Nuit Blanch is one of the biggest, and most well-attended culture events in Toronto. Thee city is mapped with art exhibits, and it happens from sundown to sunup. To be honest, I don’t pretend to get most of it, but a crowded city in the middle of the night does make for some neat photos. My favourite? The rainbow to the CN Tower.
’Tis the season for all kinds of great things, if you happen to be a resin artist.
Autumn leaves, for a start. Queen Anne’s Lace, Chicory, New England Astor, Goldenrod, and all those gorgeous flowers that grow in the scrubby bits on the side of the highway are in full bloom. Late season red clover, bright red sumach, touch-me-not orchids and even a strange little flower called the bursting heart plant. All kinds of gorgeous stuff, just growing wild and waiting to be turned into stunning jewelry. Isn’t autumn great?
But how to go about gathering all this goodness? I have what I call my ‘harvesting kit’.
This small box contains 12 little metal canisters, great for keeping delicate blooms (like this New England Astor) separate from each other, nice and flat until I can get them home and start preserving them. I bought this one at Lee valley, but you can use anything that is small, and has a lid.
Some of my sphere molds from Resin Sun. I like to carry these with me, because you never know when you’re going to find that perfect dandelion, and you want to be able to put it in a spherical mold right away to protect the fluff from falling apart..
My leaf press, of course! Gorgeous leaves and Queen Anne’s Lace, which I know I’ll be drying flat, go into a leaf press right away. As a bonus I don’t need to move them at all until I’m ready to resin.
A pocket set of garden shears, so I can clip flowers with minimal disturbance to the surrounding flowers, and without damaging the bloom of the flower itself.
A mason jar – this is great for items that I plan to preserve in a form that isn’t flat, or a form where I want to take the flower and stems. Chicory, for example, wilts really quickly. By taking the flower and a portion of stem I buy myself a little extra time to get the flower home.
A simple ziplock bag is a really great addition. I use it when I’m hiking, and I want to carry a lightweight ‘just in case I see something awesome’ bag without having to haul the whole kit around. I pretty well always have one in my purse, even when I’m not out harvesting, because you never know when you’ll find that perfect leaf.
Finally, a dedicated bag to keep it all in. I like always having this bag ready to go, so I can be spontaneous, and it’s easy to just throw it in the car if we’re going for a ride. I keep one other helpful item in the bag that isn’t pictured here: a visual guide to the wildflowers of Ontario. It helps me identify flowers I’m unfamiliar with, and gives me advice on which ones are prickly, and which ones are rare, protected, or endangered, so I know to leave them alone.
For the next month or so the world will be full of beautiful things to preserve, get yourself a harvesting kit to make the most of it :)
After a long break, I’m finally designing knitwear again. The new project is my favourite kind; a single-skein, luxury yarn with elegant details and just enough variation to keep me interested while still being great conversation knitting.
I’m not talking just any luxury yarn, this is being designed for Tanis Fiber Arts and her gorgeous new decadent Amber Label.
Here is a sneak peek of the test knit in progress, stay tuned for more!
September in Toronto has had more beautiful days than both July and August this year. To take advantage of this gorgeous weather, Tito and I went hiking in Caledon over the weekend.
We left home at 6:30 and were rewarded by arriving at the park just as the sun was creeping over the tops of the trees. There was a scrubby little patch of grass in the patch, with some weeds sprouting out of it. Charming, right? The weeds were New England Astor and Red Clover. Here’s a pic of my setup.
I’m using my Canon 5D Mark III on a tripod, with Canon’s 100mm f2.8 macro lens and 2 keno extension tubes. The flowers don’t look like much. But as the sun crept over the trees, under the setup of my macro lens, you could see the morning dew collected on delicate petals, petals which still hadn’t opened for the day.
These were shot with no artificial lighting and processed with minimal colour correction, and no special effects. Just the natural interaction of morning dew and a rising sun.
We continued our hike, seeing the waterfalls at the end of the meadow trail, the mist coming off the pond, and tiny little frogs sunning themselves, but these shots were definitely my favourite. I took one final shot as we were retracing our steps a few hours later.
I was grateful for the chance to see some of the beautiful stages these tiny little flowers pass through before they open and dry out for the day :) These photos have all been added to my photography site at Smugmug.
I have purchased a number of batts from the talented Mother Macrina at Inglenook Fibers. Of these, I have decided to sink my teeth into a massively long spin of lace weight in a colour called ‘Tardis’. I am working with 10oz. of fiber on a fine spin and, as you might imagine, it’s taking forever.
To distract myself, I decided to start a new spin, also from Inglenook, intended to be quick, satisfying and fun. I chose to combine about 50g of the various little samples that she likes to include in her shipments. Different fibers, colours, everything was included.
I felt like someone had sheared a My Little Pony and given it to me to spin ;)
Spinning in progress. I was going to a 2 ply of maximum yardage. I weighed my bobbins to try and get as close as possible.
The results are 198 yards of a passable sock weight yarn, of indeterminate fiber content.
I am unreasonable happy with it, but can’t think what to do with it. Suggestions? What can you do with less than 200 yards of sock yarn, assuming you can’t make it into socks?
I get several requests a month for printed photography, but somehow it’s never occurred to me to set up a proper photographer site with an actual shopping cart and print options. When I rebranded the blog, I knew I wanted to put my three passions first; resin jewelry, photography and knitwear design. With that in mind I created the three top links (or side links, depending on where you are in the blog) and went shopping for a high quality, third party provider that could help me sell my work.
I believe I’ve found a good partner for this with smugmug.com.They offer competitive pricing, high quality prints at every size imaginable, metallic and lustre printing and other great options like framed prints, canvas prints and mounted prints.
After much deliberation I decided to start out my site by featuring photography from our trip to Oregon last summer. Rather than inundate folks with the spoils of my 15+ yearlong love affair with cameras, I’m going to release galleries in a trickle, as the mood moves me ;)
You can check out my site by clicking the photography banner at the top or side of the blog. Below are the photos I’ve chosen to feature. Whether or not photography is your thing, I would very much appreciate your thoughts and feedback!
A few weeks ago, Tito and I saw an interesting sight over Lake Ontario. Someone on Toronto Island was putting on a fireworks show, but the entire inner harbour was covered in a very thick fog, which gave the fireworks and eerie and ephemeral feeling. To top it off there was no crowd that we could see, only one little boat just below the fireworks (presumably the intended audience for the show). It made for some neat shooting, so of course I got out the camera :)
The fall edition of Spinoff Magazine is out, and if you leaf over to page 28 you’ll see an article on our friend Mr. Alvin Ramer. The article was written by Leslie, and the photography was done by me.
I’m proud to have some of my work published in Spinoff! If you choose to check out this edition, I can say that it’s a pretty fascinating one, including some great information on blending boards (ahem, Rayna).
My favourite shot is not the one above, though I love his smile and the fact that you can see his wheel collection in the background, it’s the one below.
Because not only is Mr. Ramer in this one, but so is my antique wheel! The wheel that he lovingly restored for me and which is now spinning beautifully. More on that later!
Double post today because I just had to share these. This is the sky over Toronto today, opening up after the morning rain.
Found this gem on the boardwalk yesterday.
I have never actually seen a cicada. I knew what they looked like from books, so you can imagine how happy I was to discover this lady (I know it’s a lady because of the pointed thorax, apparently males are rounded) just hanging out in plain site.
Like the good bug-stewards we are, we picked her up and moved her off the boardwalk and into her natural setting. Right away I could see why I had never seen one before, what great camouflage!
The Blue Brick 
