Because I've been meaning to send you some photographs for quite some time now I thought that, instead of putting them in an email, I could blog them (in case there were restrictions on the total size of the email).
I've taken some shots of the apartment, notably the bedroom, cuz I thought you and your lovely wife might like to see. Credit here is, in the main, Jennifer's for her sense of style. This first picture is an overview with ceiling fan included in the shot (which was a royal pain to mount).
We had recently got a new bed from Ikea, one that hinges up from the bottom so that the underneath is for storage (and it's amazing just how much you can fit in under there). The headboard on the bed however is a lot shorter than the one we had with the old bed and so it left a gap in the wall, ah, art. The large panel was already there and I didn't want to have to move it. I had added my Appalachian dulcimer just to the right of it. There were a couple of smaller prints (dragonflies) to either side.
On the far right of the shot, where the back wall dips out a bit, are two prints in a similar theme that I've been carrying around with me for literal decades, having belonged to my Aunt Fran.
I added a few prints, the frame with 5 geishas and the moon art on the right. In order to balance out the dulcimer I ordered a Chinese violin, an erhu with bow, and added that onto the left side matching some of the scenes in the panels as well as complimenting the dulcimer.
I apologize. The previous stuff is kinda' out of sequence.
Not long after we initially moved in (and this is on the opposite side of the room from what I've already shown), Jennifer had the idea that she'd like to have a silk kimono mounted on the wall over her dresser. We sourced one at one of the oriental stores (on Dundas West, the one that has the huge ceramic dragon mural outside) then I mounted the drapery rod to hang it on. She added the flowers to either side and then, from another foray, added perfume bottles in the display cases we had found and modified. Shortly after that I got her the mirror to set on the dresser.
When we were working on that wall opposite (you can see the panel in the reflection of the mirror here) I had ordered a geisha doll for Jennifer. It took some time to arrive and so it was really a surprise when it finally showed up. Jennifer loved it and gave it pride of place in front of the mirror.
The doll is playing a samisen which ties in to the musical theme of the images on the black panels and the instruments to either side.
In the living room, the pit as we call it, I recently added another figure to the top of the book case.
It's another marionette, a male one this time, to match the female figure I had picked up the previous year. As far as I understand these are wedding figures but they really set off the bookcase.
The big mask in the middle I picked up at a place in the beaches. The two big silk pictures were a gift (from long ago). The other two smaller prints we picked up in St Jacobs of all places last year as well. You never know where you'll find stuff.
And speaking of finding stuff (how's that for a segue) this gives me the opportunity to plug one of my favourite places, a great place to browse and pick up unusual items. It's located near Pt Hope so it's a bit of a drive east of Toronto but it's worth it. The place is called Primitive Designs. You can check them out on the web if you wish. Anywho it's here that I found the female marionette last year and the male one this year.
We also found a glass bowl that we liked, one that was blown over a piece of wood, which was unusual enough for us to pick up for a table centrepiece.
Now you could use it as a fish bowl, except we have cats. You could also use it for aquatic plants, except we have cats (particularly Max von Cat). That's okay, we like it as it is.
So Primitive Designs is a cool place to go.
It's also where a rather full figured Campbell can sit the iron throne.
And also where a three headed metal dragon meets you in the parking lot.
And where Imperial robots patrol the Buddha statuary.
Every time I go there I think of you, particularly for the metal bits and pieces and what they're built into (like the dragon previously shown). I always take some shots of things I think you'd like, like...
gears and wheels and rods, oh my.
They must have access to one hell of a scrap pile on the originating site.
I particularly liked this shot. I cropped in just a bit to hide a bit of the deck detail (as shown below).
The sailing ships were actually fastened to the rafters and at the side of a second level balcony sort of thing that allowed me to get the unusual perspective on it. And there were large carved spiders there as well, I swear they came from
And out in the yard there were still hundreds of other cool things to look at and to photograph, like this driftwood horse (to scale).
And that was about where I was going to leave things off, having typed my pingers to the boney bits, until...
I bought a drum kit. Here it is.
Hopefully by now you know I like Gretsch. Two of my favourite guitars are Gretsches. And now I have this.
I'm actually not 100% sure if you are aware that I used the drawing figure that we used for the Allegory of the Cinema project back in school to make into a guitarist on stage. I actually went to some pains to put, you guessed it, a Gretsch logo on the guitar that I had picked up in Burnaby, at the Carousel, and then built a stage for him to stand on complete with amplifier and microphone.
Check out the match sticks on the snare.
Oh, as a side note, the sticks that came with the kit are way too big. Clipped wooden matchsticks are much closer to scale as you can see but need to be shaped a bit. I'll have to dremel some.
Well it turns out that it looks like I'm putting a band together. I already have another drawing figure which I've placed on the drums and, for Jennifer, I've ordered a scale model saxophone (likely to be played by another figure) which is on order and I may not receive until next month sometime.
More pictures to come?
