The Yarn Store!

Well, don't act surprised. Me blogging about my favourite yarn store in Halifax was bound to happen. But I also saw some interesting urban art on my way to the yarn store yesterday.

I think this may be my new favourite utility box:

And if that wasn't enough, just down the street on the side of the store 'Bikes by Dave' was this:

Here's a detail shot. It is individual posters, large and small, all collaged together. Even if you don't agree with the point it's trying to make, you have to admit they are interesting knock-offs of vintage advertising:

So, the yarn store or LYS (local yarn store in knitter nerd-speak). L.K. Yarns is located on 5545 Young St. and it has a wide variety of yarns to suit whatever yarn craving you have. It also has a window full of sheep and alpaca in full frolic:

Yes, I said frolic. I wish I had a better photo but that would have involved me standing in the street. And I've had enough to do this week, so I didn't feel like adding 'being hit by a car' to my dayplanner.

The reason of my trip? Fleece Artist. It is a wonderful line of hand dyed yarns and fibres from Nova Scotia. So, it really was not possible for me to be in Nova Scotia for a few months and leave without buying any Fleece Artist (or at least that's what we'll tell my father when he finds out I bought more yarn). And now, I have some:

Aren't the colours pretty? I also fell in love with this sock yarn from Dye-Version:

Yarn hand dyed in Mississauga. Yep, I managed to find yarn from my hometown that I didn't know existed until I laid eyes in Nova Scotia. Which means that I can go buy some more once I fly home.... hmm. Maybe I do have a yarn hoarding problem after all. I guess I better stop blogging and spend the rest of my night knitting!

Frozen Lake

I looked out my window this morning and could see that Chocolate Lake was frozen. How did I know this? The neighbours who back on to the lake had started shovelling out rinks over the frozen ice. One group even had the family dog out on a leash, pulling the kids on their skates around the ice. 

I skates are back home, so instead of skating I went for a walk to the park and walked on a frozen lake. It looked something like this:

I used my foot to clear off a little tiny patch of snow and checked out the ice. It was good ice, very smooth. I kind of wished I had my skates:

It was perfect skating weather too- sunny and cold. Lovely. Too bad it's going to warm up and rain on Tuesday.

Little Bits of Downtown Halifax

I had last Friday off work, so I spent part of the day in downtown Halifax running errands. I saw a few interesting things on my travels, so I thought I’d share them with you.

This is the Old Burying Grounds, located at the corner of Spring Garden Rd. and Barrington St. According to the plaque on the outside of the gates it was in use from 1749-1844. It’s closed for the winter but you can still peek through the elaborate iron fence. At the entrance is a rather striking monument errected to honour those who fought in the Crimean War:

But what interested me was the preventive conservation in action with little Tyvex tents over some of the headstones:

For non-conservator readers of the blog, preventive conservation are all of the things you can do to help prevent something old from falling apart. Protect a headstone from the winter elements and that will hopefully slow down any cracking and crumbling (at least that’s my assumption why they are there since I couldn’t find any more information on the internet). The cemetery is cared for by the Old Burying Ground Foundation, who has overseen a number of restoration projects on the grounds since the 1980’s.

It later started to snow, so here’s a better shot of the cemetery with St. Mary’s Basilica in the background:

I also thought you should see the statue of Sir Winston Churchill outside the public library just down the street from the Basilica:

And like every proper statue of Churchill, it’s surrounded by a small heard of pigeons. But, from the looks of it this statue doesn't have a heated head to prevent the birds from landing and pooping on his head:

I really liked the pattern in the snow from all the bird feet.

The beginning of the snow storm was big, fluffy flakes that make you feel like you’re standing in a snow globe. Never mind that it made the roads crazy slippy and it took me forever to get home on the bus... the snow, just for a while, made everything look very pretty:

Update

I got so focused on my ranting that I forget to talk about my Christmas in my post, or really anything I've done in the past month.

I have been working. A lot. With some odd hours and doing a lot of tedious work, so it when I get home I have no brain left to blog. Or only have enough brain power left to get me to the laundry-mat or the grocery store. The banner project finally has a firm deadline- the first week in February. So I only have a few weeks left in Halifax before I head back to Mississauga. Which means that the next few weeks will be filled with.... yet more tedious work. But I will try harder to keep you updated and find more things to blog about.

While I didn't do anything spectacular while I was home, I had a good time. I got to visit lots of friends and family. The first thing I did when I got back to Mississauga was hug my Dad's car. I think I missed it more than my sewing machine (and that's saying a lot). My first full day back I went and got a haircut. My hair stylist is located near Port Credit Harbour which is where the Credit River meets Lake Ontario. It was beautiful and crisp, although the water wasn't frozen over:

And then I went to Square One. Yep, I went into one of Canada's biggest malls right before Christmas. A mall I have worked in during the holidays. And swore I would never enter during that busy season ever again. I must be certifiably insane. Or love my Mom that much (but I left as soon as I had her present before I got overwhelmed).

I also did some holiday knitting. My cousin Sarah has an adorable daughter Lilly. This kid steals my heart because she loves colours and likes to 'help' me knit. So when I saw a ball of rainbow-coloured yarn I knew I had to make something for Lilly. One ball of yarn created this mitt and scarf combo:

Three mitts? Yep. It's a known fact that snowbanks have magnets in them that attract little-kid mitts. That's why they lose them so easily. So I knitted a spare, so when one gets lost she still has a pair. I didn't get to see Sarah and Lilly this Christmas, but I have been assured that the present went over well.

I wish I had lots of photos to share, but the truth is I spent so much time talking and visiting and cooking and cleaning and doing laundry that I kind of forgot to take them. I will make up for it by making a effort to show you Mississauga once I get back home. I'm going to avoid having the blog go dormant like it did last summer.

Rant of an Artistic Bent

During a recent Facebook conversation with a friend currently living in New Zealand I said I would update my blog if she updated her own blog as well. So Kendrie posted about all of the adventures she got up to over Christmas... which is way more interesting than anything that I could write about. Seriously, I can’t compete with minor earthquakes and jumping out of planes. If you’d rather read her post:

http://flipflopflotsam.wordpress.com/

But I’m holding up my end of the deal.

This was just going to start out as another post of urban art in Halifax. Then I heard the news from back home that city council had a long, interesting debate on graffiti in Mississauga. While I didn’t hear the entire debate and I’m sure both sides of the spectrum were expressed, the negative camp got all the press. Headlines screaming graffiti is on the rise and that it needs to be eradicated. Ideas such as installing security cameras all over the city so that (young) people will be afraid to commit such horrible crimes as tagging a piece of concrete with paint or a marker. Restricting sale of spray paint to adults 18 or older.

And then my own councillor, Katie Mahoney, who I have voted for and has represented my ward for years, had to stand up and say something profoundly ridiculous.  Images on TV of graffiti are a bad influence, so Rick Mercer’s rants in Graffiti Alley in Toronto are part of the problem.

Umm.... what? If you don’t believe me:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/12/rick-mercers-rants-damaging-anti-graffiti-cause-mississauga-councillor/

Sure, that must be part of the problem... seriously? I understand council being concerned about people defacing public monuments and private property. The idiots who recently ran around a park in Mississauga and destroyed it (setting fire to burlap tree covers, smashing stuff, etc)- that is clearly not okay. But every kind of visual public display is being lumped in the same category here. Destructive, hateful messages crudely tagged to a bench are not the same things as an image that has been artfully, carefully applied. Such as this example on the side of a closed parking garage near me in Halifax:

Peaking out of the weeds, it makes me smile every time.

I grew up an artsy kid in Mississauga and I can say that the suburbs are not exactly a nurturing environment for my kind. The arts are being seriously underfunded and taken out of the school curriculum piece by piece, particularly in the higher grade levels.

I’ve never done anything that could conventionally be called graffiti, but with the broad brush the City of Mississauga is using I’ve done a number of things that would make me guilty. I can remember in elementary school we painted on the sidewalk in the schoolyard to celebrate the school’s carnival. A few weeks later my mermaid was completely gone, because the city had come along and painted over her with black paint. One of my favourite memories of high school was when I got to help paint a mural on one wall in a history classroom. We did it while the school was closed (between exams and final grades being released) and the teacher who paid for the supplies only told the school about it when we were half done. Thank you again Mr. Malik! Last time I checked it’s still there.

The suburbs also features a lot of ugly, plain concrete structures- underpasses, waterways, bridges, and so on. Even diehard minimalists would find it hard to find beauty in them. I've also never heard anyone wax poetically about the beauty of metal utility boxes. So, in an environment where art is de-emphasized as something useless and you are surrounded by lots of concrete, council is surprised that there is a graffiti problem! How about funding community arts programs? How about starting a project something like the painted utility boxes in Halifax?

I think there is a place for thoughtful, well-executed graffiti in the urban environment. It brings colour and surprise to what can sometimes be a monotonous environment. So take a few steps back city council from blanketing the city with cameras and consider some more joyful alternatives please.  

Thank you. Rant over.