Quilting and other Things

 Last month I saw an ad for a Canon Road Trip.  They were setting up booths at different places across the country and inviting people to sign up to come play with one of their new mirrorless cameras.  There were three locations in Toronto -- Downsview Park, Evergreen Brick Works and Toronto Botanical Gardens on Sunday - Tuesday.  Monday worked the best for me which meant the Brick Works.  So I signed up to play with an R5 camera and had a fun afternoon out. I went to the Brick Works one afternoon last week to refresh my memory of the location as I've only visited there once or twice and then was able to arrive about 30 minutes before my appointment.  That let me take some pictures with my camera and lens.  Then I went and borrowed the R5 and a 24 - 105 lens and wander back around and took some of the same photos with the mirrorless.  I use an 18 - 300 lens so there were some challenges in a few places but given the mirrorless is full frame and ca...

Last Saturday was the fourth of the nature sketching classes and this time it was at Colonel Samuel Smith Park .  One of the fun things with this class has been to go to different places in Toronto.  Some I've been to before and some its the first time.  I walked through the edge of the park last summer when I walked part of the waterfront trail into Toronto and then again in December when I went out with some friends for a photography day. Saturday rained most of the morning but the Humber College student building was near where we were going to be so the class was scheduled to go ahead.  I arrived wearing my rain pants and jacket for hiking but should have had my hat and sunglasses.  Again, it was a lot of gesture sketches trying to capture birds in nature except the owl and the kestrel.  There was a bird festival in progress and one of the places had birds on exhibit.  The owl had been hit by a car and had a badly broken wing.  I'm not sur...

Saturday was the third sketching class and this time we went to Riverdale Farm.  I've lived in the GTA for over 30 years and it was my first visit.  Rather fun.  Our guest this week was a Veterinarian and our subject was gesture sketching using the farm animals.  Rather like life drawing classes were the model changes poses quickly.  Some of the animals moved quickly.  Others held their pose for several minutes or would come back to a similar place as they ate. The vet had diagrams of how arm and leg bones in humans align with the similar limbs in dogs and horses.  I was surprised to learn that what I had thought was the knee in animals is really the equivalent of my ankle!  No wonder it bends in a strange direction. The horse's body stayed relatively still as he ate some hay.  His front end moved a lot but he kept coming back to a similar pose.  The cow was curled up for a while until the other one came over and butted in on he...

This past Saturday was the second of the Nature Sketching classes.  This time we meet at the Toronto Botanical Gardens (Edwards Gardens) and went down to sketch beside Wilket Creek in the ravine. Our naturalist talked about invasive species and how important the ravines are to the ecosystem.  The beautiful grasses that I love to take pictures of are an invasive species -- they grow quickly and with a deep dense root system that really takes over and area.  Since the seeds are so light in the feathery heads, it also spreads like wildfire.  Its not native to this area so nothing or atleast not many animals will eat it so there are no natural predators.  I hadn't thought about plants having predators to help keep them under control.  Invasive grasses (different location) In the last century many ravines were filled in, often with garbage, without thought or understanding of their importance.  Ravines are carved by rivers.  In this case, r...

I’ve had a membership at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for almost 10 years.  Each season, they offer a free exchange weekend with other museums and galleries which don’t have exchange privileges with the ROM.  A few years ago, I took advantage of those to visit the Aga Khan Museum and the Bata Shoe Museum  (both are well worth a visit if you are in Toronto).  I did blog about the shoe museum here  but apparently not about the Aga Khan. A few weekends ago I took advantage of another exchange.  It was a visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).  When the ROM announced the date earlier this fall, I added the date to my calendar, so I’d remember this time.  Saturday morning I met Karen at the Gallery and we spent about 4 hours roaming around.  The first stop was downstairs to visit the model ships gallery.  The first thing to catch my eye was a shadow.  It’s cast by a tiller from a Viking Ship which hangs nea...

Well, not much quilting again.  I've gotten as far as ironing the community outreach quilt and sorting the colours into an order.  I've measured to see how long the first strip needs to be.  The sewing area is a mess again and I haven't spent much time there.  This month though I have a very tiny goal.  Each July, there is a quilt show at Black Creek Pioneer Village called Quilts at the Creek .  This year, for the first time, I've entered a quilt.  Its my Rainbow 365 quilt made using Kathryn Kerr's 365 Challenge.  It needs a sleeve and the show label stitched to the back.  That has to be done before I can drop it off for the show. I also want to tidy up the sewing area so I'll be more inclined to go do some stitching.  The big think is to get this quilt ready for the show though.  Linking up with Patty's One Monthly Goal

On Monday evening I went to the first of three workshops on low light photography at the Aquarium. It was a lot of fun. There was a talk at first about the exposure triangle and settings that might be useful then we went down into the display areas and tried what we had learned about. At first I was having problems getting the photos light enough. Talked to the instructor for a few minutes and suddenly realized that at one point when I was reading the book about my camera, I had limited the auto ISO setting so it couldn't go above 6400. When in and removed that and the pictures were much better. 1/15 sec at f5.6 ISO 6400 95mm 1/15 sec at f4.5 ISO 6400 42mm  The octopus was curled up right out front against the glass.  1/200 sec at f3.5 ISO 12800 18mm 1/200 sec at f3.5 ISO 10000 18mm The sword fish was just hanging out on the roof of the tunnel.  The ray swam past at intervals.  So did some sharks.  This was the best of the group.  ...

On Saturday the museum was closed so they arranged for members to get free admission to two other local museums.  We decided to go to the Bata Shoe Museum for the first time. At first I didn't see the shoes in the display window, just lots of colours.  It was a really interesting visit.  There was information about making shoes and different types of shoes people have worn over the years. The earliest was a replica of the shoe worn by the Ice Man.  There were shoes for many cultures.  These four were some of my favorites.  Each has some very intricate designs which I liked. These are Nalins (Turkish bathhouse sandles) from Ottoman Turkey in the 19th century These are mojaris worn by a temple dancer in Rajasthan, India c 1840 These are children's booties from early 20th Century China These are from Jaipur, India and are Paduka from the 18th century.  They would have been for an important occasion like a wedding. There ...