One more thing today.

I just came across a link to a British Knitted Village. This incredible model was made by an Afternoon Club. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I'm guessing it's a lot of older ladies getting together and knitting crazy cool things.



The entire project took over 23 years to complete by the 40 members of the club. Each of the buildings in their town of Mersham, near Ashford, is included and the details they included are absolutely countless. Now that they're all finished, the pieces will be auctioned off and all proceeds will go towards their local town hall.

Good tunes.

The Polaris Music Prize is an annual Canadian music award presented for artistic talent and creativity in recorded music. Each year in September a jury of 180 journalists, bloggers, and broadcasters from across Canada convene to select the best album in the country. There is no entry fee, no submission process, any album recorded in the year is eligible for the award. The idea here is to celebrate the complete recorded album as an art form.

The long list of 40 albums is released to the public in early June. The short list of the top 10 albums will be announced tomorrow, July 7. This gives the public a chance to search out these artists and have a listen before the Polaris Gala in September when the top album is announced.

The Polaris Prize has been awarded for the past three years. The top albums each of these three years include some incredible work. 2006, the first year the award was given, Final Fantasy won for He Poos Clouds. The 2007 winner was Patrick Wilson with Close to Paradise. Last year's winner was Caribou with Andorra.

This year's long list contains some fantastic albums. Several of these bands will be attending the Hillside Festival in three short weekends.

O man, I'm excited. I put the album pictures beside my favourites....but I'm biased because I don't know everyone here. I'm going to search them out because you can't go wrong with any of these CD's. Can't wait to see who makes the short list tomorrow!

Arkells - Jackson Square
Hamilton

Jill Barber - Chances
Port Credit

Beast - Beast
Montréal



Bell Orchestre - As Seen Through Windows
Montréal

Bison B.C. - Quiet Earth
Vancouver



Bruce Peninsula - A Mountain Is A Mouth
Toronto

Cœur De Pirate - Cœur De Pirate
Montréal

Leonard Cohen - Live In London
Montréal

D-Sisive - Let The Children Die
Toronto

Elephant Stone - The Seven Seas
Montréal



Elliott BROOD - Mountain Meadows
Toronto

Fucked Up - The Chemistry Of Common Life
Toronto

Great Lake Swimmers - Lost Channels
Toronto



Handsome Furs - Face Control
Montréal

Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
Montréal



Hey Rosetta! - Into Your Lungs
St. John's

Japandroids - Post-Nothing
Vancouver



Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
Hamilton

K-OS - YES!
Toronto



K'NAAN - Troubadour
Toronto

La patère rose - La patère rose
Montréal

Land Of Talk - Some Are Lakes
Montréal

Lhasa - Lhasa
Montréal

Malajube - Labyrinthes
Montréal



Metric - Fantasies
Toronto

One Hundred Dollars - Forest Of Tears
Toronto

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
Vancouver

Joel Plaskett - Three
Halifax

Snailhouse - Lies On The Prize
Montréal

Charles Spearin - The Happiness Project
Toronto

Rae Spoon - superioryouareinferior
Calgary

The Stills - Oceans Will Rise
Montréal

Think About Life - Family
Montréal



Timber Timbre - Timber Tiimbre
Toronto

Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane
Calgary

Martha Wainwright - I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
Montréal

Patrick Watson - Wooden Arms
Montréal



Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
Montréal

Women - Women
Calgary

Woodpigeon - Treasury Library Canada C/W Houndstooth Europa
Calgary

Pretty, pretty.

I've never seen this before. Penguin Books has been re-releasing classics with interesting hardcovers. I suppose this is a good way to restore some interest in book-buying since this generation is saturated with everything high-tech.

Ahhhh pretty (Great Expectations by Charles Dickens):

These next few weeks.

So, pretty much everything in my life is changing over the next few weeks. This is all sort of overwhelming, but it's also so exciting.

This week is a big one. Mainly because I'm defending my Masters thesis on Friday. Um, I'm a little nervous. I just practiced my presentation for Doug and Uta and got myself tied up in a "big ball of wool". This is not a good feeling because I have enough actual tangled balls of wool in my life and I don't need any extra metaphorical ones. I know I'll have myself untangled by Friday, but it's a bit unsettling this afternoon. Apparently, some people find untangling wool to be therapeutic and relaxing, though. There's a group of people on Rav you can send your tangled wool balls to. They will deal with the mess and send them back all skeined up. I'm not a member of that group and they probably wouldn't be able to do much with my thesis presentation anyway.

The weeks after will include the following events:
-making edits to my written thesis and preparing to publish
-visiting Warsaw, for one last relaxing weekend before I move
-traveling to Manitoulin Island for a roadtrip with Nat
-Hillside festival where I will be running a crafty workshop
-Wolfe Island music festival with Em
-moving out of our sweet little abode in Guelphtown and finding some place to stash all of my belongings
-perhaps (of course) a going away party for everyone

During this time I also need to pack for my trip. I'm taking one backpack for the entire four months. It carries 65L, or about 35 lbs. That's all I can comfortably carry for the day anyway. I've been collecting items to take over the past little while. I need a lot of multi-functional items because I'll be at an International conference, working in a forest, working in a rain forest, camping in the desert, flying on a bunch of planes, working on farms, swimming in oceans, the list goes on and on. So far, here are the items that I feel a little bit crazy about NOT taking:

-my hairbrush
-my laptop
-my wallet
-a pillow
-my running shoes
-a proper towel
-my jeans

These are all of the things that I want to take, but just don't have the space for (my hairbrush is really big and I chopped my hair off anyway). Everything else I've found suitable alternatives for except my jeans. I might end up wearing them, actually, but I'm trying to find another pair of pants that will dry more quickly, but still look fashionable. I'll have to come back here and post the few items of clothing I'm taking and amaze everyone with how many different outfits for different occasions I can come make with so few items of clothing (um, I still don't have that completely figured out yet).

Yeah, so busy busy busy, but a lot of fun too!

One of my favourites.

Every few days the banner on the University of Guelph website changes to show off an important event or information about the school. The most recent banner is one of my all-time favourites. It shows Doug and one of his bands, the GMO's, at the Make it Seven Rally in Hamilton. The GMO's wrote a song about the drive to bring a seventh national hockey league team to Canada and they were picked up by the rally organizers to play on the big day.

This is fun.

I found this computer program on the Internet that takes your name and some other information, turns it into Dewey Decimal System Coordinates, and then tells you what it means.

Cass' Dewey Decimal Section:

489 Other Hellenic languages

Cass = 31999012258 = 319+990+122+58 = 1489


Class:
400 Language


Contains:
Linguistics and language books.



What it says about you:
You value communication, even with people who are different from you. You like trying new things don't mind being exposed to unfamiliar territory. You get bored with routines that never change.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Cass' Dewey Decimal Section:

104 [Unassigned]

Cass' birthday: 1/21/1983 = 121+1983 = 2104


Class:
100 Philosophy & Psychology


Contains:
Books on metaphysics, logic, ethics and philosophy.



What it says about you:
You're a careful thinker, but your life can be complicated and hard for others to understand at times. You try to explain things and strive to express yourself.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Cass' Dewey Decimal Section:

081 Collections in American English


Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works


Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.



What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

More than I ever imagined.

Last night Emily stopped by with treats from Paris. She just returned from her two week vacation on Sunday and was back in Guelph on Tuesday.

She had so many interesting stories about her travels through the belle city. Versailles sounds so unbelievable. Marie Antoinette decorated the palace with marble and gold and created acres and acres of traditional french gardens. She had a hamlet built on the property where the perfect little sheep were shampooed every morning. Of course, she didn't last long, but what a lavish way to live.

I also really enjoyed all of Em's descriptions of the french food. She says they likes raw things a lot and mould doesn't scare them away at all. Tartare is on every single menu. Everything was delicious and the grocery stores have giant pudding sections. Good to know.

Emily brought me a tiny black and gold box with six macaroons from Laduree. Laduree is a famous bakery that makes double decker macaroons with delicious fillings. Each one has incredible, saturated colouring that comes from the flavouring ingredient. I'd known about this place for awhile and have wondered what these little delights actually tasted like. I imagined they were tasty, but they were far better in real life. My little package had: vanilla, coconut, lemon, salted caramel, pistachio, and bergemot macaroons. Emily's favourite flavour is salted caramel and Gillian's favourite flavour is bergemot. I am quite partial to the lemon macaroon, but each one was fantastic. I HAD to eat them all as they had been purchased on Sunday and didn't have much of a shelf life left.

I took a picture, but they were half eaten and don't compare at all to the ones I found online. ha. Here's the little box which will be the future home for various miniature items:



And here's a cool little miniature someone made: