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I got this little snap-close plastic container with food-shaped erasers at the dollar store yesterday. Specifically, Dollarama. This is the kind of thing Dollarama is importing! I love it.

I had a conversation with the guy at Vintage in the Village (if you’ve ever been there, you know that once you start a conversation with the proprietors, well-meaning as they are, you’d better settle in for at least 15 minutes of discussion! And the only way to end the discussion is to physically walk away) about things that were inexpensive back in the day but are now sought-after by collectors because of their scarcity today. Things that are inexpensive are not preserved and cared for the same way objects that are pre-determined to be collectibles or heirlooms are, thus ensuring their place in the future vintage Hall of Desirability. He pointed in particular to these metallic drinking glasses from the mid-century — I don’t know if they’re made of tin or what, but they’re painted on the outside, and apparently they were the kind of thing you’d pick up at Woolworth’s and have on the patio in the summer. They were especially handy because you could freeze liquids in them (before plastics were ubiquitous). Now, they’re rare, because no one thought to hold on to them. They got dented, they got chipped, they got tossed out. Not like grandmother’s china.

I suggested that in our future, the sheer glut of material objects in our society will mean that fewer objects will hold vintage fascination. He disagreed. He thought that the stuff we get at the dollar store today could be prized by collectors decades from now (and not just because they’ll be scrounging for any and all implements that will allow them to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

I’ve found myself more and more surprised by the aesthetic appeal of things you can find at Dollarama, lately. For instance, the notebooks don’t just have garish holographic cartoon animals on the covers, but elegant bird motifs (a motif which is old meme to the design-savvy, of course, but it’s mainstream now, and still pleasing to look at, especially when compared with the alternative).

None of this has anything to do with the food-shaped erasers, which I got because they are just too adorable to pass up. Or use, for that matter. Likely not an heirloom — but one never knows.

Well, not today today, but a couple days ago.

I was going through the mail at work, as is my prerogative. Moments like this one make me relish that prerogative.

I came across an unusually pristine bubble mailer — we get tons (not literally, because they are quite lightweight, so perhaps I should say VOLUMES) of bubble mailers, and few are as clean and unrumpled as this one. Perhaps Beth at Indoor Recess has some special bubble mailer powers?

Anyway, then I noticed the stamps. They were unusually relevant to my interests:

Outer space AND and dragonflies. (Specifically, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Aeshna canadensis.)

So, was there any question that I’d find something unbearably wonderful inside the envelope?

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Craft supplies from China

Order of zines from Learning to Leave a Paper Trail Distro

I highly recommend Paper Trail Distro for your zine ordering needs. Ciara runs a super tight operation, and all of her stock is high quality — she’s really picky about the zines she distributes. She’s also an excellent writer, and you can either buy her own zines or check out her new blog, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Come Sit Here by Me. She always amazes me with her wit and incisiveness.

From Lindsey, who is abroad, in France:

Balances out the gloominess induced by arriving home at 5 p.m. in near-complete dark.

I once again decamped to my parents’ house in Southern Manitoba for the weekend. It was just me and my dad as my mom is still in Vancouver spending time with my Oma. My dad had been there with her earlier in the week but came back early. He’s on vacation, but he was anxious to get back to work on finishing the basement of the house he and my mom have been living in since the end of ‘08.

There he is, hard at work putting in a door. My dad has some serious construction skills, as you can see — before he got to it, the basement was just a bare, unfinished cementland. But he can transform it into a beautiful, livable space. I have always been proud of him for having this ability. This room he’s working on will be an additional guest bedroom — useful, because the upstairs of the house only has two bedrooms and this way my brother won’t have to sleep in the floor of the family room in the basement when he and I sleep over at the same time (as clearly I get the office/bedroom on the main floor, no brainer).

Every time my parents come back from visiting my Oma they bring some objects. Amazing that there are still objects to bring, as they’ve been bringing things back for over 15 years. Anyhow, there are a few special items that I have always had my eye on for inheritance, and the time has finally come for me to take possession of a lovely one:

I have to ask Oma for the exact details of this statuette’s origins, but for me, it’s not so much the thing’s provenance as it is the childhood memories I have of admiring it in my grandparents’ home. It’s solid, made of some kind of stone, and about 20 inches tall. Its curvy lines and milky colour were pleasing to my eye even when I was five, and I remember putting my little finger tips in the rounded depressions of her cup and pitcher. It’s still a satisfying sensation! In this photo you see the statuette sitting on my parents’ hearth, and there it will stay for the time being. My apartment needs a serious spring cleaning before it is worthy of such an objet; even then, it might look better beside my mom’s fireplace. We’ll see!

One final shot: the view from the back of the house. I like the contrast of the dark prairie mud and the stark, leafless trees. But the snow is melting and spring is on its way!

I’ve been MIA on this blog for a few weeks. This absence was due to some very difficult news I received at the beginning of the month — I hate to be oblique on this, but I’m not quite ready to go into details about it in this space. Perhaps at some point I will.

Anyhow, it’s been a rough month. When times get tough, I turn to endeavours like you see pictured above, embroidering aimlessly with bright colours. Random doodles on fabric. Very comforting in the execution.

At the start of the month I spent some time at my parents’ home outside the city (this sojourn directly related to the obscurely aforementioned difficult news) and when I returned to my apartment I brought with me an object from there. It turns out that times of emotional and physical distress cause some sort of reversion to childhood impulses, like attachment to soft objects of comfort.

Check out this pillow. You may be thinking, “Hell, that is an ugly pillow.” And you would be right. But let me explain. You see how this pillow kind of looks like a chenille bedspread? Well, that’s because this technique is what one calls “handmade chenille.” Meaning, all those lines were machine sewn by my mother and then all the cuts in between them were done by her as well! The technique is basically to layer several pieces of fabric, sew the lines on very carefully, and then carefully snip the fabric through all but the bottom layer between the seams. Sounds tedious? According to Mom, it is! And she says she’ll never do it again. Of course, the technique itself is not the issue here, but the rather horrid dusty rose and moss green chintz fabric you see on the top layer, the effect of which, I will say, is significantly muted by the chenille technique. It actually kind of gives it a cool watercolour effect. Which makes me kind of want to try this technique with fabric that I actually like!

Anyhow, this pillow was just chilling out on the couch in my mom’s basement, and I grew fond of it in its texturey, under-stuffed, old-lady glory. So I took it home with me to cuddle when I feel sad. The end.

In other quilting news, last month I finished the batik quilt top I started at the Pinawa quilting retreat.

I used the pattern Splashes of Color (free on allpeoplequilt.com), though mine isn’t quite as… harmonious as the one by the designer due to a) my use of a bargain bin’s-worth of discordant fabrics from pale blue to dark green to bright orange and b) my flipping of the squares’ orientation.

This is my first quilt bigger than a baby quilt and it was onerous at times, due largely to a cutting error that required me to resquare all the blocks (though of course the serious quilter will tell you you should always square up your blocks even if you’re super accurate).

At any rate, I plan to quilt the thing according to the pattern. I just need to find a fabric for binding and backing.

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