knit night on the brain: COMPLETED!

This past weekend in Hamilton was amazing. Supercrawl was so so good. The best ever. I was so impressed and thrilled to share such a great Hamilton event with some friends and family who were visiting. And The Beehive completed our giant knit façade of The Brain, which we've been working on since June/July.



We were literally knitting and piecing the installation together as it was going up. And many of us were knitting non-stop in the week leading up to the deadline. Towards the end we pulled out the big guns to speed things up - mega huge knitting needles! Thank goodness for chunky yarn and big needles.



We couldn't have done this without our friends and family. In addition to all the knitters that helped with the actual creation of the piece, we could never have installed it without the tireless help of Gary. THANK YOU GARY! Sky Jack operator extraordinaire. And Kieran and Mike. HEROES. And thank you Heather who patiently let us take over The Brain, inside and out.



Oh, and that amazing knit recreation of The Brain logo? Yeah, that was Courtney. She's the mastermind behind this entire thing. Not only is she speediest knitter I've ever met, she's also a genius when it comes to making up patterns. Three cheers for Courtney!!!



And now it's done. It was only up for 2.5 days, but it was totally worth it. Our first giant Beehive project! If you swing by in the next little while, you can still check out the yellow section with the The Brain sign, which is still up.

Now that  knitting bricks and giant sections of yellow is behind me, it's time to get back to knitting flowers non-stop again. Oh, and school. Yeah, another year of school.

a hot day at the farm.

Drowning evil potato beetles.







Sorting good potatoes from bad, planting good potatoes. And weeding carrots. And removing strawberry flowers from plants so they redirect their energy to becoming big and strong. They can save their strawberries for next season.




Hoeing the weeds around the rhubarb.



Planting tomatoes.

bonne fête Jenna Rose!

At the James North Art Crawl this past Friday, Jenna celebrated 5 years of being in business. The party was hosted by White Elephant, with cupcakes and gold balloons! I helped set things up, which was quite fun. Her adorable Downtown Hamilton totes and tea towels were a huge hit, and I made sure that one of those bags wound up in my possession. It's beautiful and so sturdy! Jenna sewed the bags herself, so they're not your everyday screen printed tote. She also had cute 'charm packs' of her printed fabric, which I'm kicking myself for not buying. Any leftover Jenna?

Needlework

So I've got some news. Big news. And it's not just my news, it's also fellow Beehive member Elizabeth Simpson's. For the past four months or so Elizabeth and I have been brainstorming and researching and scheming. And now we have a plan. The plan is to open a textile based store and workspace on James Street North in the very near future. The store will be called Needlework.

Our vision is to bring together the DIY and craft community in the Hamilton area by offering them a creative workspace and a local source for a thoughtfully curated selection of fabric, yarn, notions, patterns, and books. We hope to offer specialized sewing and knitting workshops in addition to a sew by the hour space.



We've been inspired by similar creative spaces such as The Workroom, Emmeline & Annabelle, Spool of Thread, and Purl Soho. But we are still very much in the beginning stages of our version of this project, and we would like to kindly ask for your input. We have created a survey to gather your thoughts and ideas, and would be extremely grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete it and pass it on to friends and family in the Hamilton area and beyond. By participating in our survey, you also have a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to either White Elephant, or Mixed Media. Yay!


Thank you so much! We hope you're as excited about this as we are! We're also mildly terrified, but with the amazing support of friends and family, we think we can pull this off.

If you have any more questions about Needlework, or if you'd like to be added to our mailing list, please feel free to email us at needleworkhamilton@gmail.com.

p.s. regarding yesterdays hint: naadlwerk is Dutch for needlework.

a busy spring weekend

This weekend was absolutely packed full of potential activities: Doors Open Hamilton, the Spring Special Show at the Aberfoyle Antique Market, the AGH Spring Art Sale, The West Hamilton Artist Tour, and veggie/fruit planting activities up at Gary's farm. We were sadly only able to participate in a few of them.

After doing a little bit of gardening at home, Erick and I headed out with Thea to check out a few Doors Open locations.




First we visited William Reid's Cottage near Dundurn castle. It used to be home to William Reid, the gardener to Sir Allan Napier MacNab who was the owner of Dundurn Castle. It is over 150 years old, and the City of Hamilton has bought it and is in the process of restoring it back to the way it once was. This awesome linoleum flooring was peaking out from under some new flooring in one of the rooms. And I have no idea what that kitten thing is (maybe the lid to a cookie tin?), but I think they found it under the walls above the fireplace and decided to leave it there. I like it.





Next, we walked over to the kitchen garden itself. I was beyond impressed and extremely jealous of it. They were growing a large variety of vegetables, including asparagus. They had some of the asparagus covered with wicker baskets to keep them from turning green. This process is called etiolation. Since the plant is kept in the dark it does not produce chlorophyll (thus remains white) and allocates more of its energy to growing. Neat!

Thea will be doing a more detailed post on the Beehive blog about Dundurn Castle's kitchen garden later this summer, so keep an eye out for it!






Our last stop on the Doors Open tour was the Mohawk Trail School (we started late, and got mildly lost, so didn't have the time to see everything we wanted). Built in 1882, it is one of Hamilton's first one room brick school houses. It was actually in use until 1965. It was very cute. I loved the little enamel cups hanging in the hall.

After we visited the school, we went to up the farm where we planted a whole bunch of strawberry plants and 140 rhubarb plants. A lovely Saturday.

Sunday we got together at my grandma's house to celebrate the life of my grandpa. He didn't want a funeral, so just family got together to share memories instead. It was lovely. In addition to celebrating his life, we also celebrated mother's day and my brother's birthday.

A good weekend.

breaking news: the debut of the beehive craft collective!

I'm so excited!!! Today is the official reveal of something a small group of amazing people in Hamilton have been working on for the past couple of months! Specifically, The Beehive Craft Collective.

Our mission statement:

The Beehive is a craft and urban homesteading collective. Bound together by a common thread of making things by hand, this collective was formed in 2011 by members of the arts community in Hamilton, Ontario. Focusing on handmade, DIY, and sustainability, we hope to engage and promote a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity.

We have lots of ideas in the works, with both short term and long term goals in mind. SO EXCITED! Our first project? The Beehive Summer Craft Fair, which will take place this summer during the August Art Crawl on James St. North. It will be a juried show, so if you're interested in being a part of it, please apply!!

Check out our website for more information on the group members (all super talented people!), and an application form for the summer fair. And check for regular updates on our blog to see what we've been up to!

Hamilton, you rule.

Photos by Hollie, and our logo was designed by Jenna, both members of the collective!