Toronto the Good

I love this city; I really do. I grew up here — that might be part of it. I moved around a lot, after my parents' divorce, but I went to school downtown, so that was my stability. We went trawling through Kensington for vintage clothes and cargo pants. We went through the Queen West goth shops before they left to make way for H&M. I had always assumed that I would go to the University of Toronto, so Ottawa was kind of a surprise, and moving back was pretty much inevitable.


View of downton Toronto from the John Street roundhouse
Anyway, every summer I hatch a plan to explore the city a little more. There are the obvious places — High Park, the Beach, the Toronto islands — but lots of small places, too. That little tiny park near OCAD. OCAD, period. Or, for example: did you know that, in the summer months, they run a vintage streetcar on the Lakeshore line?


Last weekend was Doors Open, of course, so that was the perfect place to start. We went to the John St Roundhouse, above; we'd been there before, but trains are always fun.

We tried to go to the new green roof on top of the Horse Palace, at Exhibition Place, but misjudged the time, so I settled for a sunlit shot of the arena:


Green roofs seem popular this year; another opened on top of City Hall (the new one). We went to the one at MEC last year. It's very cool, but here's a lesson I learned: do not wear a skirt. The access is via ladder (indoors to out), and there is a gusty wind.

...
All of this was actually triggered, not by Doors Open, but by the Bloor Street Viaduct. It's one of my favourite architectural structures in Toronto, but hard to photograph, especially with the Luminous Veil (which I still hate, by the way). Last week, though, I had to figure out how to get underneath it, as Pd is playing league soccer this summer in a field down there, basically next to the Bayview extension.

Looking up at the viaduct
You can go down into the valley quite easily, it turns out. There are stairs near the Castle Frank subway station, by the school. They're a little bit hard to find, but once you're there the entire thing is actually very straight forward. And the view of the viaduct soaring above you is worth it.

end goal

We stopped by Kensington Market on Saturday to pick up some cheese — we spent an appalling amount on cheese, actually, but it was so good — and I finally took a picture of this mural:


It's my favourite in all of Toronto. Passing it always makes me smile, probably because it reminds me of Prague. I know that's an obnoxious thing to say, but seriously: Mucha is everywhere in that city. At some point, it becomes a Pavlovian response. The Eiffel Tower equals Paris, and Mucha equals Prague.

(My second favourite mural, by the way, is the one of humpback whales on the Redpath factory at Queen's Quay; coicidentally enough, I got a picture of that too, last weekend. Except that they had plonked a giant supermarket in front of it, so you can't really see the full mural any more — certainly not from the Gardiner Expressway, which is where I used to see it.)


We were running around the downtown core on Saturday because we were hunting and gathering food for our housewarming, and it was good. It was a family shindig — we need to have our friends over as well, and soon, but something like 20+ people helped us with various aspects of the renovation, and our house is a wee house. So we decided that it would be most politic to divide the housewarmings, and to have the family over first. And, as I said, it was good.

And our house is done! Everything is clean, and packed away (or properly stored in the basement, as the case may be), and... there is nothing left to do! After six months, we are finally finished moving house! Our heads are reeling from this. We're kind of at a loss, really. But I think we'll figure it out somehow. I mean, we live 15 minutes' walk away from this:


So how hard could it be?

this weekend

This weekend was our wedding anniversary:




Pd sent a gigantic bouquet of pink roses and Easter lilies to me at work (seriously; it was much bigger than my head), and then we went to our current favourite French restaurant in Toronto (Le Sélect, on Wellington).

We found trillium in our garden.


Technically, I suppose, it's coming from the neighbour's garden — or, at least, the narrow space between the two fences. Anyway, it feels kind of odd and illicit, like I'm hoarding some endangered species all to myself. Nothing doing, though; trillium are notoriously hard to transplant, so there they'll say. I kind of like them there; it's such a surprise.

Another surprise: the irises are blooming! A total surprise, because ... we didn't know we had irises. I'm kind of loving this garden. It takes very little work and, every other week, some other lovely thing or another blooms.

Meanwhile, I've wound my little ball of laceweight silk and started on a camisole from the latest issue of Twist Collective (the one on the cover). See those medallions? They're knit, not crochet, and it's done on 1.5 mm needles. That's US size 000.

I took a picture with a dime in for size comparison.


Not only is it going to take forever, but I'm going to go mad doing it.

cleaning is better with purple

We've been madly trying to get the house ready for the horde of family that will be descending on it in just over a week. (I mean that nicely. I love a horde.) It's a little bit stressful because it's family — nothing is off-limits (no, really, I think my mother will look in my closets), and the wee nephews are staying over, which means that the second bedroom, which was unofficially designated our "giant pile of crap" room, now has to be undesignated and made habitable. For a three-year-old. Who is lovely and rocky smart, but probably still doesn't know better than to eat a rusty nail off the floor, for example. Which is all to say: I should move those.

I really am looking forward to it, though. Mostly because, after they leave, I will have a clean, lovely and fully set-up house to live in. Somewhat because, in the course of our cleaning, I will be able to use my mother's housewarming gift, which she let me choose:


It's a Dyson Animal D... something. (We decided to get the animal version because that whole cat-hair-embedded-everywhere thing? We know that.) It works perfectly, and I love it. I even love the colour, which amuses me — you know: James Dyson wanted to get away from boring vacuum cleaner grey and he chose that?

...
Meanwhile, we have also been watching hockey, and ... what is up with the underdogs this year? Don't they understand that they are supposed to get one or two good games in, and then let the favoured teams cruise to a hard-fought, but inevitable-in-hindsight, victory? Blackhawks/Canucks, I am looking at you. I would love it if the Habs win the Stanley Cup, but if they lose to Chicago or some other team that Crosby could have easily beaten, I am going to be seriously pissed.

posters for all!

My map of Toronto neighbourhoods from Ork Posters has arrived!

(Actually, it got here, unframed, about a week and a half ago, but I didn't have time to frame it until this weekend.)

It's perfect, and I love it. I try not to buy so many prints and posters any more (because honestly, I am out of wall space already), but it's a little bit like a sickness; I can't help myself. And this one is beautiful. Ork posted a preview a month or two ago, but it wasn't available until two weeks ago. I'd been stalking the web site so I think I ordered it almost as soon as it was released. Luckily, Pd really likes it, too.

The print (and the allure) is pretty self-explanatory. It's a vaguely hipster thing to have, but it's also very typography-geek, and since I am definitely the latter I think it's okay. Anyway, it's infinitely better than "Keep Calm and Carry On," which was cool and retro when it first hit and has since become tired and annoying. (I think the trend died for me the day I saw it emblazoned on a coffee mug — in pink — at the local big box bookstore.)

I am fairly picky about messages on my walls. When we were at the One of a Kind Show, I kept making sardonic comments about the canvas-backed aphorisms that people were selling — Today is a Brand New Day! Remember to Smile! etc., done it cutesy swirly fonts. They seemed to be everywhere. And it was just — I can see them being very cute in a photograph, but I can't imagine actually living with them. I want things on my wall that make me happy, not ones that just tell me to be happy.

That being said, the next thing that needs to get framed is this poster from the 826 Valencia pirate store:


Because sometimes, you just need to be reminded of the proper order of things.