The Period of PURPLE Crying and the BC Children’s Hospital are raising awareness about Shaken Baby Syndrome by making hats for newborns.

We invite you to join our mission: make a PURPLE newborn baby cap so we can give select babies born in British Columbia the week of November 15th a gift to coincide with Canada’s National Child Day. Please share your knitting or crocheting skills to help Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome BC.

By making and sending PURPLE newborn baby caps to be given to babies across the province, you will make a difference by:

• Raising awareness for this life-saving project that promotes crucial parenting skills, infant/parent bonding, and understanding of a typical early infancy stage that every baby goes through which is frequently misunderstood.
• Participating in a growing, province-wide grassroots effort to educate new parents about the normalcy of early infant crying and how to cope with the frustration that can accompany it.
• Assist in promoting the Period of PURPLE Crying – Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome BC so that parents (and all others) learn to understand normal increased early infant crying and that crying is a key trigger to shaking.

I’m off to dig up a pattern and some yarn to make a hat. If you have a chance, you should too! I grew up in the same neighbourhood as the BC Children’s Hospital and often went late at night for rogue ear infections. The staff are friendly, the facilities are nice, so whatever I can do to help, I will!

Visit The Period of PURPLE Crying — Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome BC: Facebook event | www.purpecrying.info | Twitter

In the past couple weeks I’ve had the pleasure of visiting many of my favourite (and soon to be fave) local shops. I thought I’d share the goodies with you all as there are some fibre-related products(!!!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Things have been pretty busy here the past couple weeks at chez Monnibo. This post is going to be a mish-mash of many things.

We went to Spanish Banks on Saturday and met some Camp friends for dinner. When the tide was out, we went for a wander in the ocean. Gorgeous photos resulted (and I made a new Flickr set called Vancouver Beaches).

Spanish Banks at low tide

We went to Bard on the Beach on the weekend and saw Anthony & Cleopatra. I really enjoyed it and I have to say that Bard on the Beach is one of my favourite festivals. And of course there is a Bard Flickr set too, with various years’ photos.

Intermission at Bard on the Beach

Speaking of festivals, I sent The Word On The Street Vancouver program guide to the printer today (!!!). We’ve been working on this all summer. I’ve also got some other initiatives for the festival going: if you’re on Twitter, follow WOTSvancouver — if you’re on Facebook, “like” The Word On The Street Vancouver — if you’re on Flickr, share your photos on the WOTS Vancouver Group Pool — or add the WOTS Vancouver blog to your feed reader!

At BookCrossing Meetup the other night, we were talking about books (of course!) and then blogs and publishers and authors, etc. I mentioned I signed up for newsletters and followed publisher/publishing blogs. Dale and Marina instantly wanted me to write a blog post full of links… and this is just to say that yes, I intend to do that, but I don’t have time right now.

Philippa Gregory’s new book comes out this Thursday, August 19. The Red Queen is book two in her next series about the Houses of Lancaster and York. I enjoyed The White Queen (review) but wasn’t crazy about it. So, I don’t know how I feel about The Red Queen, but I’d like to give it a shot.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins — book three of the Hunger Games Triology — comes out in one week (Tuesday, August 24)!! I’ve read (and reviewed) both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire and I’m really looking forward to the final installment.

Julie Forrest tweeted a link earlier today to an upcoming knitting book from Random House — Vampire Knits: Projects to Keep You Knitting from Twilight to Dawn by Genevieve Miller. There are many Twilight-inspired patterns on Ravelry already (including a leaked pattern from Vampire Knits), but it will be neat to see what other vampire-inspired knits are devised.

Okay, now one weird question… why are my house plants plagued by fruit flies?

We’re already a week into August (can you believe it?!) and despite arts funding cuts, I’m very excited about the 9th Annual BC Cultural Crawl! The best thing about living in the Lower Mainland, is the proximity to other cities. I technically live in Vancouver but can easily go to Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, New Westminster, Langley, Abbotsford, and that’s not even mentioning all the nearby Island communities.

So I started looking through the list of BC Cultural Crawl activities for cities throughout the Lower Mainland. The Cultural Crawl listings are also a great way to learn about new artisans and artists in the Lower Mainland as many of the crawls are self-guided. Here are some of the activities I’m hoping to attend and/or looking forward to:

Surrey: Cloverdale Blueberry Festival
August 14th & 15th
I’ve been to the Abbotsford Berry Beats Festival, which combines a farmer’s market with music and a festival atmosphere. I’ve not been to the Cloverdale Blueberry Festival, but it’s already blueberry season here in BC! There is a Show ‘N Shine Car Parade in Cloverdale during the Blueberry Festival.

Vancouver: Main Street Magazine Tour
A celebration of the local arts & culture magascene.
Presented by the Magazine Association of BC
Thursday, August 19, 2010. 6:00–10:00 p.m. Free event.
Starts at Rhizome Café (317 E. Broadway)  Continues at various venues near Main & Broadway. There are two different routes and the tour guides are Elizabeth Bachinsky and Jennica Harper. It all looks fantastic. I missed the Literary Tour last year as part of BC Book and Magazine Week, but I will be trying to get out to this!

Gibsons Landing Fibre Arts Festival
August 20th to 22nd.
I am very excited about the Gibsons Landing Fibre Arts Festival. Unfortunately this may be the last year of the festival (not fully due to funding cuts, but a retiring board). A few of us are probably taking a little field trip there on the Friday. There are classes, an exhibitor marketplace, and on the Saturday there is an artisan market on the Landing.

Langley: Arts Alive! Festival
August 28th, 2010. 10am – 5pm.
Fraser Highway between 204th and 206th
I went to the Arts Alive! Festival last year completely by chance. It was great to wander around and check out all the shops.

Richmond: Wild BC Salmon Festival
Saturday, August 28. 11am – 4pm.
www.wildbcseafoodfest.com

Vancouver: Bard on the Beach
June 3rd to September 25th, 2010
Anthony & Cleopatra | Much Ado About Nothing | Falstaff | Henry V
I try to make it to a show every year, as Bard on the Beach is one of my favourite festivals. The performances are always spectacular, and extremely accessible. In 2008 I blogged about seeing The Twelfth Night, I’ve seen Comedy of Errors, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Romeo & Juliet, … and I can’t recall any others.

Richmond: Summer Night Market
May 21st to September 26th. Every weekend.
Live music, hundreds of vendors, and tons of food.
I’ve been to the Vancouver Chinatown Night Market this summer, but last summer the Richmond Night Market wasn’t operating. The Richmond Night Market is probably four times as large as the Vancouver Chinatown one. It’s great to grab some food, wander around, and haggle for some neat knick-knacks.

Maple Ridge: Meadows Maze
www.meadowsmaze.com
One of the largest corn mazes in the Pacific Northwest. Every year Meadows Maze has a different design. Last year celebrated the new Golden Ears Bridge, and this year is designed for the 100 year anniversary of the PNE.

Vancouver: Downtown Vancouver Art Walk
There is a ton of public art and art galleries in the downtown core. I’ve been trying to take photos of all the public art (and posting it in a Flickr set). I hope to get photos of all 18 Mosaic Art Tiles and all the Vancouver Biennale Sculptures.

Bowen Island: BowFEAST
Cultural Crawl the week before, Farmer’s Market on August 15th
Bowen Island is having a Cultural Crawl and BowFEAST during this week, all culminating on the August 14 & 15th weekend. This may be the perfect opportunity to visit my friends Adrian and Ginger on Bowen! Last summer we attended their wedding on Bowen and I am itching to go back to Bowen Island for more fun.

Circle Farm Tours
There are Circle Farm Tours in Abbotsford, Langley, Chilliwack, Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows, Agassi & Harrison Mills, and Mission. It’s a self-guided tour and there are tons of farms and artisans that I’d like to check out.

Granville Island Art Walk
When is going to Granville Island not tons of fun? Granville Island is actually chock-a-block full of artisans and artists. Honestly, I don’t know how they can afford the rent, but it’s an amazing place to spend the day. Grab some food at the Public Market, visit lots of lovely shops (including Circle Craft!!) and maybe catch a show at Waterfront Theatre or the Arts Club Theatre.

There are pros and cons to all shopping experiences, but even more so for shopping online. You’re taking a huge risk and purchasing a product, service, or deal based solely on photos and descriptions. Sometimes things go great — I have had tons of positive experiences when things go great as well as awry.

I’ve been really impressed by the daily group-buy offers and have even purchased one (and nearly purchased a few others). I love receiving those daily deal emails from StealTheDeal, Groupon, TeamBuy, GoodNews, LivingSocial, and EthicalDeal. Another great experience: Once we ordered an all-region DVD player but it arrived only being able to play Region 2. We emailed the eBay seller who was able to send us instructions to reset the region to 0. Fantastic customer service!

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But since Saturday, one recent experience has been pissing me off. I really need to rant about poor customer service. Frankly, I don’t care if you’re at Comic-Con or on the other side of the world (hello World Wide Web…). I ordered this item a month ago and I just want a damn response regarding a replacement!

Craig’s birthday is this Friday and he’s a fan of the online comic, VG Cats. He’s been laughing over this humourous Zelda-themed shirt sold by SharkRobot for a while. (View the VG cats comic it’s based on OR read a Game FAQ to find out why it’s funny). He hadn’t ordered the shirt due to the cost of shipping to the UK. Good for me though, since shipping to Canada was pretty reasonable. I ordered the shirt a month ago and it arrived last Friday (allow 4-6 weeks for shipping, fine).

But when I opened the package I was highly disappointed. As you can see above, the image is supposed to be large and wrap-around. It is tiny and only on the front.I replied to the “Order Shipped” email with my dissatisfaction and demanded they reprint the tshirt as advertised and reship it to me. I don’t want a refund, I want the product I paid for. I hadn’t heard anything by today (Tuesday) so I sent another message via their website and quoted my Order Confirmation number. As of this post, I still haven’t heard back. Grrrr…

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Online Shopping silver lining: today I came home and Kim Werker had retweeted something from PoppyTalk about an online sewing class. I’ve been really tempted to take some of the clothing workshops and tutorials offered at local shops, but really don’t feel my skills are up to snuff. I realize that the point of a class is to learn, but if my basic skills aren’t honed, I might miss out on what I really want to learn about. What appeals to me about a local class is that with clothing, they can help measure me and teach me how to modify patterns to fit.

However, with this online Home Ec class offered by Leigh-Ann, Courtenay and Rachel, I’ll be able to practise some basic skills for a reasonable price! I ordered as soon as I finished reading the list of project and course description.

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself. [I found this at Julia Likes To Talk.]

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Read the rest of this entry »

On September 13-17, 2010, book bloggers across the net will be celebrating the third annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week. This is the second year I’ve helped out with the website CMS and design. On Wednesday evening, My Friend Amy and I sat down to hash out the design for 2010.

Here are some of the images that didn’t make the cut:

This image felt a little dated with the old-style CRT monitor.

This was just slightly creepy…

This felt too impersonal, especially since BBAW is all about the community

This was friendly… but perhaps a little too friendly… borderline creepy.

[P.S. These are all images Amy found while looking for something good. These weren't seriously considered.]

I’m honoured and excited to be a part of Serena’s National Poetry Month Blog Tour 2010. Hopefully this will be the first of many successful literary blog tours! I applied to take part to showcase Canada’s (particularly BC and Vancouver’s) poetry scene. This post is basically a Canadian/BC/Vancouver poetry linkfest!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday night I walked to the Vancouver Police Museum, which is a real hidden gem located in the former Coroner’s Courtroom. I had signed up to participate in their first-ever Forensics for Adults Workshops. Tuesday, March 16 was the first evening with Forensic Pathology, which was all about autopsies. Kim Werker has a great post up at the Vancouver Is Awesome blog about the forensic event. Not only did we get to hear, smell, and see what an autopsy was like, it took place in Vancouver’s former morgue. We got a chance to walk around the exhibits and had a personal tour from the museum’s curator, Chris Mathieson.

The Vancouver Police Museum has organized two more Forensics for Adults Workshops: tomorrow night is Blood Splatter and the following Tuesday will be Ballistics (Bullets). I loved learning creepy and gruesome things about my city’s history that I never knew (even growing up here) and would definitely recommend a visit even once the workshops are done.

Wednesday and Thursday were full of dental and doctor appointments. Let’s skip over that… I’ve got much more interesting things to talk about.

On Friday afternoon, I met up with Chelle for some sushi before going to see Handmade Nation. We arrived early at the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) and got a chance to look around the current exhibit, The Art of Craft. The Art of Craft is part of the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad and showcases handcrafted art from western Canada and Korea. The exhibit is on until April 11 and really is a gorgeous display of unique art. Our only complaint was that crafting is such a tactile activity, but the exhibit wasn’t meant to be touched (as is similar in other museums).

The main event at MOV was a screening of Handmade Nation. When Got Craft? did a couple showings in the summer, I was really bummed I missed it. When I heard that MOV was screening it on Friday, March 19th, I jumped at the chance! Overall it was a good documentary and I’m certainly glad I got to see it. Although, I initially thought it was going to focus more on the community of crafting, it was certainly interesting to explore the small business side of handmade goods. MOV had also arranged for several local craftspeople to have a Q&A afterwards: Kim Werker, crochet/knitter and author, Erin Boniferro, owner of CollageCollage, and Rob from GotCraft? Vancouver’s largest indie craft fair.

This weekend I celebrated my twenty-second birthday. I haven’t had a proper party in my new apartment (not that I’m much of a party-er) so I decided to rent a button-maker and have some friends over on the Saturday. Yes you read that right… we made buttons, and it was pretty awesome! I rented a button-maker and circle cutter from Blim Art & Craft Facility and bought button parts in bulk from Six Cent Press. I designed a bunch of buttons ahead of time but also made sure to have lots of funky paper and pens for anyone who wanted to draw button designs. We had a good time through the afternoon and it quieted down in the evening.

And last but not least, on Sunday (my actual birthday) we had a family dinner at my parents’ house with my uncles and cousins. It was a really nice night and I enjoyed sitting around and laughing with my cousins. Overall a very busy (but good) week and I am looking forward to something a little less hectic this week/weekend.

The BC Book Prizes announced the 2010 Finalists on Thursday, March 11. Yes, this is self-promo since I work with the BC Book Prizes, but I really believe in what we do so I don’t care! There are some great authors and illustrators listed for seven different awards. We also organize a free Soirée and right now we’re planning our 7th annual BC Book Prizes On Tour. This tour takes finalist authors all over the province — we’re planning three legs: Northern BC, Kootenays, Okanagan and Vancouver Island. Sign up for email newsletters on our website to get all the updates.

Canada Reads 2010 also concluded the debates on Friday, March 12. The winner was Nikolski by Nicolas Dicker, translated by Lazer Lederhendler. In my review of Nikolski, I mention I was pleasantly surprised by the translation. However, I’d like to comment that the Canada Reads debates weren’t as intriguing for me this year compared to last year. I remember painting my bedroom last March/April and listening to the debates. I kept thinking “oh I want to read that” for each of the books. I loved The Book Of Negroes and still really want to read Fruit: A Novel About A Boy and His Nipples by Brian Frances and Outlander by Gil Adamson. I think that this year they spent too long debating what makes a book “Canadian”, which was never really the point of Canada Reads. I guess that they [CBC/Canada Reads] need to make their criteria less vague (“A book that all Canadians should read”) so that they [the champions] spend more time talking about the books themselves.

The UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction also released the 2010 longlist today. The Guardian newspaper in the UK has a great mini-site set up so you can browse through the titles. Some of the books have now been added to my TBR mountain, including Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel which also won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison, one of seven debut novelists.

Also, of note:

• The 2010 Pulitzer Prize (Pull it, Surprise!) awards will be announced April 12.
• On March 8, 2010, the Jury for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize was announced. The Gillers announces their longlist in September, shortlist in October, and winner in November.

P.S. If anyone knows of anything I missed, please let me know! I love hearing about new things in the publishing community.