Springtime Craft Roadtrip.

Yesterday Nat and I went on a very fun roadtrip. Well, actually the day started off with Louise's first trip to the Guelph Farmer's Market and a visit with Emily at Capistrano. Then we went on a roadtrip. So, it was actually a roadtrip that was part of a very fun day.

The first stop on the roadtrip was The Ford Plant in Brantford. The Ford Plant is a music venue in one of the abandoned corner shops in the decrepit ghosttown that is downtown Brantford. This was very sad to see, actually, as the city seems to be a very beautiful town with the river running through and all the old limestone buildings and southern Ontario architecture (I love stone buildings of any sort). Anyway, I had heard about an Art and Craft Sale that was being held by the Telephone City Crafters. And we managed to find the Ford Plant and all of the crafty wares it contained. I was very impressed by the selection of artists that were at the show and their prices. I ended up purchasing a few things.



First, was an incredible pink coral ring made out of polymer clay by Sarah from Beat Black. I was completely in awe of the way this person makes cool things with polymer clay. We seem to have very similar tastes as well. I noticed she has a cool little crafty blog called In Shadows and I've already found two clips there that I absolutely love.

I'm going to have to do an entire post on videos from PES (the Western Spaghetti clip) because my mouth just drops open every time I see something new. O, and I also picked up a tiny coffee bean stitch marker from Beat Black as well.

Next, I purchased a small pyramid shaped pouch from a textile artists named Anna Zygowski. All of her work was absolutely beautiful, as is her website. I didn't notice any of the tops she has on her website at the sale, but they certainly are gorgeous. Really, even her business card is absolutely beautiful.



I also talked to Jen from Urban Fusions for awhile. I bought two hairpins from her and they are so lovely. My hair is very slippery though, and I lost one while we were playing in the park with Nat's kite this afternoon. I feel sort of sad about this and might have to order a new one from her shop. Looking through, many of her items caught my eye.



The last item I purchased was from Erica (nothing's up in her shop as of yet). She was one of the few locals at the sale. She knits and makes all sorts of things and does some bookbinding. I found a very cool little hand-bound journal for Jayme's upcoming birthday. The inside is lined with vintage Bettie Boop Goes on Vacation material and Jay loves that stuff.



After the craft sale we took Erica's advice to travel over to Paris, Ontario and take a look in all the little shops there. It was really nice to see a happening downtown. I found some neat items for one of my colourswap partners on Rav. We had lunch at a small cafe that had a back balconey over the Grand River. It needed a good spring cleaning, but it was fine. Then we took a drive out to Mary Maxim. I've only ever known Mary Maxim as a catalogue order craft business, but found out yesterday that it's headquarters are out in the middle of nowhere in a small business park near Paris. Interesting place. Huge store. Tons of crafts. Lots of wool.

I'll be back tomorrow with pictures from all of these adventures, Cass

Science Fair 09.

Today I volunteered to judge 36th annual Waterloo Wellington Regional Science Fair. The Fair is a day long event. All of the projects have won the science fairs at their respective schools and have moved on to present at this regional fair. The students range in grade from 8 to 12. There are several divisions which are divided based on age and field of study. I judged 7 displays from the Life Science and Biotechnology categories in both the junior and senior divisions. I was impressed by the level of effort and dedication the students put into their projects. One of the students decided to test the effect of energy drinks on his hockey performance. He was in grade 8 and had a rink in his backyard. He shook my hand and offered me a seat while he talked about the skills he tested after him and his dad drank Red Bull, Full Throttle, and some other highly caffeinated, sugar water drink. He had to have special permission to incorporate these drink products into his study because they aren't permitted in his elementary school (good thing, in my opinion). His observations about the way the drink altered his performance were things like 'made me fidgety'. I was impressed by his cleverness and his determination to study the contraband beverage. I tried to ask several questions, but unfortunately he was never quite able to explain what some of the negative aspects of consuming these drinks were. He also had a hard time explaining why the information he gained was useful and beneficial to the general public. I think this is where most the projects began to breakdown. And I do suppose that this sort of cognitive synthesis is going beyond the level of most grade 8 students as well.

Overall I had a really fun time. It seemed like the students were having a great time too. I think this sort of an atmosphere is great for teaching the importance of displaying your work well and sharing the information you gather.

I actually went to the Science Fair with one of my friends from down the hall in Integrative Biology. She is heading into her 7th semester and mentioned the fact that she is finishing up the last edits of her thesis. When she handed her first draft in it was only 20 pages long! I'm way past that point now, so I think I'm going to hammer out the ending and focus on submitting it asap. Even if the discussion isn't quite up to par this will get my committee talking about it and I could use some suggestions. I need to stop feeling stuck, put the ideas down on paper, and work on things from there. Moving to the next point is the goal at the moment and that requires letting all of my readers see a fair copy and sign my request for evaluation form.

Just now I also made a change to my blogger template. I managed to figure out how to edit the html and add a label cloud! I've been wanting to make that change for awhile, but I was intimidated by all of the lines of code. Blogger doesn't seem to have a gadget for just adding-on a cloud. So I went to this friendly site: phydeaux3 and figured out to add their code into mine. I also found this really cool 216 Web Safe Color Chart in order to change the colours of all of the features on my blog. I'm sure this will come in very handy in the future now that I know how to use it. I ended up making my cloud range from light pink to burgundy.

And in other exciting news, as I was browsing through the recent updates of blogs I keep tabs on, I found that the muffin bunnies were featured on IndieFixx along with a cool tutorial for these sweet little cherry blossoms.



At another of my favourite blogs, I found a tutorial for making tulle blossoms was posted yesterday. These flower crafts are so fresh and spring-timey to me. I wish there wasn't a blizzard outside. I think I'm going to have to incorporate some of these ideas into my secret swap package that's heading to South Africa this week.

Inspiration.

This is so beautiful:



I found it on one of the crafty blogs I follow for inspiration. Every time I finish a section or a bit of thesis I get to look at one. This prevents me from sitting around and daydreaming about all of my knitting projects at home. Uh, yeah, I do that. It's so strange how you can care so much about so many different things and yet some things just seem so much more fun to do. I suppose knitting is easier for me than this science gig since I've been actively practicing craft for so much longer. Not to mention, science still has that schoolwork vibe attached to it for me. I can't wait to be a free agent and just float around in the world for a bit.

For now, I'll type away and post pretty things. This particular blankie is made with a wide range of Koigu Premium Merino (KPM). The colourways are rich and beautiful. Imagine the possibilities with this stuff for giant granny squares which happen to be one of my favourite crafty items. A throwback to easy days in Warsaw at Nana's house. And possibly every summer weekend in Cottage Country, Ontario.



Okay, I'm out. Enough pretty internet pictures. I've promise myself that I'll send my Hypotheses, Predictions, Methods, and Results to Uta this afternoon for proofreading. Got to buckle down and show up, I just had to post this first.