On Track!

Toronto didn't have a winter this year. The number of snowfalls worth mentioning and days below -10°C I could count on my hands. What that meant was joyrides all through the winter. Bike rides, that is. The latest took Geoff and I east of the DVP and down near the coal plants where we had antics on the train tracks.

Backyard Havens

With spring coming up soon people are starting to think about patios, porches, sunscreen, and breezy cocktails, not to mention hammocks. I spied the perfect little backyard haven with colourful lanterns behind an artists' coop. It even has a sun roof constructed out of bundled branches or something of that nature. A little slice of heaven within urban Queen West.

Queen St. Today: construction & destroyed bikes

Taking a walk today to do some shopping for my mom's birthday coming up, I found a few fun shots along west queen west.

Galerie Voltaire

People have been talking about this abandoned space for years (since at least 2008 from what I can gather), and it's always with the same comments: "This place has been abandoned/boarded up for years" and "But I've seen lights on." My theory is that it's not really an abandoned building. How else could its decrepit charm be maintained consistently since 2008? Then again, some artists showed there back in 1997. A quick search reveals that this is an oft-photographed building. Maybe the gallery has turned into art itself.

Two pieces of wall candy

I worked on these projects during the winter, accompanied by some red wine. Outdoors was ugly, slushy, and grey, contrasting these colourful fun pieces. The stencilled damask one, done with acrylic and gloss medium, was an experimental foray into stencil work and the craquelure effect. I need to find a way to prevent the stencil from sticking to the painting as I'm workign on it. Perhaps make it out of something other than paper? The craquelure effect should have been done with a matte medium on top rather than gloss. Definitely will be doing this again. The other piece was a mixed-media collage incorporated surreal sort of space invaders thing, and I am quite happy with it.

Red and Green Thai Curry Pastes

In February this year I decided I was going to make my own red and green thai curry pastes. I looked into some recipes and found some interesting ingredients that I had never heard of: galangal, and kaffir lime leaves.

Galangal is a root that looks vaguely like baby ginger and tastes like "has a citrusy, piney, earthy aroma, with hints of cedar and soap" according to Wikipedia, although I can't describe it myself. Kaffir lime leaves taste vaguely lime-like and look like this:

Kaffir lime leaves

Hair removal

I had wanted to try this two-parted tutorial because the concept of pulling out hairs in the direction of growth versus opposite would really solve the hair breakage problem, and also it looked super cool. Previously I had been using this excellent Canadian sugar waxing product:

Puffy Hexagonal Quilted Wristlet

Sometime back in reading week I finally bought some leather scraps from Len's Mill Store to make a leather wristlet. I couldn't resist and bought enough for two, one black motorcycle chic hexagonal quilted and the other an adorable camel brown with antique bead and tassel details. It must be simple to make a wristlet, right?