Archive for February, 2011

DIY is best when not done by yourself. Or, you know, when you can learn from your friends. Let’s talk about what we’re doing on the home improvement front, shall we?

Chez Werker, we’re the kind of DIYers who get a day’s notice about adopting a baby and decide a week later that it makes perfect sense to remodel the basement. (Kid needs a room near our room, see, and our bungalow has but one bedroom on the main floor. So we’re moving to the basement, where there are two bedrooms right across from each other.)

In a selfish attempt not to feel alone in this kind of behaviour, I thought I’d start an open thread where we can chat about the home-improvement projects we’re doing ourselves. And don’t hold back! Sharing is caring. Tell how you’re doing what you’re doing and where you’ve found the best supplies. I’d love to learn some tips and tricks about supplies in the city and fun projects to do, and I’m certain I’m not alone in that.

Ok, I’ll start. We’ve gotten help from friends and a contractor-friend to replace the dirty wall-to-wall carpeting with a laminate floor, and in painting over the hideous cave colours on the walls with nice, bright neutrals. Here are some of the more interesting, or at least smaller-scale, DIY projects we’ve done or plan to do:

• We made a new bed (where by “we” I mean I wasn’t involved at all). Our old bed had a gorgeous log headboard and footboard, but the logs were bulky and we need room for a bassinet in our bedroom now. So right after the baby came, my partner and his brother made us a platform bed with drawers underneath for storage and room under he foot of the bed for the dog. They used plywood and MDF from Dunbar Lumber and Home Depot, and they painted the whole shebang white.
• Our new bedroom has room for furniture beyond the IKEA Pax wardrobe our tiny old room could fit, and we spent some time looking at furniture online, poking through thrift stores and browsing antique stores on Main St. In the end, though, we’ve decided to reclaim my 34-year-old childhood furniture from other uses. After a light sanding, a couple coats of primer, some water-borne oil paint stuff from Benjamin Moore, and new handles and knobs from Lee Valley, they’re not exactly like new, but they’re newly white and tomorrow we’ll have someplace to put our clothes.
• I’m desperate to fashion some sort of a (not-bulky) headboard for the new bed. Maybe something out of upholstered ceiling tiles, or maybe I’ll use some of that textured, paintable wallpaper on a piece of plywood (I saw some at Home Depot the other day). My partner thinks this is a dumb idea, so first I need to convince him it’ll look outstanding. (It’ll look outstanding.)
• Our old bedroom will be a combo guest room and crafts studio. One of the first things I’ll do when I finalize where the furniture will live is make some of these using spent formula canisters. I’ll fill them with yarn, fabric and maybe some other pretties. I’m giddy just thinking about it.
• I’m going to try to make it to a class at Spool of Thread so I can learn to make fabric boxes to keep stuff organized in.

Ok, go!

Welcome to The Playground, a place for Vancouver families. Every Wednesday I post a roundup of upcoming family-friendly events and activities. I’m always on the lookout for fun stuff to do, so if there’s something happening that you think I should know about, contact me.

In The Playground for the week of February 23-March 1: The Snow Queen, Family Time at Seedy Saturday, Haida Stories with Roberta Kennedy and Swimmy, Frederick and Inch by Inch.

This weekend, Music in the Morning presents the The Snow Queen, a multimedia production based on Hans Christian Anderson’s classic tale. “The story of a friendship between a little boy and girl, Kay and Gerda, and the beautiful but cruel ice maiden, The Snow Queen weaves a powerful magical spell.” There are two public performances at the Roundhouse this Saturday, the first at 2PM and the second at 7PM. Tickets can be purchased online.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Looks like they were looking to add some experience…..

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!).

I’ll never forget a statement that I heard years ago while studying painting in art school. At the time I was struggling with painting – as someone with fairly decent drawing skills, I was finding the transition to painting a lot harder than I had initially thought. On top of this, I was striving for a sense of photo-realism in my paintings that was far beyond my skill level. The statement that stuck with me was something along the lines of ‘if you want your painting to look like a photograph, why not just take a photograph?’ So photography became more than just source material for my paintings, and became the end in and of itself.

But I will carry an interest in painting for the rest of my life, and it is not restricted to just realism either. Perhaps, instead of working in a studio from photographs, I had been more like the subjects of Robert Fougere‘s photograph Sarah Holton and Kylie Ward – Plein air painting. Deep Cove, BC, I might still be painting today.

I’ll never know of course, but two things I do know are that a) I would most likely be painting the exact same subject matter that I photograph today, and b) it would probably take me a little longer.

Painters do it in plein air.

Because really, if you want to paint a blue thrush, would you rather observe it in its natural habitat, or pull one out of your freezer?

Gary

Celebrating Vancouver’s 125th anniversary, as the rerelease of 10 out of print, classic Vancouver books draws nearer I’m getting more and more excited about coupling the new copies with the old copies I’ve been digging up. My goal is to unearth original versions of all ten so that we have both on the shelves of our growing library here at the V.I.A. office.

It hasn’t been as easy as I thought it might be. As all of these books are out of print of course I imagined it wouldn’t be a cakewalk but of the few bookstores I’ve presented the list to so far Macleod’s Books is the only one who hasn’t asked me “You’re kidding, right?”. Which is just another solid reminder of why Macleod’s is my favourite used bookstore in Vancouver.

Here’s what they dug up for me yesterday: a copy of Rolf Knight’s Along the No. 20 Line published in 1980 by New Star Books. And HERE is a PDF copy that Rolf himself uploaded to his web site if you want to get a sneak peek.

Vancouver 125 Legacy Books might be your new religion

So my list is looking like this (the ones with a strike through them are ones I’ve found so far):

A Hard Man to Beat by Howie White
Along the No. 20 Line: Reminiscences of the Vancouver Waterfront by Rolf Knight
Opening Doors: Vancouver’s East End edited by Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter
Who Killed Janet Smith? By Edward Starkins
Class Warfare by D. M. Fraser
A Credit to Your Race by Truman Green
Crossings by Betty Lambert
The Inverted Pyramid by Bertrand W. Sinclair
Day and Night by Dorothy Livesay
Anhaga by Jon Furberg

HERE is my original post on the project in case you missed it. And HERE is my first post about my first finds.

Stay tuned in the coming months as we’re going to be reviewing all ten titles before they’re released.

Courtney is a lover. She loves her family. She loves her friends. She loves VANCOUVER! She loves her Canucks (even though she grew up in the land of white and blue.) She loves writing letters for various causes – in fact, she believes that one of her letter writing campaigns single-handedly got Swiss Chalet to put the lemon back in the cup of warm water to clean your hands after a chicken dinner. Courtney is a lover and she’s wacky and fun in all the right ways to boot. Loyal. Dependable. The one you want in your corner. She’s Courtney and part of what makes Vancouver awesome.
- Scott Weisbrod

The Proof
o1 This is where I love to spend my time and get inspired; in the workroom at Craftworks, surrounded by craft supplies, miles of fabric and great people.

02 My fridge. It’s messy & I love it. My friend Nick says it’s because I’m an emotional eater, I say it’s because blank fridges are just begging to become something more than they are (and all the good stuff is in the pantry anyway) These are all of my favourite photos of my favourite people.

03 Walking on the beach on a tremendously sunny January Sunday, we’re lucky enough that we can do that everyday.

04 These are the crazy bunnies of Craftworks, handmade with love here in Vancouver, they crack me up every time I look at them.

05 My very messy workspace, a friend snagged my initials from an old greenhouse here in Vancouver and the art is a mix of nephew doodles and prints from local artists. This is the desk of possibility. I’ve made many many things sitting here, and the desk is one of my best alleyway finds in Vancouver yet.

06 Something I made sitting at my very messy desk for my little jewelry line called telly designs.

07 My mantra. This is at my other very messy desk at work on my wall, staring at me, begging me to make something.

08 Food! I love cooking, I love eating, I love sharing food with friends, there is truly no better place than at a table with friends and family telling stories and stuffing your face with deliciousness.

The Questions
What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in the beachy, ocean-smelling Kitsilano where I can walk everywhere and my car gets super dusty. I love it there because I recognize the faces of my neighbours, and it’s got a small-ish town feel not far from the big city. Plus I can whirl down to the beach in about 1 second flat on my bike and lie in the sunshine. Boom!

What do you do and where?
By day I am an account manager at an advertising agency in Gastown, I work with great peeps and we work hard and have a lot of fun, and my evenings and weekends I spend as a board member at a little Kitsilano not-for-profit called Craftworks Society. It’s a small retail store on 4th ave and everything that we sell is handmade by people with disabilities in our Vancouver communities. It’s amazing. I also have a small jewelry line called telly designs which sometimes gets neglected, but I love making pretty things. I also quilt and am an enthusiastic and nerdy member of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.

What are you working on?
My main focus right now is my work at Craftworks Society, they’ve been around in Kitsilano since 1966 and no one really knows who we are, so we’ve recently finished a new logo and we’re working on new product development, brainstorming ideas for craft classes and about one thousand other things. We are looking for new faces to join our board (crafty, enthusiastic, smart, looking to make a change in their communities) if you’re interested ping me at cj (at) tellydesigns.com

Where can we find your work?
Swing by Craftworks Society on 4th in the next few months and let me know what you think of our new products that I’m helping design, you can also find a smattering of my jewelery at U-Life at 4th and Vine. And hopefully a few new places around town in the summer of 2011.

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telly designs

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. We interview some of our favourite local artists, post weekly guest playlists comprised of Vancouver artists and ‘Last Week in Music’ highlights some of the concerts happening around the city…

This is the first of two Scene and Heard’s that will be shared, photography-wise, between myself and our marvelous fill-in photographer Leigh Eldridge. You might remember Leigh from that time that she subbed in for me when I went to Ontario. Well right now I’m blogging from Whistler (where I am with my family) and next week I’ll be…well that’s a surprise that I’m tell you about during next week’s playlist! So you’ll see lots from her in the next few weeks!

Back to the music…This week I caught the Yukon Blonde/Plants & Animals show at the Commodore and Leigh went to the first concert in the West Coast Pop! series – Rococode, The Racoons, and Bend Sinister.

THIS WEEK IN MUSIC: As much as I’m excited to be in Whistler, I’m missing an AMAZING show at The Railway tonight: Redbird, Sumner Brothers, and The United Steelworkers of Montreal (GO TO THIS!). On Thursday be sure to go see The Albertans, Analog Bell Service, and Hot Panda at the Biltmore (and listen during the day to Radio 3 to hear the TOP 20 announcement – did you vote today?). Friday is The Provincial Archive with Jordan Klassen, Fisticuffs and Jocelyn Price at Waves On Howe. Saturday you have two choices, or just one if you don’t have a ticket to see Jim Bryson & The Weakerthans (with this week’s playlist creator Siskiyou) at the Biltmore (it’s sold out!) – alternatively go check out West Coast Pop! at the Red Room ft. Wassabi Collective, The Midnight Hours, and Cruel Young Heart.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!).

The beach is an amazing place year round. Obviously it enjoys its busiest time of the year in the summer when, you know, it gets warm and stuff. A lot warmer than now, in fact. But as far as marine life goes, this place never closes, as the photograph by John Whitworth from English Bay demonstrates.

But what I further appreciate about this image is this: it presents photographic evidence that, no matter how many french-fry birds you see hanging out in the parking lots of the fast food places on Main near Terminal, there are still seagulls out there that appreciate real food and continue to practice their age-old craft.

Gary