A couple of weeks ago, CuteGecko was asked by local University of Waterloo initiative, SiG (Social Innovation Generation), to design a book which has been in the making for about two years. We were provided with sixty pages of content, a couple of photos and the required logos. Because of an extremely tight deadline, the design and layout became my life for two weeks.
The most fun part of the project was the title, ‘Notes of a Newcomer’ – essentially a story about a newcomer to the Waterloo region and their experiences in our awesome community. Because of this, we were able to include many of the photos we’ve taken over the year we’ve lived here. We also knew exactly where to find the perfect shots that we hadn’t taken previously. I stylized the book to have a ‘notebook’ feel to it with taped in photographs and stickers or stamps.
With a lot of help and encouragement from Renjie (you’re the greatest!!) as well as Karl’s words of wisdom, the work took shape and was delivered to the printer by the deadline. The final print is made from 100% recycled materials, eco friendly inks and is fully FSC compliant. Ah what a relief and such a great sense of accomplishment! Loved it – bring on the ext one :)
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Strawberry season!!!
Yesterday, Karl & I went out to Herrle’s Country Farm Market, located just outside of Waterloo for our first instalment of fresh fruit picking this season. MMmmm they are delish! I’m also pretty sure we left the place a few pounds heavier ;)
THEN, we stopped by Seven Shores Urban Market and Cafe (Uptown Waterloo) this afternoon and picked up some locally grown tomatoes, asparagus, garlic and hot peppers. I’m itching to make dinner tonight with all of our fabulous finds.
Does anyone else have a favourite market/locally grown venue I should know about?
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On Saturday Afternoon, we attended nüBerlin and the Magnetic North theatre event – Homage. The performance was located in the Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts.
Interestingly enough, a few of us in the group had some reservations about seeing the play (I think the major difficulty was the England vs USA football game on at the same time). We did go (thank goodness!) and the play was absolutely wonderful!
Based on the true story of Haydn Llewellyn Davies.
Who owns public art? The artist who built it? The town that paid for it? Or is all art a public trust, owned by no one and everyone at the same time?
An advertising executive takes a risk, leaves his job and tries his hand at art. His first commission: a public sculpture for a town’s central square, a monumental installation inspired by Stonehenge and built out of red Canadian cedar. Thirty years later, he has become one of the country’s most successful public sculptors and his work is featured in textbooks on Canadian art. Yet, as his health fails and he is left with an uncertain prognosis, the town decides to demolish his seminal work.
This particular performance is over, but there are a number of play’s left to see. Just visit the Magnetic North Website for more information on the upcoming shows. They will be running until June 19th, so hurry to get your tickets.
**Photos courtesy of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival website
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Our Logo: 'Drunk Twitter Bird' by Karl
Earlier this year, I joined / helped to round up a bunch of awesome people for a local baseball team. I’ve played baseball before and was royally bad, I I figured ‘heck, this will be fun!’
Our team is made of of a group of young professionals we’ve run into one time or another at any of the many events we attend for CuteGecko. Most of us have never played before (Including Karl who insists that when he hits a grounder, he’s allowed another turn at bat…). We’re pretty terrible but, boy, do we have a good time. The ‘beer’ league we joined is made up of a lot of pretty incredible teams. One team we played recently had some intense players, but all we really care about is playing. Many of our games have ended as a mercy, but we generally convince the other team to keep playing until our time is up – for the practice?
Click this picture to see our whole team
Hmmm… I’m a bit foggy on the exact wins/losses, but so far Absolutely battered is 0 wins for 7 games played. Our best loss was last week when we lost by 7 points, yay! I don’t think I’ll even mention our worst… ok the score may have been about 34-1, but that’s just between us.
I’m really enjoying the game. I can’t wait for someday when we’re one of those awesome teams that just wins all the time. Last week our complete team played, so we got a group shot. Thanks Ramy (Bright Lights Photography) for bringing your photographic talent and sharing the pictures with us. (& Sorry Ashley for blocking you in this shot!!)
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We live in such an amazing city (or cities K/W) that something like CultureCamp can exist. I’ve talked about this inspiring forum for discussion before on the CuteGecko blog and still love the concept.
IdeasTransform: CultureCamp is a user-generated ‘unconference’—an open, creative, participatory workshop-event, whose content is provided by participants related to an emerging understanding of culture.
So last Saturday’s event was held at artbar and began with a team building exercise that my team greatly failed at… but we had fun :) Brock then motivated our sessions by helping us to use a storytelling technique in order to find solutions to our group questions.
We broke off into three groups to discuss a range of subjects:
- How to get locals motivated and OUT at events, etc
- Engaging locals and the Tannery District
- What to do with the artbar vibe after it closes
I was a part of the first group with a few friends and even a couple of people I hadn’t met before. A rough breakdown of our story:
Photos Courtesy of Ramy Nassar at Bright Lights Photography
- Meet with tourism corporation and convince them to promote Kitchener Waterloo as the vibrant city it is instead of advertising it as ‘on the way to Stratford’
- Bring a friend campaign: The idea here is to negotiate with local businesses and event co-ordinators and have them provide a discount when a patron ‘brings a friend’. If all else fails, just get the regulars at events to bring someone new
- Better event listings such as online calendars that incorporate a number of local interests.
We also discussed push vs pull advertising – people have to VISIT the website to know what’s going on vs event listings posted around town and in your face - A Volunteer Club – something where a group of people come out locally to volunteer or create awareness for an important cause
These are just a small few of the ideas bounced around in the discussion group. It is a great way to get people thinking about local issues. The next CultureCamp will most likely be held in the fall. If this sounds like something you would be interested in attending, drop me a line or keep an eye on Ideas Transform for more information about local awesomeness.
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as you can see by me iPhone pic, there's not much happening yet
Phew… it’s warm out there! It’s a great way to start off a long weekend.
With lots to do before the weekend starts, Karl & I planted our pretty little vegetable garden this morning. It’s our second spring at my brothers’ place and we all dug out the spot for the garden last year, so the soil wasn’t as prepared for the extra effort then.
But this year… This year, we’ve got enriched soil, lama poop and awesome compost from our home composter. We’ve also got a bit of knowledge gained from a year of experimenting.
as you can see by my iPhone pic,
there’s not much happening yet
Today we planted corn, carrots, lettuce, spring onions and cucumbers. I’m so exited to see how everything turns out – we’re going to try to keep a better eye on things this time around. As you can see, it’s a small garden. So no road-side stands for me – just a lot of home-grown salad, yummm!
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It has been a little while since I read Water for Elephants, but I glanced at it on my bookshelf this morning and just couldn’t resist writing about it.
The book starts off as a tale from an old man, Jacob. He’s in a nursing home and is slowly loosing the plot. Loosing it enough that when he dreams, he relives his past – and narrates this great story. His mind brings him back to the days when he was twenty-three years old – during the depression. He’s going through a quarter life crisis and is about to write his University Exams to become a veterinarian. One evening he has a mental breakdown and promptly leaves school and jumps on a passing train.
Unknown to Jacob, the train belongs to a circus and so his life begins within the trials and tribulations of a circus worker. (Carny?) The story has love, adventure and more.
Jacob finds a place tending the circus animals, including a seemingly untrainable elephant named Rosie. He also comes to know Marlena, the star of the equestrian act—and wife of August, a charismatic but cruel animal trainer. Caught between his love for Marlena and his need to belong in the crazy family of travelling performers, Jacob is freed only by a murderous secret that will bring the big top down.
The meaning of the title? As well said by Wikipedia “In the beginning of the novel, Jacob mocks another resident of thenursing home who claims to have worked in the circus and carried water for the elephants. We are led to believe that this is a popular, but untrue, claim.”
I’ve just checked and apparently the book is going t be made into a movie next year (that’s the first I’ve heard of that!)
Be sure to read it before it goes onto film. It’s a great novel and not too difficult either.
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**photo courtesy of RQ Magazine
Last night was another nü Berlin event, held at Centre in the Square for the Symphony’s James Bond event. The music great, the company was great and it was highly encouraged to dress up for the event – love it.
We started the evening off in Niko Niko‘s for some sushi and saké. The food was good, but nothing compared to my favourite sushi joint in town – Sakura Island. After dinner, a group of us walked over to Centre in the Square for some drinks at artbar before joining the audience for the show.
The music was fantastic with orchestra music from many of the Bond Films as well as some other favourites such as Austin Powers, The Pink Panther, The Avengers, Peter Gun, etc. The conductor made the performance even more interesting by giving us an insight into the composers and some anecdotes revolving around each piece of music.
After the performance, it was back to artbar for another glass of wine. A lot of great people turned up for the nü Berlin event. Keep up to date on the inner-workings of nü Berlin at Ideas Transform. Here, you will find a calendar of more local and cultural events. Join us!
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Last night’s great adventure at the CuteGecko home base was the creation of an iPad case for Karl’s new toy.
It started earlier in the week when we attempted to make a case out of material we found at Michaels… which failed horribly. With all of that learning behind us, I knew we had the knowledge to create a masterpiece this time.
I’ve written the simple instructions to make this awesome little iPad and iPhone case.
Materials:
3 millemeter thick felt (not the soft kind!)
- iPad: 8.375 x 23.5 inches (folded)
- iPhone pocket: 4×7.5 inches (cut into pocket & flap)
black thread
2 black buttons of different sizes
optional: Hugo Boss tag :)
I was fortunate enough to have a little cloth Hugo Boss bag with matching buttons that that I could borrow those materials from, but obviously they aren’t necessary for the project.
I started by measuring everything. The main ‘bag’ section is 8.375 inches wide by 10 inches tall. The flaps, etc can be measured at your own desire depending on the look that you’re going for.
The sewing from there was pretty simple as long as I remembered to put the iPhone pocket on before sewing the rest of the bag. The iPhone pocket is about 4 inches wide x 6 inches tall. This leaves enough room for the width of the iPhone. I centred the pocket on the same side as the flap for the main bag so that the bag could lay flat on one side. The tag was placed in before sewing.. (try using a piece of ribbon or something similar for the same ‘store-bought’ effect).
I used the sewing machine for all of the stitching and had to practice a few buttons before I stitched them in – they turned out ok, but are still tight, I think they’ll loosen up over time.
I made Karl sew the buttons onto the case so I could relax for a minute.
He did a great job.
And.. Voila! There it is! Big pocket for the iPad and little pocket for the iPhone.
If you saw it without knowing it was home-made, would you be fooled???
Should I sell my plans to Hugo?
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It’s true… there, I said it “I like to sew”.
I’ve been sewing ever since I was a pretty young. My mom & I made some of my childhood dresses since.. well, as long as I can remember. There were some beautiful Christmas dresses and to be honest, there were some dooseys that later turned into Hallowe’en costumes. Overall though, it was a great way to bond with my mom while teaching me some valuable lessons.
When I was about twelve, I was in 4H (if you don’t know about 4H, it’s a country-kid thing). I took a sewing class and made a quillow (half pillow, half quilt) on my mom’s sewing machine. Wouldn’t you know it but I sewed my finger right into the machine.
A bit of hilarity ensued with me wailing while my dad tried aimlessly to rid my finger of the needle. Not to worry though, it didn’t even leave a mark.
All of this brings me to my latest project, pictured here:
No, I didn’t make the tshirt, but I lovingly hand-sewed the lace bird onto it. It was inspired by some pretty fabric I took from a value-village blouse. I drew the outline onto the fabric and hand-sewed the rest. Personally, I really like it, & I like adding a bit of me to something that I wear.
I’m looking for some inspiration for what to create next (and the time to do it!)
Any ideas?
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