Etsy Visit to Toronto

I made a long-winded thorough post about the Etsy Admin's visit to Toronto on the Trans-Canada Etsy Team blog.

bedroom wall continues to gain ornament

bedroom wall continues to gain ornament
Originally uploaded by the.minouette

Me: minimalism, not so much.

Lost & Foundry

Yesterday, I went out to the craftster Toronto meet-up in Kensington Market, which was fun, and gave me the chance to stop by the Bass & Minnow gallery periodically. Faunalia and her cohorts in the OCAD bronze sculpture group had their triumphant Lost & Foundry show. The OCAD foundry has narrowly avoided getting cut, and will continue to provide a venue in Toronto for this sort of amazing art:

(melting pepper sculpture by the instructor Claire)



These are Baba Yaga's Hut (complete with smoking incense) and the fox smole self-portrait by Faunalia! The photographer showing her work at the smaller Minnow room next door said that people were drawn into the show, just to see the magnificent hut... which they then wanted to buy, of course.




It was great day- I hung out with Faunalia, Reynardin, and Someotherathena (a too-rare treat) and even saw Blythechild, if only briefly. I managed to get all my errands done (including obtaining the GIANT 5 lbs. bag of stuffing for pillows). Faunalia, Reynardin, and Someotherathena and I had dinner at Pho Hung, remembered the bad old days, discussed books, heard all about Dunce Bucket (upcoming animated phenomena). Someotherathena regaled us with the hysterically funny tale of the trials and tribulations of having to serve five male, Brasilian supermodels at one's bookstore. Though the rest of us are not blessed challenged with this problem, we must confess we could see the difficulty she described (but I do not suggest listing to, or watching the associated hand gestures to this story, with a full bladder).

Since we all want to see: TARA MCPHERSON, Print Exhibition & Signing, Friday May 8th, 2009, 6-9pm at Narwhal Art Projects, I propose that be our next dinner be on Friday, prior to (or after) the show.*


*Especially for those of you who missed this:

urban art

bird on a wire with moon

Quail Monoprint

Quail monoprint
Originally uploaded by the.minouette

This is a block print on various Japanese washi papers, in brown and black. It is 8.5 inches by 9.75 inches (21.5 cm by 24.8 cm). The top has inclusions of fibres, the bottom has gold and silver foil flecks.

The MSOE challenge fro May 09, is ornithology.

I may make some more birds before the month is through, but I added a quail to my shop.

Q is for Quail & Quilt

So I finally added another block to my alphabet-quilt-in-progress. Q is obviously for quail. They are so comical looking. We used to see them a lot on Vancouver Island. Whole little bustling families, with bossy parent-quails trying to round up bumbling, fluffy, little balls of quail. They would walk in a line from tallest to smallest. The male top feathers look so imperious and pompous. Plus, they are very small, and yet make quite the racket if they think you might step on them.

Also, I love self-referentiality: a quilt within a quilt, with some vintage fabric showing game birds including quails. (The same fabric appears on the giraffe I made ).


Coincidentally, the MSOE team challenge for the month of May is Ornithology. So I whipped up some multimedia quail-on-various papers. I think I'll submit a pillow. I printed the quail block on print fabric showing calligraphy. I think it worked well with my letterpress Q.

In fact, the top-feather echoes the tail of the Q.

Alphabet quilt remaining letters: U, V, X, Y. I will finish this project! I will.