I'm a fool for a good play on words, and this is the one I really enjoyed this weekend:
What a GREAT name for a flower shop! Not to mention the creativity in the Celtic-looking hearts interlinked to resemble carnations.
This weekend, I got away for a couple days. My journey took me north, to Sundridge Ontario. Sweetie had a barbecue up there, and we decided to make a weekend of it. Zoey, my little dog, was sent to her "second family" for the weekend, so the grownups wouldn't have to worry about stopping for meals and points of interest.
One of our first stops was the "town" of Burks Falls, which is now little more than a village. While there, we found a studio containing works of local artists. There were egg cups hand-turned from ironwood, quilted placemats, and some really interesting works by local artists. It is worth the stop, if you're ever up there.
At the barbecue, we learned that there was a Sunflower Festival in Sundridge, where we were staying. We headed over there and were treated to all kinds of inspirational things -- solidly-built Mennonite furniture, metal sunflowers (I'm still kicking myself for not buying one of those for my garden), some beautiful, abstract watercolour paintings, and a rustic bench with bear-themed upholstery on its back.
This morning, I awoke, refreshed, and got to enjoy morning coffee on the dock of the resort with some knitting. Sweetie took a picture of me "knitting in my natural habitat", but it's on his phone... it may take a while to get it. In the meantime, here's one of me knitting in my natural habitat back in 2006:
On our way home, at Huntsville, we stopped at a lovely souvenir shop that had lots of signs to hang around the house, beautiful hand-turned and polished wooden bowls, beeswax candles, shaker boxes made in New Brunswick, and pillows, with faces fringed with strips cut from old knitted garments. "I could make that", I observed. (Huntsville is a must-stop if you're travelling through Muskoka -- it's downtown rivals many of the pretty ones in the province. And, there's a chocolate shop!)
As we drove home I said to Sweetie, "You know, it has been good to get out this weekend -- we can get pretty stuck in our little box called home, and I've spent far too much time in the house so far."
Being a proponent of The Artists' Way, I like to get out once in a while and have an "artist's date". (An artist's date is an opportunity to feed the creative, right side of the brain. It could involve tasks that are routine or mundane that take your mind off things and allow your brain to float off on its own (gardening is a good example of this), or getting out and feeding off of the creativity and inspiration in the world around us.) This weekend's jaunt certainly qualified as one.
This weekend, I got out there. And it was good.
