Toronto looks lovelier from the water

Saturday was a perfect day to go sailing. We circled the Island, stopping for a fabulous boat-side picnic lunch. I'm glad to see so many people enjoying the lake (even if a few of the power boat operators do not understand the right-of-way rules or the size of their wakes). I took the helm going into the channel to the north of the Island, which was a bit challenging in the chop - the twisting pitch and roll of the boat proved unpopular with the newbies. I'm so used to smaller boats with tillers, that using a wheel is anti-intuitive for me (as you drive like a car, rather than pushing in the opposite direction). The sheer variety of vehicles visible: single-hauled keel boats, catamaran boats, wind surfers, parasurfers, jet skis, power boats, ferries, planes of all sizes, helicopters, dragon boats, canoes, was something to see. There were both dragon boat races and regattas on. Oh, how much do I want to try parasurfing? Oooh! I wouldn't cut in front of a 27-foot boat with the right of way, barely clearing the mast though (looking at you, Mr. OrangeSail, you know who you are). As the skipper N said, "Well, if he hits us, that's really his problem. The boat wins that collision."

Fractal Geometry II on the Front Page (again!)

I guess triangles are the thing. It's weird though:
a) this piece is a little odd anyway, and not strictly representative of what I do
b) if it's going to be on the front page of etsy on June 15 and August 24th, why not choose Fractal Geometry I just to mix it up a bit.

So, today I will spend in the parking garage, spooling the winch. So far, getting frustrated diassembling the power connector (which doesn't match our 400 V supply, so we hard-wire it), I chopped it off. Then, as I stripped the wires, I recalled that the last time I re-terminated a winch cable, I ended up at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, getting stitches.

Classification of Clouds

A who's who of the clouds in the sky are handprinted in a cloud-like mass of circular diagrams on teal unryu ("Cloud Dragon paper" from Japan) in this first edition linoleum block print. The clouds represented are shown as they would appear in the sky; the lower altitude clouds are lowest, the mid-altitude clouds in the middle and the high altitude clouds at the top. We have cumulonimbus, stratocumulus and cumulus at the bottom. There are three types of altocumulus and one altostratus in the middle. The top level contains cirrocumulus and two types of cirrus clouds. Each is denoted by its own symbol.

The sheets are 12.5 inches tall by 18.5 iches tall (31.8 cm by 47.0 cm). The first edition contains 4 prints.

The fibres in the paper interplay with the clouds themselves.



I read a great biography of Luke Howard, who first classified the clouds in 1802. Some science is more obvious than others. His ability to see order where others see dragons, giraffes, faces and maps of foreign lands darting randomly and lazily above them is quite astounding. Whenever one goes to say, the American Geophysical Union meeting, one can count on good loot from NASA. I picked up the free cloud charts.

Parkdale, only more so

Yesterday, I had to get to Queen & Ossington by 7 pm. I knew public transit would be hopeless and I wanted to stop at the Paper Place and Type*, so I walked. Going through Parkdale I was behind these three young women most of the way. I've never felt so invisible. I snapped this with my phone. It was sort of fascinating. I passed them, and within a minute, was no longer invisible. During my walk home I saw a few more women extravagantly, if sparsely dressed for Caribana**. I think it's a good sign they felt comfortable to walk through Parkdale, after dark. And while they certainly garnered attention, I didn't hear any cat-calls or anything.

*where as reqbat wrote, "i MAY have, theoretically, purchased another book"
**For non-Torontonians, Toronto's Caribana is the largest Caribbean festival outside of the Caribbean. There were thousands and thousands of people out. The parade attracts a million people every year. This picture is from a particularly empty stretch of Queen St W.