happy almost birthday to my mom - she is a leap year baby so we celebrated on the 28th this year. I made her a silly cake - two tiers of chocolate devil's food with marshmallow fluff buttercream icing [really, just butter, fluff, and icing sugar], decorated with marshmallow Peep chicks and dark chocolate piping. my mom and I love anything sugary, particularly marshmallow and she is always dropping these off at my house this time of the year.


ted made fancy french toast - thick slices of brioche with candied hazelnuts, ricotta, vanilla bean & mead sabayon, maple syrup, peach preserves and raspberries. and we also had mimosas!

i'm up to my armpits [well, not really] in sorting paperwork to prep for taxes - what a pain. my studio was in total disarray for the first year we lived here, as we thought we would have to move due to apartment problems.

i haven't been able to justify paying someone to do it if i can figure it out myself, but i might be having a change of heart.

press

my work is in Canadian Family magazine this month - here is a onesie just peeking out on the cover



and here is the farm smock and ruffled knickers featured in a story on kid's fashion.

custom colour

we had a request at repeat for some custom colours - I was more than happy to do it as I love mustard yellow, especially on that nice dark grey.

wonderful letterpress apology card from PaperWheel.

spring

we've started our garden already - we spent 'family day' together planting seeds, many of which we saved from last year's garden. we are using the plastic containers that salad mix comes in at the grocery store, an economical replacement for the little greenhouse kits sold in shops. for some reason London won't take these as part of the recycling program.



these are cosmos - always the first to sprout and shoot up, followed closely by the tomatoes and marigolds. cosmos have always been one of my favorites. i love the smell of the warm soil, and tending to these little plants. after many years of failure, I think we're figuring things out.

I'm not sure how I feel about twitter yet - I just don't think I need another distraction in my day [I'm very easily distracted most days]. Ted found this wonderful site, that calls itself a twitter visualization tool. I would like it better if all of twitter was like this.

by post

I have a small penpal in Halifax, and up until friday it was a bit one sided, with me sending little presents that fit in regular envelopes to Ada, the daughter of one of my best friends, Kyla, and her husband, Lloyd. on friday i got an envelope back, and it was full of wonderful drawings and notes. Above is the valentine's collage of punk sparkly things which is just to sweet.



i've been coveting Andrea's work at owlyshadowpuppets for a long time, and thought this was the perfect occasion to treat myself. I bought this for Ted to give to me [silly, I know], and it is just beautiful.

happy birthday to my brother, all the way over in Japan! He is a patient guy, and waited until his birthday to open the parcel we sent.



I'm not so patient, and finished mine on Thursday.

a wonderful giveaway over on the bookhou blog, just in time for a valentine's treat for yourself.

bibs, version one and two

arounna had suggested to me that I make bibs a while, back, and I've finally gotten around to it. above is the first version, and below is the second.



I like the first one, but the bias tape was too difficult to get around the tight rounded ends at the back, and I wanted to avoid more snaps, because I just hate hammering them in. also, I love covered buttons, they are on almost everything I make for children, so I wanted to include them. I didn't realize how small necks are - this looks tiny, but I can wear it around my neck!

teaching

I'm so excitied - I'm off to Guelph in a few minutes to teach a one day workshop on screenprinting. I miss teaching terribly, it is so much fun and a great experience to be sharing something you love with new people. the class is being help at the Guelph School of Art, above Wyndham Art Supplies. above poster by the very talented Mike Byers, who is in the class today.

astulabee

one of my favorite artists is astulabee - the banner above is just so sweet. her handmade textile sculptures are so gorgeous and full of detail. Lee and I visited her at the Renegade show in brooklyn last summer, and they are even nicer in person.


the white fur detailing is all little individual stitches, and the garments and decorative work is a collage of all different fibres and materials. I love the lashes on the deer, below:

address file

isn't this lovely - a letterpress address file from 1canoe2

aqua

I've been trying to get just the right aqua for two days now - I keep getting teal. we are having a bit of a shake-up in our lives right now, and my mind is occupied with working through that - apparently it's affecting my colour theory.