This is what happened in my house tonight…

One my way to some teacher quilts.
Also – this Saturday store is open 9am to 3 pm, I am off to Montreal after that for a meeting….

This was the case a few days ago – it is now much closer to “together” – today is the final push.

There has been progress since then, all should be good. Here is a picture of one of several bins Mr. LCY has been building – I didn’t want to clutter the space with bookshelves to the point where it seemed a maze, so this was the solution we came up with. In this case this bin is full of organics – you will spy Daisy Janie on the top shelf, along with Betz White and the Lorax on the bottom……that is a happy feel good bin!

The details? Saturday May 18 (tomorrow) 12-5 pm, 425 Whitevale Road on the east side of the Granary. The complete address for Google/GPS is below – essentially it is the western edge of Pickering (Altona Road, just east of Port Union exit on the 401 – or Durham/York Townline Road exit off the 407), on Whitevale Road which runs east/west just below the 407 between the Durham/York Townline and Brock Road, much closer to Townline than Brock. There is a wee Tea shop and an Ice Cream/French Fry Caravan, as well as the park, Seaton Hiking System, and West Duffins Creek running under the bridge and currently full of trout fisherman…..as well as a historic village setting with lots of old houses to take a gander at…..and tons of awesome fabric!

425 Whitevale Road
Whitevale,ON
L0H 1M0

Until a phone gets installed in the shop if you are lost call me – 416-818-1393. There are cows, horses and lots of farmers fields (Whitevale in the west sits in a protected agricultural preserve) so the lack of subdivision housing and retail sprawl down’t mean you are lost!

Things are moving along at the store, between all sorts of other every-day chaos….ahead of next weekend, which is both the Creativ Festival which I will be at, and an away dance comp. which Mr. LCY is taking the resident monsters to.

That was my wonky shelf. The floor is sooooo far from level…..in any case Mr. LCY spent forever levelling other shelves.

Mr. LCY put MY saw to good use as well, built a bin for fabric for me, he figured he was going to build me two – I like it so much he is now building at least 4 – you can imagine how thrilled he is!  In all seriousness, it is hardly a refined construction but it works!

No new fabric news yet, there is stuff, but in the homestretch for Creativ, and store is hopping now, there are enough (but not all) of the black shelves (we cleared out every GTA Rona over the course of about a week), and the bins, so I will be able to have everything together and see it……

The door bears a temporary sign, but a new outdoor light above it!

Inside things are collecting…….

And I just realized I took a picture of a light fixture….

So here is a very important store opening accessory…..it is, technically speaking, mine (bought for some project eons ago), but Mr. LCY has absorbed it, pleading no recollection that it is mine (given that he is the one in the family who remembers things I can’t counter that argument….), so in order to frustrate things I got in the store on the weekend and cut a whole bunch of wee bits of wood.  Reason being that in Whitevale everything is crooked.  Building shelves, specifically the ones I showed you the other day, requires shims to level the shelves once built.

Of course you do see where this goes….I have some lovely level shelves….on a 100+ year old granary (ok, I spell it granary, the owner spells it grainary….the intent is to eventually put up the provincial road signs, so it will come to a head…), so the only thing level is the shelves.  Of course the only thing I see every time I go in the space is how level the shelves are as against everything else…..I can’t decide which will bug me more, the contrast, or crooked shelves….we shall see.

Have a good night all…..

Anyhow – time for eye candy.  It is sunny out here now, still bloody nippy – though forecast for tomorrow morning is about 12 degrees warmer than this morning was so who knows.  Most of the snow has even melted – due entirely to the sun shining as opposed to temps, but I will take it, I am so over the snow here, it has reached the dirty, gross mess stage.

And some more…..

And the last one…..

For now…..you can’t guess I have been playing with mosaics in Picasa, right?

Oh yeah – what were those?

First was an assortment of Philip Jacobs, next was pieces from the Somersault collection by Erin McMorris, last is pieces from Wingin it by Henry Glass, still waiting on the last piece for that assortment, but love the little bird and the grey with blue….

Later guys.

No headlines here per se – the only news is that family easter dinner was hosted, and more importantly survived by all.

Our first family away hockey tournament was also survived, and enjoyed immensely by the player, the younger monster caught a wicked stomach flu, so did an exorcist impression saturday night, however in the end all was good.

A wee bit more fabric news – including the Headline!

The collage shows three news prints – Headliner, Books and Letters and Newsprint.  (I needed a text print fix).

I also found a news collection – this is manufactured in Japan, has extremely high quality, and a design I really like.  The colours aren’t beige, they are more than that.  In addition to hitting the text fixation these also work with a french theme, I can see these having a decor function, or in a quilt with black and brown solids, these as the background to stars……ok that would be some seriously fiddly piecing we shall see…..one day.

This last one is a fun one…..it comes about as I liked the the feedsack print trend, but could never get “into” them, I like the history, the place in the craft the use of the vintage prints which were used by bulk dry good retailers to package their goods, in order to entice purchase.  Once the feedback was empty the fabric went into clothing, quilts, any kind of sewn good.  I simply couldn’t ever decide on a single print (ok, who am I kidding), a reasonable number of prints, there were too many choices…..until I found this!  Feedsack prints hanging on the line.

Ok, have a good week y’all, I would say enjoy spring, but the spring we had last week, even on saturday, vanished today with high winds, cold air, and most distressingly snow!  I had just started the clean up and planning of what to do with my new, very old, overgrown shambles of a yard….back to dreaming for now.

A note from the truly great white North…..The process of getting the shop ready has begun!

Once I am home I will post a few pics of the process, Mr. LC is building tables and moving fabric as we speak.

The process of moving fabric is a good time to ensure that the online store is somewhat up to date, so I have been loading fabrics into the shop…..today’s focus is fabric produced by Henry Glass.

I have found that I like the Henry Glass product, the fabric has a nice hand, the weave is tight, the colour though is what caught me.  The colour is saturated into the fabric and looks wonderful.

Bountiful is a fall themed line with the main landscape fabric, the complimentary fabrics can be used in any project, and the patchwork print is lovely, it could be used as a cheater print on it’s own.

Oh Holy Night by Henry Glass, a charming panel with several complimentary pieces.

So, check out the site, more fabrics going in there, more news later……

It is that time of year……since we moved the end of last summer we are on a property with a couple of older trees, one being a big sugar maple that is very close to the house, and whose days are therefore numbered…..in total we have three, and I decided to tap them, they are all plenty big enough to be tapped.

How exciting! We shall see how this goes, the plan is to combine the maple syrup with the black walnuts I collect din the local park in the fall and have been drying, they will rehydrate sucking in the maple syrup…..then the baking fun will begin.

Other than that it has seemed might quiet around these parts I figure.  But do not despair.

I was getting dubious we would get to this point, but I have keys!  Yippeeee!

425 Whitevale Road, Whitevale ON, Unit 2……..on the East side of the old Granary building, beside the river and Seaton Hiking Trail system.

Of course progress is hampered by March Break with the kiddies around, the day job, upcoming travel for the day job, and a secret project…….

More on that soon!  Enjoy the weather (maybe, keeps snowing here) spring is around the corner (how can you tell?  There is a million canada geese in the farmer’s fields I drive past, they are back….

So I spied something today, a picture of a block, and figured that Riley Blake’s Matryoshka’s would be just about right.

I put together one block, I read about this technique way back somewhere, sometime…..

Website has been upgraded (back end stuff, you won’t see it), makes it less glitchy loading stuff – which is good.

Website host hit a glitch with their domain renewal automated system that wasn’t so automated, along with others we were down a few days – not good.

After this email self-destructed, resulted in some emails to nicole@ being lost – also not good.  (if I haven’t replied I have an awesome sad story of an excuse!)

Laptop – presumed to be bullet proof has started that MAC fan thing, chewing thru battery – not good.

Store is coming along, getting closer on the paperwork side – this should be good

But best of all?

FABRIC!!!!!!

Above would be Riley Blake’s Matryoshka collection, below is also Riley Blake, this time Life in the Jungle…..

Loving both of these!

Also – picture coming, Daisy Janie New Leaf is just in the store, Riley Blake will be there soon……