Film Friday - USA

Chicago bus station, summer 2009.
Lomo LCA+

With no work today, I was still up early with Minnie. I've spent the morning indulging in daytime TV and seeing loads of commercials for President's Day sales. So in honour of the upcoming American holiday, an appropriately American picture.

I have tons of photos, but no access to a scanner right now, so I've been relying heavily on all the pictures I scanned of my train trip. By next week I'm going to try and get some stuff scanned so I'll have a wider array of stuff to show off.

February so far

Finished Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (even with frequent bulldog interruption).
I'd only read The Handmaid's Tale by her, and was feeling a bit like a bad Canadian, so I asked Mary for a recommendation. I thought it was great; I've realized I really like books set years ago when the author gets into the customs and norms of the time.


Me and Adam finally made it to Kintaro Ramen.
This is one of those places that's on a lot of "must see" lists for Vancouver. It's a tiny place that serves massive bowls of soup. It was amazing.


Spent the day before Valentine's crafting up some cards for friends. I've only actually delivered two so far.


Minnie Pearl modeling a lovely Yarn Over Movement bow.
Spent the 14th volunteering and then hanging around home with Adam and Minnie. I realized about a week before that this was actually my and Adam's 10th Valentine's together, so I decided to recreate our first one. I came home from school and he had bought kielbasa, dill havarti and little bottles of champagne that we ate with some triscuits on his couch.
All these years later it still made for just as lovely an evening.

Cosmic.

The other day the always interesting Skepchick blog posted a link to some amazing photos of heart-shaped astronomical objects.

Adam recently bought a pretty awesome telescope, which he hopes to use for some astral photography. Owing to Vancouver's oft-cloudy climate, I have yet to really see anything through it, but this weekend is supposed to be clear and the moon quite full so I'm gearing up for some awe.
Our goal is to see the rings of Saturn. Apparently near the beginning of April they're supposed to be the most visible. The thought of being able to see them gets me way more excited than I could have thought possible, and has had me obsessing over all things space as of late.





This Solar System quilt from 1876 (!!) is just amazing. Even more amazing is that the woman who made it, Ellen Harding Baker, used the quilt as a visual aid when teaching astronomy.


More loveliness from Hand and Shadow. Sadly these scarves, which use images from the Hubble telescope as inspiration, aren't available at present. Please come back!


This Christopher Kane skirt is perfection. But with a price tag over a grand, it's the stuff of dreams. Starry dreams.

Film Friday - Old school

Me, Mary, Chandis and Haley in the back there.
This was the morning after a sleep over (which is why I'm holding a pillow) during grade 9, so 1996-1997. The four of us, plus one or two other gals went through about a year long phase where we had sleep overs pretty regularly. Generally they consisted of us watching goofy movies, eating junk, doing routines along to Spice Girls and BSB (all ironically, of course) and sometimes recording the whole ordeal on Haley's video camera.

Hair, pt 2

My hair is fine. I'll be hard pressed to get it to do anything but lay sleekly on my head. Of course, a lot of girls would kill for hair that does that. But, because we're never happy with our lot in life, I dream of big hair: cascading waves, luscious curls, thick and heavy plaits.





These tangled hair scarves and tshirts from Vancouver's Hand and Shadow are particularly lovely.


Illustration by Jenny Mortsell


The girls of Audrey Kawasaki often have enviable locks.





When I was younger I cut a good 8 inches off my hair and kept the braid. My dad was squeamish about cut hair, and I could use the braid to gross him out on command.
These illustrations by Jeannie Phan have a beautiful/creepy quality that reminded me of that.



And speaking of beautiful/creepy, I dream to one day have a collection of Victorian mourning pieces.

Hair, pt 1

I apologize for my absence. As I mentioned briefly on Friday, I was working a lot last week. Every day of the week actually, which is the first time that's happened since I became a TOC, so hooray! But, that combined with puppy duty left me with little energy. I actually wasn't even on the computer that much, which was good actually. I read more.

This past spring/summer there was an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, "The Modern Woman: Drawings by Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Other Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay, Paris". I'm most familiar with Degas, and it was really interesting to see his drawings; just the very beginnings of all those famous paintings, and how they changed from those early sketches to the finished piece.

Growing up my parents had a Degas print in their bedroom:

After the Bath

My mum had a nightly ritual of a bubble bath before bed. My bedroom was right next to the bathroom, so the sound of the running water became a sort of lullaby for me, and I'd eventually have trouble falling asleep without hearing it. When I was younger I had very long hair, which knotted terribly. It was a common ritual also, for me to be sitting in front of my mum while she worked out all the mats.
The familiarity of that one Degas print, along with his common themes of bathing and hair combing have led me to love those paintings of his.

Film Friday - LCA

Taken inside the MOMA.
For the first time since becoming a TOC in Vancouver I worked every day this week; the last 3 at a nearby alternative school.
While very interesting and rewarding (intellectually and financially) , I am damn tired. And I probably uttered this phrase a million times today.