montreal, take two

Pho­tos I took in Mon­tre­al with the Diana are final­ly devel­oped :D Here are some of my favourites.

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Dou­ble expo­sures some­times make real­ly fun col­lages :D Could­n’t quite remem­ber what I took pic­tures of when I first looked at this… It was from the Biodome, an image of anemone in an open pool, over­lapped with an image of Mike in front of trop­i­cal plants.

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Beau­ti­ful streets of Old Mon­tre­al on a beau­ti­ful day :D We were blessed with real­ly nice weather.

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Not sure what my cam­era did with this image. Some­how most of the colours are stripped away, mak­ing the pic­ture look like a hor­ror nov­el cov­er :S The actu­al scene was quite cheer­ful with these colour­ful hous­es! The house between the red and the pur­ple is sup­posed to be blue.

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Chi­na­town. I real­ly like the depth of field in this one.

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I find the Mon­tre­al Chi­na­town a lot clean­er and more pic­turesque than the one in Toronto.

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Inside the Bios­phere, which is locat­ed on Saint Helen’s Island.

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We took a long walk on a tree-lined path on the island along the river.

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St. Cather­ine Street closed off for pedes­tri­ans in the sum­mer, with bril­liant art instal­la­tions :D

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This one is titled “D pour Democratie”.

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We squeezed in a vis­it to the cen­tral library right before catch­ing our train home. The library is acces­si­ble through a metro sta­tion. I like the solemn­ness of this photo.

We had left­over film after our trip, so we took our cam­eras to a cou­ple of his­toric sites dur­ing Doors Open Toron­to last week­end. More pho­tos to come!

Hope every­one has a good week­end! :D

 

montreal, take one

We vis­it­ed Montréal over Vic­to­ria Day week­end :D We only brought our phones and film cam­eras. The major­i­ty of pic­tures are tak­en on film, and they are being devel­oped as I type! Can’t wait to see them :D But in the mean­while, here are some high­lights from our phones :D

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On the first day we went to Biodôme. There were many dif­fer­ent crea­tures to mar­vel at, but I was most attract­ed to these sea urchins and anemones. They’re like pompoms :)

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In the after­noon we vis­it­ed Café des Chats, or Cat Cafe, and sat for a while with this fluffy friend while drink­ing tea and peo­ple-watch­ing. We found this cafe by acci­dent; it was across the street from our hotel. Mike and I had some inter­est­ing imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions about how the cats were inter­viewed to work in the cafe.

“Do you like being petted?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like tea?”

“Um, I don’t mind it. Will there be tuna?”

“Um, yes. That would be part of the ben­e­fit package.”

“Okay. What is your pol­i­cy on nap times?”

I’m sure the cafe has a very flex­i­ble nap time pol­i­cy, as most of the cats (I count­ed 5, oth­ers were prob­a­bly nap­ping else­where) we saw were nap­ping. But the ones who were awake seemed to enjoy being petted.

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And guess what we found?! A shop devot­ed to mycol­o­gy!! :D We also stum­bled upon it by acci­dent while find­ing our way to MEC. Being like a kid in a can­dy store is an under­state­ment. It has every­thing — dried mush­rooms, mush­room ear­rings and neck­laces, mush­room books, mush­room posters, mush­room condi­ments, mush­room for­ag­ing tools, mush­room grow­ing kits, even mush­room tea! (which has to be sim­mered for 2 hours — we did­n’t buy any, but I’m real­ly curi­ous about how it would taste — maybe more like broth than tea?) I did­n’t want to leave, but it was get­ting awk­ward how long we were dawdling there in that lit­tle shop, so we had to leave :( But I did bring home awe­some sou­venirs! :D More on that in a minute…

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And then! We came across this won­der­ful cafe called Le K at Square Saint-Louis, which is a love­ly park next to our hotel. The cafe oper­ates out of what might have been a stor­age build­ing for gar­den­ing tools and such for the park (?) (Mike said it looks like a mau­soleum, but I don’t think that’s what it is). It fea­tures large mugs of tea, adorable patio tables and chairs under­neath the trees, mason jars of bloom­ing plants, a book cart, a tri­cy­cle, and real­ly friend­ly own­ers (who offered to take pic­tures of us togeth­er after see­ing Mike tak­ing this pic­ture of me :D). High­ly rec­om­mend a vis­it if you’re in the neigh­bour­hood :D

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And in the last night we were in the city we vis­it­ed 1.26 by Janet Echel­man at Les Jardins Gamelin. It was mag­nif­i­cent. And feels a bit sur­re­al stand­ing under­neath it.

As planned we vis­it­ed more well-known places like the Bios­phere, the Muse­um of Archae­ol­o­gy and His­to­ry, the Old Port, Chi­na­town, and St-Via­teur Bagel, and (hope­ful­ly!) we have good pic­tures of these on film, but it seems like we had the most fun stum­bling across awe­some places out­side of our plan. And one would prob­a­bly say that we did a good job find­ing our hotel with all these fun places around! It’s this hotel if you’re won­der­ing, very friend­ly, mod­est size, con­ti­nen­tal break­fast (which saves quite a bit of mon­ey for muse­um vis­its!), no complaints :)

And oh! Sou­venirs! This one we bought at the most won­der­ful out­door mar­ket out­side Mont Roy­al sta­tion. We care­ful­ly packed it so I could car­ry it in my bag on our jour­ney home (we took the train).

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And this from Mycobou­tique! :D

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We’re now proud own­ers of the com­mon fun­gi poster!! :D

More pic­tures to come soon! Have a good week, everyone!

 

diana spring roll

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Final­ly got back the pho­tos tak­en on the Diana :D These were tak­en on 200 ISO film, which was cross-processed.

For the cher­ry blos­soms this year I most­ly took pic­tures on the Diana, and a cou­ple on my phone, because I find that in pre­vi­ous years I was tak­ing so many pic­tures that I for­get to enjoy the cher­ry trees them­selves. The one above is my favourite of the cher­ry blos­som pho­tos on film.

This year the cher­ry trees bloomed dur­ing the week, so we had to vis­it them after work, and it was about 7pm when we got to High Park, the sun was set­ting, the petals were glow­ing, it was quite glorious.

Here is the park at dusk, with gold­en rays of light from the set­ting sun shin­ing through the branches.

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These ones were tak­en with my phone.

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They just make me so happy :)

Ear­li­er in the month we vis­it­ed the Chil­dren’s Ani­mal Farm in Sar­nia, Ontario. This pho­to is my absolute favourite of the roll.

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The way the branch­es are posi­tioned in the goose, the grey-blue tone, the com­po­si­tion — I’m just real­ly hap­py with the way it turned out.

And here is my favourite smil­ing ani­mal :D

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I think I might print this and put this up in my cubi­cle at the office :D

And here are some very pic­turesque views of the farm.

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Then one week­end we took a stroll down Queen Street West and end­ed up in Trin­i­ty Bell­woods Park. We got some white squir­rel ice cream (white choco­late, craisins and pecans) from the White Squir­rel Cof­fee shop and wait­ed for the res­i­dent white squir­rel. No luck so far, will try again next time.

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But I did find more cher­ry blos­soms! :D

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A walk through the park…

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Took this while wait­ing for the streetcar.

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And back in my own neigh­bour­hood, with my favourite bloom­ing tree :)

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Have a hap­py week­end, every­one! :D

 

this blog is a happy place

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This blog has always been a hap­py place for me. The main pur­pose of this blog is to share the joy of craft­ing. But a few days ago some­thing hap­pened on this blog, some­thing that’s prob­a­bly the most unhap­py thing that’s ever hap­pened on this blog, and I feel that I can­not go on writ­ing my usu­al hap­py posts with­out address­ing it with the vis­i­tors and reg­u­lar readers.

A few days ago, it was brought to my atten­tion that one of my past posts was prob­lem­at­ic. I’ve addressed what hap­pened in the post itself, includ­ing tak­ing down much of the con­tent of that post. It can be read there, so I won’t go over the detail again here. But I want to apol­o­gize to every­one for not being care­ful and thor­ough enough when I wrote the orig­i­nal post. My inten­tion has always been focused on shar­ing what I know, and shar­ing it freely. But in this inci­dent the desire to share had pre­clud­ed thoughts about deter­min­ing what is or is not mine to share. So I will, from now on, be a lot more care­ful about find­ing orig­i­nal sources and acknowl­edg­ing the hard work that artists/designers/artisans have put into their creations.

I’ve had the urge to take down that entire post so that I won’t have to face my mis­take again, so that I can keep this blog a hap­py place. But this blog can be a hap­py place and bear my mis­takes, and we move for­ward from here.

So, to end this post, I share with you a very hap­py spot I vis­it­ed today, under­neath a crab apple tree. I wish I could record the mag­i­cal fra­grance of this tree for you. And here is a view from under­neath the canopy.

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I’ve just vis­it­ed the cher­ry trees at High Park with the Diana this week and dropped off the film for devel­op­ing today, so there will be more bloom­ing tree pho­tos to come!

Thank you for read­ing today. I hope every­one has a won­der­ful week!

 

spring finally

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The trees are bloom­ing! Came across this tree while explor­ing some new trails. Looks like a vari­ety of apple.

While vis­it­ing fam­i­ly on the week­end, swung by Canatara Park and the Chil­dren’s Ani­mal Farm. Took the rest of the pic­tures on Diana, so we’ll have to wait for the roll to fin­ish and devel­op to look at pic­tures of the res­i­dent lla­ma and goslings. But here’s a very pic­turesque view of the farm :)

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AND I fin­ished the Can­cun boxy lace top!

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It was a very fun make, a great pat­tern to prac­tice dif­fer­ent lace stitch­es. I added a few lace pan­els to make the top mea­sures approx. 20″ in length. Also noticed that the drop stitch can get pulled out of shape eas­i­ly if the stitch­es get caught on some­thing… will just have to be care­ful when I wear it. Real­ly hap­py with how it turns out! Love the drape of it, and the yarn is won­der­ful to knit with. I love the grad­ual var­ie­ga­tion and the pur­ple tone in the dark­er shade. Last time I men­tioned that I bought the yarn for the Con­ver­gence top, so now I have a skein and a bit left, because knit­ting uses up way less yarn than cro­chet­ing. Hmm. What to make, what to make…

Hap­py spring! :D

 

 

this week’s awesome finds

It’s out­door-din­ing weath­er! Love these cheer­ful and clever per­ler bead drink cov­ers to keep bugs out, also dou­ble as coast­ers! Spot­ted on Make.

These gink­go ear­rings are so very beau­ti­ful. Hard to believe they’re made with shrink plas­tic! From Wellnest­ing.

Must try this next time I get a bou­quet :D Frozen flower pho­to tuto­r­i­al spot­ted on Pho­to­jo­jo.

Sim­ple and fun clothes­pin pup­pets, with print­able tem­plates! Might give this a try one day with the nieces, nephews and friends :) From Delia Cre­ates.

Very classy dip-dyed busi­ness cards. From Mint­ed.

Recipes for these straw­ber­ry kiwi and oth­er fruity ice pops on The Slow Roast­ed Ital­ian :D

Have a won­der­ful week, every­one! :D