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.

Holiday Prep with a Local Flair

Living in one province and celebrating Christmas in another offers some logistical challenges. Sure, you have to do all of your Christmas shopping a little bit earlier and buy things that will survive a plane trip in a suitcase. But when most of your presents consist of Christmas baking, you have to get creative.

A lot of the more complicated baking, such as cookies with frosting on them, have to wait until I fly back (so if you’re looking for me anytime in the three days before Christmas, check my Mom’s kitchen first). But some things I’ve been making in advance, freezing, and then crossing my fingers they don’t crumble on the way home. It has meant that this year’s stout brownies have a local flavour to them:

This year they’ve been made with Garrison’s Martello Stout, which is one of their seasonal brews. And since the recipe only calls for 1 ¼ cup beer, I had some leftovers to drink. While I normally only drink beer you can see through when you hold it up to the light, I can’t let good beer go to waste. And this stout is really good because it’s not too heavy; it’s not unlike Millstreet’s Coffee Porter.

I also made a statement with this year’s Christmas cards. I frequently complain that Canada doesn’t do enough to support its local artists, so I decided to do my bit. This year I went local and bought hand-printed cards from Inkwell Boutique. The store itself is really cute and I could have happily bought all the cards I could possibly need next year in one trip. I also coveted the paper-based Christmas ornaments, but given that all of my decorations are sitting in a storage locker back home that didn’t seem too practical. The store’s website is http://www.inkwellboutique.ca/

Buying cards made by local artists certainly wasn’t the inexpensive way to go but that’s not the point of sending cards, now is it? I got to send little pieces of art to some of the family and friends that care about.  Most of the cards I chose were made from the store’s presses:

I also picked up two from Anna Stowe, an illustrator from Dartmouth (which is just across the harbour from Halifax):

So I hope you all find a way to shop local for the holiday season.

Proper Snows

When I woke up this morning, there was no snow on the ground but that did not last very long. Today, Halifax received its first proper snow fall of the season. By four in the afternoon, my neighbourhood looked like this:

The plow had some issues, as you may be able to tell, due to all the parked cars on the street.

The tiny specks in the middle of the road are a mom trying ever so hard to keep her toddler (dressed in a green one-piece snow suit) walking in a forward direction. He seemed rather interested in playing in the small piles of snow in the road instead.

As I write this just after 8 pm, the snow had ended and we're being treated to a lovely mixture of rain and ice pellets, so my walk to the bus stop tomorrow should be very slushy. Eww.

Urban Art

This post is an example of how blogging alters how I explore a new city- I see something interesting from the bus and then I have to figure out how to find it again so I can share them with you. When I first got here I noticed that most of the utility boxes in Halifax are not industrial green or brown in colour. In an attempt to prevent graffiti tags on the boxes, the city instead allowed local artists to paint them and turned them into little pieces of art. You may have noticed one set in the photo I posted of the Nova Scotia Archives (if not, look back at the 26 October entry). Some of them I encountered while out walking, such as this one:

It’s on Robie St. behind the one of the hospitals downtown. I pass it on Saturdays on my walk from the bus stop to Starbucks (I work on Saturdays and the whole experience a bit more civilized by starting my day with knitting and a cup of tea). This is both sides of a box located in Bayer’s Lake, out on the edge of town, near the Home Depot:

But all of my favourites seem to be utility boxes that I see on the bus. This required some planning and an epic Sunday walk a couple of weeks ago to get photos of them. These two boxes are located a few blocks from each other on Joseph Howe Dr and are inspired by Monet paintings:

There is a house behind that second one that has tall, tacky cement columns on it, but in order for me to get those in the shot as well I would have had to stand out in the road with oncoming traffic. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

My favourite, however, is this abstract design located at the intersection of Quinpool Rd. and Connaught Ave. I usually pass it on my bus ride downtown.

Lovely.

Farmer's Market

Last Saturday I took the opportunity of a day off to go to the Halifax Market. It’s open most days but on Saturday there are the most vendors selling yummy food, handcrafted things, and local produce. It’s located in this building by the harbour (which is how I ended up looking at the seagulls that I posted yesterday).

I had a lovely wrap for lunch (which was too delicious to stop eating and take a photo of) and was full enough to resist all the yummy baked goods I kept seeing. I did buy some yarn from the Lismore Sheep Farm located in River John, NS. Good thing the stall from the alpaca farm was only selling knitting things and no yarn because I would have easily have bought the equivalent of a few animals without trying. I also did some Christmas shopping. However, the most interesting thing I saw (and bought) was this:

Hand-carved oak buttons! How great are they? Now I just need to knit a sweater so I have something to sew them onto. And since all this talk of yarn is going to have my Dad freaking out (since my yarn stash currently lives at my parent’s house)... look, a brewery!

Garrison Brewery is located in the Farmer’s Market complex. They make a variety of beers year-round along with some seasonal favourites. They just released their Winter Warmer Strong Ale.

I enjoyed it, even though it’s not the kind of beer I typically drink. It has some seasonal spices in it but the taste is balanced, so they don’t overwhelm the beer. And they were selling nice openers too, so I just had to buy one. I look forward to sampling something else from Garrison soon.

Flurries

While I was on the bus to work this morning, something happened with the weather:

Still can't see it? All you had to do was stick out your hand and then it was hard to miss the big, fluffy white stuff.

Yep, there were snowflakes this morning. Which I know isn't a big deal to the average Canadian but remember that I spent most of last winter in London where it typically does not snow. Literally, this is the second time in 2011 that I have seen fluffy snowflakes. The flakes only lasted for an hour and none of it stuck, but still, it's a sign that winter is starting to creep up.

And don't worry- by March I'll be sick of the sight of snow like everyone else. But leave me to my childish delight for the time being.