Thrifting ... Canadian Finds

Another week and we're into April already, and I'm still waiting for the weather to improve just a bit to drag out the patio furniture.  The snow is all but gone from this area near Lake Ontario now, but my yard isn't all that inviting yet ... and it's just not warm enough to sit out there comfortably ...

 

Inside, the house plants are doing fairly well.  I don't normally have a lot of house plants, but I'm glad they've been around this winter.  I'm really pleased with my little green shamrock.  I asked at our local nursery what's the best thing for a shamrock since mine is surviving, but it's not thriving.  She told me they like bright light, but not direct sunlight, liquid plant fertilizer, cool temperatures and to water it by placing it in a pot of water and let the plant draw up what it needs.  I was already providing everything but the bottom watering system, and within a week my little shamrock had filled out really well.  The centre of the plant was very sparse, but now there are lots of new leaves filling in that area.

 

 

 

This week I decided to drop into our thrift store for a little browsing again.  There've been a couple of things I've been looking for.  One being a small night table for my daughter's bedroom when she comes home from university town (she took most of her bedroom furniture with her).  I was happy to find a perfect little table and will show it once I get it cleaned up a bit.

 

Since I was already in the thrift store, I of course toured around to see what else I could spy.  I found this big beauty of a tea pot right away ...

 

 

My parents had this exact tea pot when I was growing up.  I think it must've got broken not long before they moved their house (maybe it got broken during the move, I don't know).  It's nothing fancy, and the only writing on the bottom is "Canada", but it's just so familiar to me, that I picked it up off the shelf with a sort of reverence.  It could easily have been their very own tea pot, and I really, really like it.  More and more I'm noticing that I have a lot of brown in my décor.  I keep picking up brown dishes and now another brown tea pot.  I also have to admit that I officially do have a tea pot collection.  But I swear, this is where it's going to stop.  I don't have many ... four brown tea pots and one stainless steel, but I don't have the desire to have any more than that (and I honestly use them all).

 

Now this little mug is only a couple of inches high, and it has a little story.  My mother's grandfather was a potter, and his family also owned a tile company in Hamilton.  They made clay tiles and even supplied a famous house in Hamilton (Dundurn Castle) with sewer tiles.  I have a couple of pieces made by my great grandfather which are very special to me.  I believe my mother grew up with a fondness for pottery because of her close association with her grandfather. 

 

This little mug was made by a company called "Blue Mountain Pottery" from Collingwood.  There used to be a potter's store in Dundas where I lived when I was very young called "Dundas Pottery".  My mother, being very fond of pottery, used to take us kids into the store and we were allowed to choose something from the "seconds" shelf (pieces that had small imperfections and were cheaper), and they carried Blue Mountain pottery.  This is the mug that I chose many years ago.  Not much good for anything, but it was cute.  Blue Mountain Pottery is apparently now defunct, but you see this stuff everywhere here.  Because it's so common, I've always thought it was kind of tacky looking.  But in clearing out my parents' home, I came across a couple of nice pieces that I brought home with me ... a vase and another mug.

 

"BMP" Blue Mountain Pottery

I notice that the thrift store is under the impression this stuff is a collector's item, and maybe it is, so they price it a little higher than the other china.  Anyway, I found this stylish little jug in the thrift store which I will use as a bud vase ...

 

 

The glaze used on this pottery is always the same.  Apparently, the original potters developed this glaze as it reminded them of the colours in Blue Mountain.  Surprisingly, there are some Blue Mountain pottery pieces at the Royal Ontario Museum in the Canadian display with a write up about the pottery.  So now, without even trying, I have a collection of Blue Mountain pottery too.  I don't see myself expanding this collection as it really only holds sentimental interest to me ... I still feel it's sort of tacky.

 

 

I also found a nice wicker basket, and I have a problem with letting these nice baskets remain on the shelf ...

 

 

... and it came in handy for carrying all the stuff home with me that day (in the rain).  Now it's holding my latest knitting project.

 

 

The project is only in the planning stages.  I'm not sure if I'll even finish it (or frankly, start it!), and usually I don't like to say "I'm going to make [this]" because I feel rotten if I don't complete it.  I'm going to attempt to make a man's vest for my dad.  I'm already off to a bad start.  The pattern is old, from the 60s, and it calls for "double knit" yarn(?).  I tried a swatch with "worsted" weight, and have already gone down five needle sizes and knitted five swatches trying to get the gauge right.  The swatch is still too large and I'm quickly getting discouraged.  I'm at a size 2 needle now, but I am not going to knit worsted on these teeny tiny needles.  So no promises.  I might try it with a lighter weight yarn, but I've already bought two skeins of yarn to experiment with, and really don't want to waste money on a third.  Sometimes I still hate knitting.

 

Well, that's it for me.  I hope you've all had a nice weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to my British friends!!  We "celebrate" ours in May. 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy



  

Hoping for more of this soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Sold ... One Canoe

Off she goes!

 

Well, after one day of advertising, we sold our dear canoe last week.

 

Off she goes with a new owner and a new chapter in her life.  We had many happy summers together on the water with that canoe.  Most of it spent in Algonquin Park and Charleston Lake.  Although we've not done any back country camping, we've taken our canoe through many of the lakes and rivers that border Hwy 60 through Algonquin.  We've seen a lot of beautiful scenery and wildlife from it ... kids and dog packed along with us.

 



 

We've had this canoe since our kids were small, and ordered it special with cherry wood to please my woodworking husband, and with a middle seat to please our daughter.  She's never been very happy in the canoe, so the additional seat allowed her to sit in comfort and read a book while we all paddled along.  It helped.  One memorable canoe ride was when she was about 3 years old (we were renting canoes then).  We stopped at an island to explore, but then my daughter refused to get back in the canoe, and I have an adorable photo of her standing high on a smooth rocky hill just screaming her little heart out in anger for the rest of the wilderness to hear ... and I'm sure they did hear. 

 

My son took to the canoe much better, and has always enjoyed being out on the water for a little adventure or just fishing.  He bought his own kayak a couple of years ago and enjoys the independence of his own boat.  But he does get tired after a long day when he's the sole "power".  We'll occasionally take pity on him and tow him a little ways. 

 

My son & Cody in his kayak, Alqonquin

My son was sad to see the canoe go ... he used to say that we had to keep it for when he had a family and he would be able to use it again.  Unfortunately, we just don't have room for extra canoes, but I do like his sentimentality, and I'm glad that he has lots of happy memories with this big ol' boat. 

 

Barron Canyon, Charleston Lake, Oxtongue River (me)

 

Our next canoe is already on order and we plan to pick it up in May.  It's being delivered to the store just outside Algonquin Park, so depending on how bad the blackflies are, we may take it for a paddle that day.  We'll at the very least pop it into Oxtongue River beside the store to check it out.  I can't wait!  Our old canoe weighed 65 lbs. and was 17 feet long.  Our new canoe is 35 lbs. / 15 feet.  The convenience of the smaller, lighter canoe will open up new routes for us.  My husband has flat out refused to go on any long portages with the 17' canoe, and I'll admit it's no fun lugging this size through the woods on a rough trail.  I'll soon be perusing my canoe routes map to see where we can go this summer ;)

Rock Lake (our last paddle)

One place we'd love to visit is the north end of Opeongo Lake. 

Costello Creek off Opeongo Lake, Algonquin Park

Opeongo is a huge Lake which we've paddled on many times, but because of it's size, you just can't canoe all the way up the lake in one day and expect to be back to your start point by nightfall.  There is a convenient day outing arranged through the park that will take you and your canoe up to the north end by water taxi.  There you have options of continuing with a guide or go it alone, but this particular spot is a haven for moose!  So you can take the canoe from that point and see the moose and enjoy a picnic and then meet the taxi to take you back at the end of the day.   We've always wanted to try this, and perhaps we'll do it this summer, who knows. 

 

 

New adventures await us with our new canoe, so we're not too sad to say goodbye to our old Swift.  The guy that bought our canoe camps in Quetico Park each summer.  Quetico is a place I've always wanted to go, but it's a fair distance from us.  Over 12 hours of driving apparently.  It used to be all backcountry camping, but they've opened up about 100 campsites for "car" camping now.  There are over 2,000 interior campsites in comparison.  It sounds beautiful, and I'd love to see it one day.

On the weekend my husband repaired the end of my paddle.  He gave me this cherry paddle years ago, but it's getting a bit damaged on the end from me digging it into rocks as we come ashore.  A bit of sanding and a lot of varnish, and it should be good to go.  I expect we'll be shopping for a new paddle this summer with a protective edge on it though, and I'll just use my cherry paddle for "deep water" paddling. 



Charleston Lake

 

Well I could go on about canoes & camping, but I'm sure you've all read enough.  It's another beautiful day, but the temperatures are having a hard time keeping above 0, and most mornings it's still around -12C.  Our robins have returned however, and I'm very excited about that!  They're even finding some slow-moving worms in our frozen ground.  Yum ;)

 



Charleston Lake

Anyway, I hope everyone's week is going well.  My daughter came home for an unexpected visit over the weekend which was nice.  She's now back in university town and won't be able to nip home until after her exams next month.  Although the winter dragged on this year, I can't believe we're now heading into April and she'll be home for the summer months.  Of course I'm just thinking "summer?!" ... "where's spring?!".   I'll have to check to see if there's anything pushing up through the ground in the way of flowers soon.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy

 

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope you're all wearing your Irish green today!  I know I have my green on ... easy enough for me since green is my favourite colour :)

March Break is now over and done and my son has been sent off to school with no skip in his step.  He really enjoyed his week off, and so did I!  We rounded out the week with a bit of fish tank shopping for him.  He picked up another Bala shark (he has one already, but thought he might like a buddy), and a few more tetras and swordtail fish.  They've all settled in well.

We visited the McMichael art gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario on Saturday.  My husband was able to come with us for that visit.  The McMichael gallery holds numerous Group of Seven paintings, which I just love.  I've always admired their paintings, particularly Tom Thomson's, and my parents used to take us to this same gallery when I was young.  Many of the paintings are of scenes in Algonquin Park, which is our favourite camping destination.  To see these paintings is to feel the essence of northern Ontario.  I was rather struck with the realization that so many of these paintings were done in the winter (or maybe spring), with lots of snow on the ground.  It makes you wonder how chilled they must've been after a day of painting out in the cold ... sitting still for hours with a paint brush in your hand can hardly keep you warm for long.  If you visit the east side of Algonquin Park at Achray campground you can visit a cabin that Tom Thomson stayed in during he trips to the park.  Also you can see the view where he painted "The Jack Pine" ... which actual pine was chopped down for fire wood just a while ago.  We've visited these places and also the cairn erected in his memory on Canoe Lake where he drowned. 

The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson

 

Cairn on Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park (my photo)

There are other painters' works in the galIery as well.  another of my favourite painters is Emily Carr from BC.  Such dramatic work, and both her paintings and the paintings of the Group of Seven still look bright and vibrant today.  Some of the Group of Seven paintings are over 100 years old, and they still hold a very modern appeal to me.   I picked up a couple of books written by Emily Carr as I enjoyed her written comments accompanying her paintings as well. 

 

There is a special exhibit on now of East Coast artists, including paintings, photographs and carvings.  It was quite good and I particularly enjoyed Mary Pratt's paintings.  Her written comments that accompanied the paintings were very humorous and she's probably quite a character in real life.  She paints from photographs she has taken herself.  When she was a young mother she would see a still life in her home that she wanted to paint, but felt she never had time to stop everything and paint it just as she saw it with respect to lighting etc.  She was raising four children at the time so she was a busy lady!  Finally, she started taking photos of the things she saw and then would work on the painting from the photo when she had time.  This way she didn't lose "the moment" and was able to capture it on her canvas.  I'm so glad that she found this way to work around her domestic life because she really is an extraordinary artist.  Her paintings are described as still-life realist, and apart from the actual painting, I found her subject matter so compelling.  She's painted such ordinary objects, but with great attention to the lighting details and has a real gift for painting glass and liquid ... everything just sparkles.  I really enjoyed her part of the show.  She did some life paintings as well, and there was a particular painting of her daughter in her wedding dress that I thought was sort of heartbreaking.  The look on her daughter's face is just so anxious, and you have to wonder if it reflected how the daughter was feeling about her upcoming marriage.  Anyway, if you ever get a chance to see Mary Pratt's work, it's well worth viewing.  Her paintings are at the McMichael gallery until April 27. 

Source  This is one of her paintings of "Jelly Shelf"
and she talks about the beauty of the clear jelly as it sits on the counter in the sunshine.
You can see more of her paintings if you click here

 

I have no photos of my own to share of these works as cameras were not allowed. 

 

It was a nice day out.  Apparently, the winter weather is going to break this week, and we'll be heading into above 0C regularly.  Today was again down to -18C this morning, but I hope it warms up a bit when the sun has a chance to warm things up! 

 

And speaking of Algonquin ... we've put our beloved Swift Algonquin 17 canoe up for sale yesterday :(  I'm very sad to see it go as we've paddled many happy waterways in this big baby.  Our kids were just tiny tots when we first bought it.  But now that it's only my husband and I in the canoe, we've decided to go with a smaller, lighter version which has been ordered from Swift last month.  I'll miss our beauty though ... all 65 lbs of her (won't miss her weight).

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy

 

My Shamrocks :)