It’s that time of year again! Winnipeg’s best and biggest indie craft sale is back for a fourth helping of excellent local creativity. This is a REAL craft sale — not the kind where you have all kinds of people selling Norwex and dip mixes  (not that there’s anything wrong with those things. They are useful and delicious, respectively. But they’re not crafts).

I will be tabling at this sale, with button jewelry, some plush stuff, knits, and some special holiday ornaments. I hope to see you there! This year’s sale will be the biggest ever, with more vendors and longer hours.

For more info on the sale and a complete list of vendors, visit thisaintyourgrandmascraftsale.blogspot.com.

If only this were the main romantic pairing in the series.

A lot of ink has already being spilled about the juggernaut of a movie that opened this weekend — New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight series (or “saga” or whatever). And the column inches will continue to rack up, and believe it or not, I’m not unhappy about that. Sure, I find Twilight, its premise, and the vast majority of its characters offensive on a visceral level. But, as many critics are today noting, New Moon’s utter domination at the box office this weekend means that what the industry dismissed as woman-oriented “flukes” over the past year (Mamma Mia, Julie and Julia) possibly weren’t, and it’s not just hormonal young men who want to go to the movies (I’ll skip the Megan Fox invocation here).

Here’s what Melissa Silverstein at Women & Hollywood had to stay on the subject:

It seems to me that while Hollywood felt comfortable dismissing Sex and the City, Mamma Mia (because the audiences for those were primarily over 25), and even Twilight (as a one time wonder), there is no way that these numbers could be dismissed as a fluke.  THEY ARE JUST TOO BIG.  Women and girls are looking for material that they connect with just as much as guys and boys are, but they thing that blows me away about the success of New Moon and even The Blind Side [Sandra Bullock's new-benevolent-white-lady-saves-poor-black-kid movie -J] is that the theatres were just packed with women not caring if the guys came with them.  This was a weekend where the gals went in bunches and left the guys home cause they wanted to see this movie more than they wanted to see whatever their boyfriends or guyfriends wanted to see.

Frankly, despite my personal distaste for all things Twilight, I’m glad the movie did well. If Hollywood things women go to movies, then presumably more movies with women characters will be made. And while Twilight is full of feminist fail — a “heroine” who has no interests or hobbies beyond cooking dinner for her dad and being rescued by her undead paramour, for example — I’m going to take it as a baby step.

Let me be clear that if Twilight is your guilty pleasure, I won’t hold it against you. It’s OK to like bad things. We all do, from time to time. And I accept that the story, for some, is far more true-to-life in its emotional resonance. Read Molly Langmuir’s excellent post at This Recording:

Most of the teenage girls I knew at the time experienced some version of this story as well. But most of us also managed to eventually grow out of our teenage versions of romantic bliss (and move on to the version embedded within Jennifer Aniston vehicles, but that’s a whole other story). The movie makes no room for this reality, though, and simply goes about affirming my early conceptions of love with the delicacy of a chainsaw.

Let it be said that I tried to read Twilight; I even purchased a copy, back when I was hearing rumblings about how so many people loved it. Then I started reading and could NOT get through that damn books, because it’s so boring. Nothing happens in it. So I abandoned it in favour of reading Cleolinda Jones’s recaps. Cleolinda’s gotten a good amount of mainstream exposure recently, and deservedly so, because her work is hilarious. How she sums up the phenomenon:

Emo teenage girl moves to new town, meets mysterious boy, realizes he’s a sparkling vampire; Greatest Love of All Time Omg ensues. In later books, a love triangle forms with the addition of a werewolf. Babies are of paramount importance; going to college is not. Some readers rank the series up there with Pride and Prejudice and the works of Shakespeare; some readers… beg to differ. Severely.

+++

Let’s leave the world of massive media events and return to the humble burg of Winnipeg, where my activities this weekend, regrettably, did not include going to the annual Art from the Heart sale. My pal Mama Cutsworth was DJing the soirée, and I’ve always wanted to go. Thankfully, Ariel Gordon has  a recap of the event.

My own weekend activities were the following:

• Going to the Lo Pub on Friday night to celebrate a friend’s birthday; appreciating that even an onslaught of ridiculous hipster bands can’t cancel out the establishment’s inherent comfortableness.
• Playing mermaid toys and paper dolls with a bilingual three-year-old. (Click here for a photograph of the homemade mermaid paper dolls, which the young one took home and, according to her mother, who made the photo, is still enjoying
• Eating pizza and watching Star Trek on a big-screen TV with my brother
• Setting up my first ever personal Christmas tree. (A process that is, of now, incomplete; details and photos to follow.)

This is my third fall season living on a heavily tree-lined street in a tree-filled neighbourhood, but for some reason, I don’t remember previous falls being so… bright. Maybe in previous years, harsh pre-winter winds stripped the trees of leaves before they had a chance to make an impression.

Red leaves are rare in Winnipeg; the autumnal colour palette is mostly yellow. But it’s really yellow.

Some tableaux are a little more desolate, but no less beautiful.

It’s a Saturday in August, and I’m at home, messing around on the computer and putting off a de-cluttering expedition in my own apartment. To be fair, it’s not as though the weather really allows for anything more exciting or seasonally-appropriate. It’s cloudy and chilly again, though at least it’s not actually raining right now as it was yesterday (and has been frequently in recent weeks).

My tolerance level for clutter is high; in fact, I prefer and even require a good amount of visual stimulation to stoke my creativity, so I have a lot of art and tchotchkes around me. But a combination of factors has led to a level beyond even my capability to handle, so it’s time to take care of business. And I have done — last weekend, I came home from a friend’s cottage early and spent Sunday evening and the Monday of the long weekend emptying my main storage closet and sorting out some stuff to get rid of. The key problem here is craft supplies. Some would say I have “too many”; I say I have what I need. I need to have a collection of supplies that includes a wide variety of things, including the following: feathers, beads, glue guns, leatherworking supplies (you never know), paper, hole punches, glitter paint, regular paint, lace, ribbon, and more, in addition to the essentials of yarn and fabrics. So I’m not giving up my assortment of miscellany (it allows me to host costume preparation parties like the one I had on the occasion of Art’s Birthday back in January).

However, I do realize that I need to ditch the yarn I’m not going to use — specifically, the yarn that was originally obtained curbside or at thrift stores or for free, primarily acrylics, of course. I’ve already winnowed down to two Rubbermaid totes: one for (good) acrylics, one for natural fibers.

As for the fabric — well, I came up with a solution for that as well. It’s called “Mom’s House.” She wasn’t happy about it, but even she recognized the wisdom of me keeping my fabric at her place, because I tend to do my most serious sewing there. I decamp for a weekend and work steadily on her superior sewing machine, superior cutting mat, and superior workspace in general. I’d rather save my projects for trips to Mom’s instead of taking up my living space with temporary setups (a portable table for the machine, the coffeetable covered by my [old, cracked] cutting mat, etc.).

I’ve still got a lot of work to do (above: an aerial view of the aforementioned coffeetable), but I’m feeling confident it can be achieved. Also, I have COMPLETELY decluttered one corner of my living room, and let me tell you, looking over at it is quite the encouragement.

This weekend, a family friend got married and it was a joyous occasion. A very relaxed wedding in the country (the bride and groom are not quite as young as they look) where fun was had by all, despite the poor weather. My friend Jayne pointed out that rain on a wedding day is considered by many to be a sign of good luck, so Jon and Heidi can add that to the list of reasons why they’re gonna make it.

This shot was taken after the ceremony in the foyer of the church, where we all relaxed with cups of coffee, hot chocolate and chai. The wedding party took photos before the ceremony, so they were all free to hang out with their guests before the ceremony.

That’s my brother (right) and his friend and fellow groomsman Josh serenading us during the post-ceremony coffee time.

It was a lovely day, filled with music, delicious food, adorable children, surprise U2 cover bands, French-Canadians and dramatic kisses.

When I saw this trio of ladies sitting on a sofa at the reception, I had to snap a picture. You may know about my fascination with old ladies. I think of my preoccupation with the old lady aesthetic as a preparation for the day in the future when I will wholeheartedly embrace it as my look. (You might argue I already have with all the cardigans and brooches, but.) Anyway, these ladies look great, dressed up in suits and corsages. Plus, the two on the right traveled all the way from Ireland for the wedding! The woman on the right, the groom’s grandmother, came from Ontario, which is also impressive but, let’s face it, not as onerous as a trans-Atlantic journey.

(cross-posted from The Book of Right-On)

Julia Ryckman

Better late than never getting these pics up!

Last summer, local musician/producer Mike Petkau began an ambitious project; for 16 Wednesdays in a row, he gathered groups of three musicians, usually from different generic backgrounds, in a recording studio where they wrote and recorded an all-new track in one night. Into the wee hours of the morning, Petkau stayed up mixing the track so he could release it to the internet the following morning. (My original post on the subject.)

Last month word came out that Killbeat Music would be distributing the limited-run CD printing of the project, which comes in a happily-coloured orange-and-green, individually-numbered cardboard case.

The CD release was held, quite timely-like, in the newly reopened West End Cultural Centre, closed for nearly a year for massive renovations. It was my first time in the new WECC, so allow me to say a few words on the subject — IT IS AWESOME. (Now a few more words.) The biggest achievement of the new design is that when you walk into the new auditorium, located in an all-new building attached on to the old one (the old auditorium now is a lobby/multi-purpose-room/bar/washrooms), it feels the same as the old one. It has the same dark, cozy feel, and while the stage is larger and lower and there’s a (super-cool) catwalk balcony in a u-shape at the back of the room, the same old tables and chairs are arranged in a familiar manner and you still feel like you’re at the West End. That is amazing and hats off to everyone who pulled this massive project off.

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