Guinea Pig

Lampworker extraordinaire Amy Waldman-Smith has been chosen to teach at Bead & Button this June in Milwaukee. To prepare, she is teaching a couple of practice classes this weekend at Beadfx and I volunteered to be one of her guinea pigs. Today, we learned how to make little beads, focusing on the details - making and decorating round and spacer beads with dots, stringers and twisties.

Here's Amy giving a demonstration for us:

and here are some of the beads she made during those demonstrations, all of which I really liked and all of which are no good, because they didn't make it into the kiln to be annealed properly overnight. They're perfectly formed and decorated but unannealed, you could grind them into dust with your bare hands (but please don't, they are glass, after all!)

Tomorrow's class is "Hippy Dippy Flowers", which is one of Amy's specialties and something I have wanted to learn how to make for a long time. I have tried making them on my own, without much success. Hopefully, after tomorrow, I'll have better luck!

Rock Star Radio

Every weekday afternoon, the DJ desk for Toronto's classic rock radio station Q107 is manned by none other than Canada's own guitar hero, Kim Mitchell. If you grew up in Ontario in the 70's, you've probably heard of his band, Max Webster. If I said to you, "do you know that song about the patio lanterns? or how about the one about going for a soda?" and your answer was yes, you'd know exactly who I'm talking about.

Max Webster was actually the first band I ever saw perform live. If you can believe it, they played at a dance at my high school when I was in grade 9. At the time, I had no idea who they were. I remember I won a record album at that dance, "Night Moves" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - I had no idea who they were then either, although by the time I was in grade 13, I'd pretty much worn the grooves off that album!!

In addition to having recently released his 8th solo album, Kim has been doing this afternoon drive time radio gig since 2004 and in my humble opinion, doing it quite well. He has a relaxed style of introducing songs and making conversation, often throwing in an interesting bit of trivia about what it's like to be a rock star on tour. These tidbits are often told in a very self-depreciating manner, from the perspective of a member of the humble opening act as compared to the point of view of, say, the egotistical lead singer of the rock band headlining the tour, and it's always interesting to hear that sort of behind the scenes information from someone who was there living the life. On Friday afternoons, he does what he calls a "traffic jam" where he plays guitar along with somebody else's song, just jamming along with the tune, which is always fantastic (if you're a fan of electric guitar and who isn't?). He even posts video guitar lessons on the Q107 site, which really makes me wish I had taken guitar lessons instead of piano when I was a kid, so I could play along. Maybe it's not too late to start?

As it happens, Q107 broadcasts from above the Hard Rock Cafe at Yonge and Dundas in downtown Toronto. They have a broadcast booth at street level that passersby can peek into, where the DJ and the producer work live. The other day, I was at the restaurant for dinner and my friend and I went out into the lobby to take a peek at Kim. Here's a shot of how he looked when we first arrived.

One of the waiters told us if we knocked on the glass, Kim would come out to say hi. We did and he did. He was a little quieter than he seems on the radio, but very friendly and kind. Asked our names, shook our hands, posed for photos. Here's a shot of him and me, getting cosy. It was certainly a thrill to meet him, we felt kind of giddy about it for the rest of the night. I still do, to be honest! :)

If you'd like to read more about Kim Mitchell, here's the link to his website: http://www.lobsterlightinginc.com/normal.html or you can check out the Q107 site: http://www.q107.com/DJsandShows/KimMitchell.aspx

A Tourist in Toronto

Don't you just love being a tourist in your own town or city? I think this is something of which we don't do enough. For me, it's usually only when I have people visiting that I take the guide books off the shelf and have a look through for recommendations of where to go and what to do that would best represent the best of Toronto, when I could and should be doing it more often.

I took yesterday off work to tour about the city with a friend of mine who had grown up in Ontario and was visiting with a friend of hers who had never been to Toronto before. We started off at Casa Loma, the mansion in the middle of the city that was built to look like a castle. I hadn't been there since I was a kid, one of those places I had always meant to go to in recent years only I never seemed to get there, until yesterday.

The house was built by Sir Henry Pellatt, completed in 1914 at a cost of $3.5 million (which, you can imagine, was a staggering amount back then. Okay, it is today too!) It is still lovely, although not as beautiful as it would have been in its heyday, as it has been owned by the City for many years now and set up for visits by tourists and school children (many of whom have left their mark by writing their name on the brick on the walls of the turret tower) but a lot of the original beauty of the "bones of the house" remains and several rooms are decorated with either the original furniture or pieces similar to those that would have been present at the time. Sadly, Sir Henry and his wife Lady Mary only lived there for 10 years before a number of unfortunate circumstances (such as the stock market crash of '29) culminating in financial ruin forced them to leave their 98 room home.

After lunch in the small cafe set up in the basement of the house and a trip through the tunnel to see the stables, garage and potting shed, we jumped back on the subway and headed to the Royal Ontario Museum. We spent a couple of hours zipping through there, checking out the dinosaurs, the new bat cave (I was brave enough to go in with my two companions - even though they aren't real bats, it still kind of creeps me out), the biodiversity section with all the stuffed animals, both the First Nations and Canadiana exhibits and a little bit of Greek history for good measure.

By then, we were exhausted and needed a visit to that iconic Canadian institution, Tim Horton's, to refuel our energy with a drink and a donut, after which we took the subway down to the CN Tower. Luckily, we had decided to go up before dinner instead of after, because visibility was already reduced because it had been raining all day and fog was moving in quite quickly. It was still enjoyable and we had fun having our picture taken on the glass floor. We knew it was time to leave when the last of our 3 cameras advised that its battery was completely depleted.

Dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then home to recharge our batteries, both for our cameras and our bodies!! Boy, did my feet and back ache by the end of the day, it felt sooo good to sit down.

All in all, it was a fun day and I really enjoyed playing tourist with my guests around the beautiful and fascinating city that is Toronto.

Details to Follow

What a day we have had! Casa Loma, followed by the Royal Ontario Museum and then up the CN Tower in time to watch the fog roll in. All three of our cameras currently say "battery depleted" which is pretty much how I feel at this late hour of such a busy day, physically and mentally depleted and ready for my bed. Especially since I have to work in the morning. Sadly, my guests will be leaving then so our adventures are over for now. I shall give you more details tomorrow and since I can't download my photos, I shall leave you with this vintage shot of Casa Loma that I found on the Internet:

Patience

You may have seen this video already. I got an email about it a few months ago and never seemed to remember to go back and check it out until recently. Now that I've seen it, I highly recommend you take the 6 minutes to watch it, both as an exercise in patience and because the work of art which paper artist and bookmaker Randi Parkhurst is demonstrating is so fascinating, and the original music provided by Laura Inserra is so calming, it's worth it!

I especially like the quote which is displayed a little more than halfway through the video: "How does a person have the patience to do art? Creating art is a joyful experience and a person requires no patience for pleasure."

Patience from Glowing Heads on Vimeo.

Company Coming

I'm having some people come stay with me this week. I thought it was going to be for one night only but now it appears it will be at least two and possibly three. Not that it matters how long they stay, I'm very much looking forward to having them visit, but when I went away for the long weekend, I thought I was ready for the visit and all of a sudden I'm not. For example, I have run out of toilet paper, am getting low on milk and should pick up some extra breakfast food items. I've had a few of my shower curtain hooks break in recent weeks which led to feeling the need to change the shower curtain liner as well.

I'm also at that point in the year when psychologically, I really need to clean out the inside of my car. Floor mats pick up so much dirt over the winter from salt and snow melting off wet boots, they look totally disgusting by the time spring rolls around. You don't notice it when it's cold and grey outside but all of a sudden, it's sunny and there is this dirty mess at your feet that you notice every time you climb in and out of the car. It's not worth it to clean the mats too early in the spring season but we've had such wonderful warm, sunny weather the past few days, I am itching to get the car cleaned out. So I'm hoping to squeeze in a trip to the car wash before my guests arrive to use that nice, big vacuum they have.

I'm also checking out various websites in order to help my guests plan their visit. It's hard to narrow down all of the wonderful attractions that Toronto has to offer into a mere day or two but I'm working on it! Some of the highlights will definitely include: the Royal Ontario Museum, Casa Loma, the Eaton Centre and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Optional items (time and weather permitting) are the CN Tower, City Hall (check out the fabulous photo above!), the Bata Shoe Museum, Dundas Square, the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art and the Textile Museum. Things that will probably have to wait until a future visit: the Science Centre, the zoo and the Botanical Gardens.

Happy Easter

Did the Easter Bunny bring you a basket this morning? Or have you been having an Easter egg hunt? We always used to find baskets of candy and other special treats hidden around the living room when we were kids. I think my favourite year was the one when I found a Partridge Family record album in my basket!

I went for a walk on Friday having assigned myself the task of taking pictures that made me think of Easter and/or Easter eggs. Here is the result:


1. Easter colours on a kid's riding toy (I had to "Kinnear" this shot, a term I learned from Kate McKinnon, when you sneak a photo without looking in the viewfinder so the subject doesn't know you're taking the picture i.e. of a celebrity when you don't want to intrude on their privacy - in this case, I didn't want the child's mom to know! as it happens, I didn't even get the kid in the shot!)

2. tree scar 3. neon "egg" 4. water thingy

5. a stone basket 6. hens and chicks 7. toys in the supermarket window 8. spirit ball

9. markings on the road 10. wire cover 11. green "egg" 12. pink cross

13. handcuffs (on a tree - wtf?) 14. sidewalk gum wad 15. convenience store lilies 16. graffiti