levitating like it’s 1920

peculiar me in 1920

 

I came across this book in the book­store ear­li­er in the week — a pecu­liar lev­i­tat­ing child on the cov­er! I would have loved to read it when I was in my pre­teen years. I was real­ly into haunt­ed sto­ries and such. But I’ve got­ten more and more wimpy as I age, and I shy away from books like this lest it gives me night­mares. But it gave me an idea for a lev­i­ta­tion pho­to, as we were going to a Gats­by-themed gar­den par­ty this week­end at the Spad­i­na Muse­um, and I thought it might be fun­ny tak­ing a sim­i­lar­ly pecu­liar pho­to at a his­toric gar­den dressed in cos­tume :D

Here’s a more cheer­ful ver­sion. The ros­es are gorgeous!

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Anoth­er cheer­ful version.

cheerful 2

 

Cheer­ful guest appear­ance by Mike :D (he nev­er thinks what I do is too sil­ly for him to join in. Isn’t he the most awesome?)

cheerful 3

 

We were look­ing for­ward to this ever since we heard about it weeks ago and were excit­ed­ly prepar­ing our cos­tumes :D Mike bought sus­penders and a bow tie, and I bought a dress from the thrift store and made a hat from this pat­tern. I real­ly liked the flower pat­tern on the crown.

party hat

 

 Peo­ple come with such beau­ti­ful costumes!

party guests

 

There was a live band (note the musi­cian play­ing the wash­board! :D)

party band

 

Mike in 1920.

mike in 1920

 

Sun­shine cro­quet :D

sunshine croquet

 

Mike joined in the danc­ing :D

party dance

 

I loved the beau­ti­ful plants inside and out­side the house.

green house

 

spadina house

 

We had the most excel­lent time (and lots of pink lemon­ade) :D

Hope you have an awe­some week!

 

cornflower

I haven’t bought a new cro­chet book in a cou­ple of years, but when I saw Doris Chan’s new book I just had to get it! I was par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed to this pat­tern.

It’s real­ly an amaz­ing book. I nev­er knew how to join motifs as I cro­chet them. It’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er than I thought once I got the hang of it.

I wore it with my new skirt to an art show that I spent the past two months coor­di­nat­ing :D Was too busy at the art show to take a phone, so Mike took a cou­ple for me in front of a bush on our way home.

cornflower1

 

I actu­al­ly used a cheap and cheer­ful large ball of worsted weight acrylic yarn. I ironed it on low heat under a wet tow­el after­wards and it made it a lot soft­er and drape a lot better.

Here’s a close-up…

cornflower2

 

Since my cours­es end­ed I’ve been cro­chet­ing a lot! I guess mak­ing up for the time when I was­n’t cro­chet­ing while being busy with papers. 

Hope every­one has a good weekend!

 

crochet-along completed :D

CAL

 

Remem­ber I was cro­chet­ing along with the awe­some Amy and the won­der­ful peo­ple at Kni­to­ri­ous via Skype? The cardi­gan is fin­ished and I final­ly got around to tak­ing a pho­to of it! 

We used a lace cardi­gan pat­tern from the new Vogue Cro­chet. I don’t have a sweater pin, but I have a small piece of drift­wood lying around so I used it to hold the front togeth­er. I think it actu­al­ly goes well with it :D

I’m not sure why but the front piece with the beige lace pan­els seems a lot big­ger than the oth­er front piece. So it looks more like a wrap than a cardi­gan on me, but I think it looks alright. It’s a nice piece to wear to sum­mer night­time events! 

The cro­chet along was such a fun expe­ri­ence! It’s nice to cro­chet and sit and chat with oth­er peo­ple who are also pas­sion­ate about yarn and hooks and such. Much more fun than cro­chet­ing in front of the TV! Thank you so much Amy for invit­ing me :D

Have a won­der­ful rest of the week, everyone!

 

journey to the lower bay and paper mill

Oh my, these pho­tos are from last month! Have been busy with many things late­ly and behind in my blog posts :S

It was Doors Open last month in Toron­to, and it was par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial because the Low­er Bay sub­way sta­tion is open for view­ing this year. It has­n’t been open for the past few years.

The Low­er Bay is an aban­doned sub­way plat­form under­neath the Bay sta­tion, but it’s actu­al­ly still used for train­ing, rerout­ing trains and film shoots. 

With haunt­ings and such sto­ries float­ing around, I pic­tured the Low­er Bay being much old­er-look­ing, Vic­to­ri­an, even. Although sub­ways did­n’t exist in the Vic­to­ri­an era, did it? My imag­i­na­tion often makes things more excit­ing than they actu­al­ly are.

So we fol­lowed every­one through the secret door­way that I nev­er noticed in Bay sta­tion, and down the stairs…

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And here it is! The Low­er Bay sta­tion is actu­al­ly a lot like the oth­er stations. 

lower bay 2

It has inter­est­ing floor tiles though.

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Hap­py feet :D

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This kind sub­way staff let us see the end of the plat­form and watched to make sure that peo­ple are safe.

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View from the end of the plat­form. As I stood there Bar­bara Rei­d’s Sub­way Mouse comes to mind…

lower bay 1

 Lin­ing up to see the con­duc­tor’s booth, and real­iz­ing that I usu­al­ly don’t get to stand on the gap.

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Mean­while, film clips that were shot in the Low­er Bay were played.

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That con­cludes was our jour­ney to the Low­er Bay.

lower bay 3

 

After Low­er Bay we spon­ta­neous­ly decid­ed to take advan­tage of Doors Open and vis­it­ed Tod­mor­den Mills.

It has a his­toric paper mill that was turned into a the­ater. It still has some of the orig­i­nal brick walls and beams.

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We even got to see the back­stage :D

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Then we went on a tour of the wild flower pre­serve near­by, saw these amaz­ing mush­rooms! :D They were giant!

todmorden 3

There were also a cou­ple of his­tor­i­cal hous­es on the prop­er­ty. Friend­ly staff were mak­ing gin­ger cook­ies on the hearth. They served rhubarb juice as well :D

todmorden 1

We toured a house that had a base­ment. Very dun­geon-like. The friend­ly tour guide told us that the ground is made of riv­er rocks.

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And before head­ing to our next stop (Dairy Queen :D), I found these pre­cious mul­ti­colour flowers. 

todmorden 2

 

As I’m writ­ing this pho­to-heavy post I real­ize that sum­mer trav­el time is here! :D I love trav­el­ling around my own city like a tourist, find­ing inter­est­ing things that I had pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. And I hope that these Toron­to trav­el posts would be help­ful for you if you ever decide to vis­it the city :D I’m hop­ing to do more trav­el­ing before Sep­tem­ber (and the new school year) rolls around, so stay tuned for more trav­el posts! 

Have a won­der­ful week, everyone!

 

pocketed, lined, with waistband, whoa!

I love to sew. But I don’t real­ly use pat­terns, and I bare­ly measure.

Most of what I sew are sim­ple square tops and shape­less dress­es (actu­al­ly, they do have shapes, they are rec­tan­gles and, if I’m feel­ing adven­tur­ous, trapezoids).

Then one day, I sud­den­ly thought that it would be a good idea to have a gath­ered skirt. It would be use­ful for semi-for­mal events and such. I took a trip to the local thrift store but could­n’t find any­thing that I liked. Then I went home, and saw this tuto­r­i­al.

It was the per­fect gath­ered skirt! A skirt I think I can make… 

And here it is! A skirt! With a waist! :D

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It’s the per­fect tuto­r­i­al part­ly because it does­n’t have a zip­per. I don’t know how to install a zip­per. I avoid tuto­ri­als with zip­pers. It looks nice and flat and dressy on the front, and has an elas­tic on the back :D

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I bought this sweet laven­der fab­ric a long time ago and nev­er knew what to do with it. It’s now put to good use!

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I used less fab­ric than what is used in the tuto­r­i­al. Instead of 45″ across for each of the front and back pieces, I used 37″ and it’s quite pouffy. I also sewed on a skirt lin­ing that has the same cir­cum­fer­ence as the waistband.

Pock­ets! :D

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And as you might have noticed — a new hair­do! For the sum­mer :D

It was fun to make, and not too dif­fi­cult (except I messed up the part about sewing on the elas­tic and end­ed up spend­ing near­ly an hour try­ing to get an elas­tic into the waist­band with­out a safe­ty pin or any­thing to guide it). I think I might make anoth­er one with the vin­tage bed sheet I bought last sum­mer :D

Have a sweet rest of the week!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Lots of won­der­ful things for the mid­dle of spring! 

 

Rain paint­ing! Per­fect for today, actu­al­ly, a rainy day here in Toron­to. I love the pat­tern it makes when paint reacts to water. By Views From My Win­dow.

 

A knit octo­pus plush from the ever won­der­ful Purl Bee. Love the tex­ture on the under­side of the tentacles. 

 

Ohmy­good­ness can any­thing be cuter than this? Pan­cake blan­ket with but­ter pat friend!!! *squeal* Pat­tern for sale by the always fab­u­lous Twinkie Chan! (I’m a huge fan!!)

 

I don’t know where to buy the spray dye kit but love the way that awe­some twist pat­tern is made! From I Love to Cre­ate.

 

Mike’s won­der­ful co-work­er for­ward­ed this to me (thank you, Anne!) — a neck krak­en scarf! Pat­tern for sale on Knit Pick. Check out the rest of the Cryp­to­zo­ol­o­gy col­lec­tion too! I down­loaded the krak­en wall­pa­per for my phone :D

 

Isn’t this so pret­ty? Pat­tern gen­er­ous­ly shared by Handy Kit­ty on Rav­el­ry.

 

Fuzzy ani­mals, by wrap­ping yarn around plas­tic ani­mals. Isn’t that bril­liant? And very cute! Look at the grey dog with the par­ty con­fet­ti on him! From Home­work.

 

Love­ly leaf print pen­dant by Hap­py Hour Projects.

 

Sim­ple and sweet! Water­mel­on coast­er pat­tern by Make and Takes.

 

 This has a Life After Peo­ple kind of feel to it. Toy truck planter spot­ted on Junk Mar­ket Style.

 

And final­ly, have a look at Fid­dle Oak’s pho­to­stream. Has many of my favourite things — fly­ing, origa­mi, acorns… It’s won­der­ful­ly imag­i­na­tive and sim­ply magical.

 

May your week­end be filled with won­ders and crafty goodness!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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