After about 5 minutes in the store, I had my shopping list picked out. ShopGirls is my new favorite obsession, a classy boutique on Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale district that features fine art and fashion from an all Canadian Artist base, with an emphasis on local work. Shop Girls is now carrying many Sixth & Elm pieces in their beautiful shop, and my work is in very good company there.

I fell in love with many items including some beautiful and unique jewellery, scarves and some very amazing mixed media pieces. Okay, fine, I actually did buy a necklace and pair of earrings and I had to keep reminding myself I was there to sell, not to buy in order to stop myself buying more. I have a feeling any money I make there will not last long and will quickly be used right back up buying goodies there for myself. Oh well, groceries are over-rated anyways.

Sorry.

Yesterday I threatened to throw a snowball at someone in an Etsy forum thread and someone else commented that I could since I live in Canada and I replied that I was in Toronto and yeah, it gets cold enough for snowballs here, but in January, not october and then ten minutes later it started to snow. In October.  In Toronto.

I walked into St. Andrew’s church, by the front doors, this time. Years of finding my way to the sanctuary by the side door had led me to forget there even was a public entrance, and it was odd to see the double doors thrown wide, light spilling onto Central Ave. The plush teal-blue carpet had the same slightly musty smell, my footfalls puffing up little invisible clouds of long-stale incense and candle smoke. There were more lights then there were on my Tuesday evenings spent there – large stage lights that gave off a heady heat. I imagined the feel of them on my face as I looked over the packed pews and was a little thankful that I would be sitting down, behind the glare tonight. It was the only thing I was thankful for.

I was to be a Christmas celebration. Not a mass, a concert. Secular and sacred, modern and traditional, the few hundred gathered had come to hear them sing. Some for the first time, some for the hundredth. Some, like me, for the first time on this side of the pews.

The first of the girls entered by the back door behind the altar. I pictured the line running down from the little staircase and the girls quickly checking that the folders were on their audience side. The light flashed mutedly off the silk of their cream gowns as they walked to their places in a double synchronized line. Smile to the audience. Don’t move a muscle.

He entered first, she following, heading to the conductor’s stand to bow. She sat down as the Pianist entered and bowed. The first song must be one of his. I hadn’t taken a program. I don’t know why, but the glimpses I caught of the familiar titles as I walked past other listeners seemed to pain me. I would listen, and try to be ignorant.

I missed it. My Tuesdays were empty now, my Saturdays filled with a new crop of activities. I had to leave it behind eventually, but deciding that then was the time was a hard decision. It had been part of my life for 10 years. Trips to Europe, Winning the CBC choral competition every year we entered, singing in Carnegie hall and representing Canada in international competitions. Things that made me proud. And the girls, best friends all with funny traveling stories and concert mishaps. Pranks, skits, little sisters and the new generation. I was 11 when I passed my audition to join the choral elite, but it was a hell of a lot more than a choir to us. You can’t sing as National Champions at that level without putting your whole heart into it, and we all did. And some of us left our hearts behind when we left.

Many Alumni are still involved with the choir heavily. Not me. More than geography, it is my heart that keeps me away. You can never go back home, they say, and Amabile was home. I learned after that first concert how hard it is to sit and watch, even now, almost 9 years since I have left the choir myself. I enjoy singing with the old group for “Amabile weddings” or other group reunions, but I can’t sit in the pews and watch while trying to stop the notes from spilling out of me with every ounce of restraint I have. It will always be this way, but that’s okay. Amabile was a huge factor in who I am today, who my friends are and what I believe is important, and that’s not bad for 10 years of work on John and Brenda’s part. The choir has done what it can for me, more than I can imagine, and now I need to do the rest myself.

Well, the trip to BC was amazing. We spent 4 days in Vancouver, Surrey and Whistler, then drove down (in a rented car) to Eugene, Oregon to see Emily and Colin (we miss you guys!) and came back up to White Rock for Sue & Chris’ wonderful wedding on Saturday before flying out of Vancouver again back to Toronto. I’ll be uploading my pictures (as soon as I find the damn cord for the camera) and talking about each day in detail, but for now I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures of Adam‘s and links to the rest of the set.

The blog has been quiet over the holidays due to the holiday rush, so I have some catching up to do. So, in the spirit of fourth grade english essay assignments, here is what the holidays had in store for us…

Orders from the shop, the majority of them custom designs, started coming in near the end of November and did not stop. It has been fantastic and horrifying and certainly a learning experience. I had completely underestimated the holiday rush for Sixth & Elm but that was very good news for me and I was able to buy some Christmas gifts for myself too, including the shiny new laptop I am now typing on. Running on 4 hours of sleep a night, cleaning out the supply of 8×8 boxes in the greater Toronto area and finding out what the couch cushion looked like with ebony black wood stain were some of the things I would liked to have skipped, but despite the rush I enjoyed it all.

I especially liked being touched by the stories each custom box told between the gifter and the receiver. The shy and sheepish requests for cute, silly, sweet and nonsensical (nonsense to me, anyways) phrases or images burned onto the boxes each told the story of a bond – a sweetheart, a daughter, a friend – and it is rather nice to be surrounded by these stories at this time of year.

For sanity’s sake during the rush I did take a few breaks to make some pieces for my family and for the shop. My sister Tia has liked the copper tree sculptures I have been making this year, so it seemed only appropriate that I make her a tree in her favorite colour for her favorite time of year. I have a listing up at the shop of the Christmas tree I made her if anyone is interested in commissioning a similar piece. I also finished a decorative wall map I made for her of Middle Earth from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Hers was unstained, as per her wishes, but I will be posting the version I stained with a Cabernet stain in the shop sometime this week.

We gave Mom a hand-etched wall panel of an elephant (Mom’s crazy about them) but the poor thing did not make it all the way to Mom & Dad’s. Staring at the cracked pieces of my hard work in the backseat after a fateful attempt to calm Chuki’s in-the-car panic attacks was really heart-breaking, but kitty didn’t get hurt on the glass and I can make Mom another.

I also played with copper plating a few items (using the electrophoresis tank at work – don’t worry, Yanming – it will still work for proteins), but I need to find a better conductive paint, and I made a few roses and other small clay items to fire sometime this year.

Next year I am already set up to explore origami and leather tooling (yes, it was because of Into the Wild, so what) along with some glass – slumping and maybe getting into lamp-working. Looks like it’s gonna be a busy year, but I can’t wait.

The latest etsybloggers blog carnival topic is “Thanksgiving Thoughts,” which is silly because we all know thanksgiving was a month ago. Wait, what? Americans celebrate thanksgiving in November? Why on earth would they do that? Everyone knows it is in October.

I guess it doesn’t really matter when you celebrate your turkey day, the scene is the same in houses across the continent, no matter when it is held. A frenzy of cooking, an occasional shout from the den as every male in the family cheers on the sports team on the TV (football in US, Hockey up here) and enough turkey, stuffing and wine to fill 100 people, despite the fact that you only invited 15.

I was born Chantelle Tremblay and although I am technically now a Finley, I still relish big family dinners and will always be a Tremblay on the holidays. My new husband Adam needed a little while to recover from his first experience of a Tremblay Holiday when he came to the first one 6 years ago as “the new boyfriend.” Poor guy just didn’t know what he was in for since his family dinners, while very nice, are generally a few hours shorter than ours and require considerably less energy. To help other unsuspecting future additions to our family or to help give you a glimpse of my life growing up, I prepared the following checklist for anyone who thinks they are ready to tackle a Tremblay Family Holiday.

1. Buy the biggest ham shank in North America. We don’t really do the turkey thing – french ham is our family holiday dinner, so you’ll have to get over the lack of poultry before we go any further..
2. Count your chairs. If you have more guests than chairs, gather up all the stools, boxes and blow-up exercise balls you can find in the house.
3. Count your forks. Again, if you have more guests than forks scrounge for anything remotely fork-like and use them for the kids table since they won’t mind eating with swizzle stick pitchforks.
4. Reconcile yourself to the fact that no matter how lavishly you decorate your table, everyone will still fight for seats at the kids table.
5. If dinner is scheduled to be served at 6, it will be served at 8. Just get used to it. It happens every year.
6. Rummage through the house for every bit of embarrassing paraphernalia you can find from your children’s childhood to bring out like Santa once all the guests are settled in the den. Macaroni picture of turkeys and stories of the first time your child tried to make you dinner will work, as well as pictures of them in goofy Halloween costumes. This step is even more essential if your children are bringing new boyfriends or girlfriends.
7. Forget the stereotypical football game and just flip to Hockey night in Canada for the men. It’ll save them having to change the channel from the football game you thought they’d watch to the hockey game.
8. If the Leafs happen to be playing the Senators, prepare for a long night.
9. Calculate the amount of wine needed and then add one bottle to that total – for Chantelle to spill on the carpet. If you have a white or cream coloured couch, add two bottles.
10. Buy the biggest pot known to mankind for the ham. Make everyone else move it around for you. Throw in a couple needless trips for the pot from the top of the stove to the counter and back just to make the men feel like they are helping.
11. Don’t let the men help, unless you are barbecuing thanksgiving dinner.
12. Put bells on the collars of all the cats or you’ll never find them again when it is time to leave. (Yes, we bring the cats – we all live indifferent cities) If you can’t find Jingle, look behind the DVD player.
13. You are required to serve all of the following for dessert: Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, Coconut Cream Pie and Lemon Pie. We don’t really care what you give us for dinner, as long as there’s pie.
14. Practice your interrupting-people-in-the-middle-of-a-word skills or you’ll never get a word in edge-wise.
15. A game of Balderdash is traditional after dinner. A hint about the players: Tia’s entry will always have a culture in it (“An English sport,” “A Mexican resort,” and “An Egyptian photocopier” are all previous definitions she has used), Mom’s is the one that either has birds in it or sounds like a university professor wrote it. Dad’s is usually funny, and sometimes a bit gross. Chantelle’s answer doesn’t usually make sense until you read it about 8 times, Terry’s is always about an animal and Adam’s is the one that always needs clarification (but usually the one we always pick).
16. Make sure you have a lot of blankets because no one should drive after that much Balderdash.
17. Eat, drink & Be Merry. The number one rule is that even if you ignore all the rest of the checklist, just have fun being together and it will be a successful Tremblay Dinner no matter what else happens.

Etsy.com T-Shirts available at Etsy Labs – www.etsylabs.etsy.com

The question has been lingering since the birth of the site: what does “Etsy” mean? Is it an acronym? A word as yet unrecorded? A lithographer’s joke? But the creative crusaders behind the Etsy name aren’t talking. In fact, I think they are deliberately trying to mislead, because their hints and clues often contradict one another.

A quick Etsy forum search turns up 16,390 post results that are centered around, or at least touch upon, the subject. And the Etsy Admin Team seems to delight in each post, dropping hints and clues in such number that even if they were to outright tell us, we would believe it another dodge. Sometimes they do give an outright answer, but they are all so disparate and varied that their legitimacy is always questioned, especially since we all think they won’t give us the TRUE straight answer so easily after almost 3 years of deception.

When the subject is broached in forums the admins delightfully serve up kooky explanations such as “It stands for Expanded Truncated Structural Y,” or “It means ‘Horny person’ in Japanese,” (it may at that, but notice she does not say that is WHY it was chosen – this could be a coincidence discovered after the fact), that it is “the name of that stuffed bunny in Rob’s office,” (But which came first, the bunny or the site?) and that it is some variation or combination of other words in French, Italian, Spanish and even “Canadian” (but I’m in Canada and I have never used “Etsy” to refer to anything).

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA!!