second-hand sweaters that I unraveled and reclaimed. If you are interested in working with reclaimed yarn, (very environmentally friendly, and also cheap) there is are great tutorials here and here. 

It took me a bit of trial and error to work out how to do this in a way that I liked the look of. I thought about doing short row shaping, but didn't like the way that looked in the end, and finally decided on straight up evenly spaced decreases, which give that nice swirly star look on the top.  Since the dumbells are attached in the middle, I had to leave an opening in the bottom half of each ball, so that I could get the covers on, and then sewed them up by hand. 
I was very happy with how these turned out in the end. And I remember this day so well. It was really hot, and I walked over to where the statue was with my friend Sarah C. who took the pictures, and I used a dirty old gallon bucket as a step ladder to get up on the statue's base in order to sew the covers on. It was the day before the Baby's birthday, and I remember marveling at how he'd been with us for a whole year! It was also the day before we left Montreal, and this was the last piece of art that I made there. It felt like a nice way to say good-bye, and at the same time leave a little bit of me there. I knew it would not be there forever, but I was very pleased to hear from friends that it was stayed up there on the statue for almost a month. That made me very happy. It also made me think that the Parks Maintenance workers in Montreal are not very observant. Or maybe not. Maybe they are just big art fans. Here's hoping. 

chairs

I'm having a bit of a 'meh' day today. Not a really bad day, but an unproductive day, which if you are of Dutch ancestry and a little bit on the type A side, is a bad day. And when I have a not-so-great day, I often get homesick for Montreal. Not that things were all roses and sunshine in Montreal, but hindsight, while not always 20/20, is usually rose coloured for me. How's that for mixed metaphors? Anyhow, it prompted me to browse through my Montreal pictures and I found some photos that made me happy. Now I know that this isn't exactly the kind of photo that the city of Montreal will be putting on their tourist brochures, but this was such a familiar sight in my life in Montreal. Especially the neighborhood I lived in. Junk on the sidewalk. I love junk on the sidewalk. I'd always cross the street to poke through boxes of other people's discarded items.  These photos, specifically, are from a body of work I did a couple of years ago when I was doing my MFA degree in Montreal. Montreal has this weird tradition where almost all apartment leases end on the last day of May, therefore everyone who is moving into a new place moves on July 1st. Its this crazy weekend where you cannot rent a truck for love or money unless you have booked it way in advance. And during the time leading up to and after that weekend there are just sooooooo many discarded couches and chairs around the city, as people move out or move up, or just can't fit their giant old 70's couch into their new place. The city eventually does a large garbage run and picks them all up, but for a couple of weeks there are couches and chairs everywhere.  So one summer I took pictures of as many upholstered couches and chairs as possible. Then I'd cut a chunk of the upholstery fabric off, which I was going to do something else with, but I didn't really like the way that part of the project worked out. In retrospect I'm much happier with the photo-documentary aspect of the project.

Its funny what a strong sense memory I have when I look at these images. I can feel the heat of the summer, the sweaty, prickly feeling on my skin, the smell of the rotting garbage and the cat pee that inevitably the chairs and sofas were marked with. Not that any of those things are that nice, but they certainly conjure up the time and place for me. 
Maybe I should try and do this project again, but here in the rural setting where I live now. You don't see many discarded pieces of furniture around here. Though come to think of it, there is a dilapidated old lay-z-boy down the street that my dad was complaining about just the other day. Hm.

baby sweater rescue

Ok, you know how I feel about hand-knit baby sweaters that I find languishing, sad, forgotten and undervalued at the Salvation Army.

I do a lot of vintage shopping and it is heartbreaking the number of beautiful, handmade baby items that I buy for nearly nothing. For example this is only part of my haul at a recent shopping/scavenging trip.

Hand knitted items are priced the cheapest of all the baby clothes. Seriously, you pay $5.99 for a Gymboree sweater at the Value Village, but only $1.99 for this hand-made crochet and hairpin lace baby christening gown!

I mean, sure it makes me happy to have a bargin, but it also makes me so sad how terribly undervalued and unappreciated this stuff is.

 Plus, then I have to ‘rescue’ the baby item and bring it home to join the box full of other 'rescued' baby sweaters and hats and booties that I have been accumulating over the past couple of years. My mom saw these as I was laying them out for photographing, and we together marveled at how lovely they were and at how crazy it was that people did not use them They are almost always in brand-new condition. Unlike this lovely little sweater that my mom then proceeded to dig up out of the closet to show me.

This was a sweater that I wore when I was a little nipper. It has the look of regular use and some definite staining, and knowing my mom's level of housekeeping, I know those stains are there despite regular washing. I love that this sweater is so emphatically used. I think the sadness that I feel about the other baby sweaters is not in the fact that they are eventually discarded, but that they are discarded without ever being made use of. The denial of the function of a beautifully hand-made item seems to add insult to injury. So when I buy these items, I try to honour them with use. 

For example, here is my little baby, back when he was only around 6 months old, in his regular winter outfit of a vintage hand-knitted carriage set. We wore the daylights out of this particular one. These knitted pants, so ludicrous seeming at first, were perfect as long john's, under baggy pants, or over more close fitting clothing. They were a great extra layer inside a snowsuit for stroller rides in very cold montreal, and were car-seat friendly when the snow-suit was too bulky to fit in between the 5 point harness. The little coat was worn as a cardigan inside, and jacket in fall and spring, and was just the right length to close the gap between pants and shirt. And the hat he wore until it could no longer fit his head, because the ear flaps were the best. It stayed on too, thanks to the ties. I would recommend an outfit like this to any new mom, especially in a cold climate. So next time you see one of these little numbers at your local thrift, buy it, and put it into heavy rotation in the wardrobe of any baby you know. You won't regret it.