stuffy

I found this cool/tacky thing depicting the Musicians of Bremen - an old folktale. (Click here to learn more about it.) I'm not sure if I'm going to leave it as is or maybe spray paint it a fun colour - like florescent pink or orange or something...

The purple Basil has gone to seed. Quite pretty.


A Cicada on the porch screen.


Found this game downstairs in the laundry room. Brought it up to show Husbo because he's into the stock market.

Maybe it should have been called "Nose Picker" (see the guy at left).

This is what the board looked like... snore. It was too boring to play - even for Husbo and he is passionate about charts and graphs!


These dice were awesome though. I kept them and put the game back in the laundry room. I felt a bit bad about that but I figure there probably isn't anyone in our building who will actually want to play this game... but maybe someone else would want to take the box up to their apartment for laughs like I did.

Silver Down! Gold Up!

RRR Matey

vaRious Rs fRom aRound the woRld:

trial and mostly error

I started a little painting of my own tattoos quite awhile ago and promptly failed to finish it until yesterday when I had some spare time.

All was going well, i was enjoying the results of my labour, until tragedy struck in the form of a loose-lidded ink bottle.

I soldiered through to completion anyway - though hurriedly - and doing so allowed me to get beyond the preciousness and restraint I'd been applying to the piece. (It was already ruined anyway so I couldn't hurt it any worse right? If I failed horribly now, all I had to do was throw it in the garbage.)

In the end, (I'm not saying I'm terribly happy with the finished product) I'm glad I tried to make something of it because I learned some things... maybe I should intentionally throw a bottle of ink on all my drawings when I'm halfway through... just to stir things up.

I rather like this rope.

I liked how it was looking right before "the incident". I had been planning to leave things more plain and open (without all the yellow and filler stuff) but once the red got everywhere I just started playing around. I suppose I could have played even more, gone much crazier... but I wanted to move on to something else.

Main lesson learned: ALWAYS screw down the lids of ink and paint bottles!!

Here's my arm, where the images all came from.

In less frustrating news, I have this completely "volunteer" tomato plant growing in my garden. I guess there were seeds in the compost from last year.

I've done nothing to help this tomato plant along except give it water....

...but it's actually bearing fruit... and lots of it... soon I'll have some ripe cherry tomatoes!

Knife Sharpener

I'm trying to figure out how to find the knife-grinding truck that I saw in my neighbourhood one day when I first moved here (about 3 months ago).

I found an article from 2006 that must be about the same guy - it says his name is Carlos.

The truck looks A LOT like the one below but this picture was taken in Toronto and I found it on this blog.

Do any Ottawa-people know anything about this truck?

I wonder if he can sharpen skates too? Probably not...

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heavenward

A couple of pointing hand pictures taken in the last few weeks.

fun and games and corn

First the corn.

Sweet corn season is upon us. This display in Toronto sure was pretty - the most organized corn I've ever seen.

And this is my new "Fun and Games Cart".

The fun is on top and the games below. The cart was in the trash at Husbo's place of work. It was covered in rust but I had a feeling it might clean up nice - and it did.

I added the red wheels.

hold the fleas please

"Flea market" has got to be the worst name for a second-hand-sale... no one wants fleas.

Hopefully my new NON-Hudson-Bay-Blanket doesn't have any...

It's got the classic colour scheme but was made for Eatons - so it only cost 15 bucks at an antique store (in an upscale, Toronto neighbourhood to boot!!)

That's pretty darn cheap for a queen-sized 100% wool blanket without a single hole or stain!

I got a neat old medicine cabinet to hang above my sewing machine. It was still in the original box.

And here's what the sideboard looks like these days. I missed taking pictures of several in-between variations but the biggest change is that I got rid of the lamp. It was a useless place for a lamp (no chairs nearby that needed reading light). We never turned it on - so it has gone to another good home.

I brought the paint-by-number-horses out of the stable.

The fun, new additions to the sideboard are this old tray with sparrows, an old toy horse and a beautiful Amethyst crystal (my birthstone) - all obtained for only $8!