Home To FilKONtario!

FilKONtario is less than a month away! For those who aren't aware, this year's Toronto filk convention is special in that the Guests of Honour are the sixteen (16!!!) members of n'Early Music Consort (a.k.a. "n'MC"), an a capella filk choir based in Great Britain.

FilKONtario, Interfilk and n'MC have been raising funds for this event for the past three years. Here are the sketches I did for a fund-raising t-shirt:








Buttons were also made from these sketches, courtesy Blind Lemming Chiffon:



This may very well be the ONLY TIME that all of n'MC performs in North America, so make sure you buy your FKO membership soon!

In addition to concerts by n'MC and individual members within the choir, there will also be concerts by:

	Gwen Knighton: Gwen is a London-based master of the wirestrung harp and is a member of Three Weird Sisters. Gwen competed at Celtic festivals and Highland Games, and was named the Scottish Harp Society of America's National Journeyman Champion for the year 2000, which earned her a trip to Scotland's Edinburgh Harp Festival (!!).
	I first heard Playing Rapunzel perform Sholem in Germany, and was absolutely blown away. I could listen to Mich Sampson and Marilisa Valtazanou sing forever, I swear. You can hear samples of songs they perform here, including Sholem (*swoon*). Mich and Marilisa are also members of n'MC.
	Tom Smith made the switch to being a full-time musician in the past couple of years and has a HUGE fan following. With at least 12 albums under his belt, Tom has also gained a reputation as an incredibly fast songwriter...he has been known to write a parody of someone's song before the person has even finished performing it. :-)
	And yay for Toronto's own Phil Mills getting his own concert! I remember when Allison came back from a housefilk with praises for Phil's Universal Follower song. You can read the lyrics to some of Phil's other great songs on his music page. I've also gradually learned what a terrible/wonderful punster Phil is. :-)

There's a songwriting contest (theme: "Harmony") and lots of other fun programming planned. Please note that the info under Concerts hasn't yet been updated as of 1:26 pm today; Urban Tapestry does NOT have a concert this year...some of you were asking me in e-mail.

My own feelings about FilKONtario weekend can be summarized in a song I wrote years ago. I've posted the lyrics below along with some photos taken at previous FKO weekends. Urban Tapestry has been honoured to be asked to perform the song at the end of the convention each year, and it's wonderful to hear everyone sing along on the chorus:

HOME TO FILKONTARIO
===================
by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
(c) March 1999

I used to feel the lyrics slide inside my head
The music filled me up, and I felt I would explode in a
burst of coloured static, and the people all around, their eyes
on the ground.




CHORUS:
Bring me home to FilKONtario
Stay, sing with me we'll
be all right, sing all night
with my friends at Filkontario.

One fateful weekend, my friend took me to a filk, "What's a
filk", I said, and she laughed and took my hand, led me
to a room of people with guitars and easy smiles, and I
stayed a while.



CHORUS:
Bring me home to FilKONtario
Stay, sing with me we'll
be all right, sing all night
with my friends at Filkontario.

(plus counterpoint #1)
Bring me home to FilKONtario
Bring me home to FilKONtario
I want to go to FilKONtario



(plus counterpoint #2)
Filk FilkOntario...Filk FilkONtario
I want to go to FilkONtario

So now I'm hooked, I go to filk cons every year, never
get much sleep, why sleep? I could be filking...
The circle changes but the smiles are still the same, and the
song remains.



BRIDGE (a capella):
(but each time, I) find it harder to say
good-bye at the end of day,
may our paths cross again,
my friend.

Our voices may not be all perfectly on key, but we
lift each other up, and share the melody as we
fill the room with music, and I know I'll be all right as we
sing into the night.

 

CHORUS (twice):

Bring me home to FilKONtario
Stay, sing with me we'll
be all right, sing all night
with my friends at Filkontario.

(plus counterpoint #1)
Bring me home to FilKONtario
Bring me home to FilKONtario
I want to go to FilKONtario

(plus counterpoint #2)
Filk FilkOntario...Filk FilkONtario
I want to go to FilkONtario

FilKONtario 17 March 23-25, 2007 Delta Toronto Airport West Mississauga, Ontario Membership: $60 Filk Hall Of Fame Banquet: $36 Web site: FilKONtario.ca

Link O' The Day

Stabbing at Leia's 22nd Birthday Party: When my friend Ray sent me this link, I was totally turned off by the title ("why would I want to watch a stabbing?!?") and postponed watching it until Jeff encouraged me. Be warned that there IS strong language (i.e. not appropriate for kids) but if you're a Star Wars fan, this is pretty funny. :-D



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Cocooning

The above illustration was created for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Communication."

We've had a couple of relatively quiet weekends, which has been wonderful. I've done lots of reading and writing. My novel revision is turning into more of a rewrite than I expected (surprise surprise) so is taking me longer, but I'm very happy with the results so far.

I've been slipping into hermit mode lately; I'm sure it has something to do with the winter. All I want to do is burrow away into my office-cave, cocoon, and write. If I gave in to this tendency, of course, I'd end up as an anemic semi-comatose balloon, so I've been forcing myself to go outside at least once every day. Once I'm at the gym or out on a walk, I'm glad I'm doing it. The challenge is getting myself out the door! But I seem to be succeeding at overcoming my slothful inclinations; I've managed to get to the gym or other cardio-workout at least 4-5 times a week for the past few weeks.

I've gotten hooked on steel-cut oats in the morning lately. Quick-cooking oatmeal is tasteless mush in comparison! Dear lord. The only problem with steel-cut oats is that they take so long to cook, and I'm not the patient type. I've gotten into the habit of soaking them in water overnight, which vastly shortens the cooking time, but this means I have to remember to DO this the night before. It's worth it, though. Any other oatmeal fans out there?

Very much looking forward to our California trip. I'm bringing my laptop so I can do some writing every day, but also plan to do a lot of just hanging out with people. After the convention, Jeff and I be staying with friends (the Bohnhoffs, then Andrew and Jenny). We're also hoping to get together with some other friends (from university days) whom we haven't seen in a while as well. Unfortunately we could only take a week off; we have so many friends on the West coast with whom we would have enjoyed spending more time.

Also looking forward to California weather! It doesn't sound as if it's going to be HUGELY warmer than Toronto, but at least there won't be snow. I love snow, but it's always around this time of year I start getting tired of it. :-)

Link O' The Day

The squirrels in California are getting nastier! Thanks to Bruce for the link! (Bruce is one of the friends we're going to be seeing in California, yay)



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Orange bundt cake, why I love Toronto, and moose heads

Thanks to my friends Sue and Tom for the dinner and company last night. It was my first visit to their new condo, which has a spectacular view of the Toronto skyline:



It was interesting to contrast this with the view from the OTHER side of the CN tower, when Jeff and I stayed at his mom's condo.

This may sound sappy, but I do love this city. I've gotten to know it pretty well over the years, from when I attended the University of Toronto, lived in a cockroach-infested apartment near Spadina and Bloor, part of a house in north Toronto, an apartment at King & Parliament, a downtown condo in a high-rise across from Roy Thomson Hall, and now in a house in a residential area in North York.

Jeff and I also got to know more of Toronto while househunting over several years. Each time we seriously considered a house, I would check out the neighbourhood on foot as well as the nearest subway station to see whether it had some of the essentials I needed (like a grocery store and a bookstore, not necessarily in that order). I loved the fact that every neighbourhood had its own personality, as distinct as the people who lived in it.

One of the things I really like about Toronto is its multicultural aspect. Whenever I ride on the subway, I almost always hear other languages being spoken. You also see a wide variety in the way people dress, from business garb to multi-hued Mohawk hair to Goth to ethnic. To those really baggy jeans on kids where the crotches hang down to their knees that I still don't really understand but y'know, they probably don't understand what I wear, either.


Winter colour at Sue's and Tom's place.


Anyway, it was fun to catch up with Sue and Tom, see photos and hear about their trip to the UK. For dessert, Sue had baked an orange bundt cake with chocolate icing which was AMAZING. I had several slices, and was very happy when she offered to send a big piece home with me.

On the way home, I stopped by a discount book shop in the Yonge-Eglinton subway station. I try to support the local children's bookstore as much as possible, but my appetite for kids' books far exceeds the limitations of my wallet, so I also turn to libraries and secondhand / discount bookshops to help satisfy my craving.

As I beelined for the children's book section, I heard singing. Turning, I saw the store clerk dancing to a tune on the radio, and singing along. He wasn't half-bad, either. He gave me a grin and I smiled back, but turned back to my book browsing -- I was tired, and wanted to get home. BUT I couldn't resist the lure of this bookshop, which sometimes a good selection of books for young people; the selection tends to change each time I visit, depending on how overstocked publishers are with certain titles.

The fellow danced up to me several times and tried chatting, but I'd say something non-committal, smile, but made a point of going back to my books. When it was time to check out, I was surprised when he gave me a discount on my discount.

When I thanked him, he said it was because I gave him the "nicest brush-off."

:-)

Not a bad way to end the evening. And I have more books, yay! Books are good.



Above: an inflatable moose head that Tom brought with him from Winnipeg, wearing a GAfilk cap.

Thanks for a great visit and dinner, Tom and Sue!

Link O' The Day

INCREDIBLE flautist: Thanks to Fiona for the link. I would kill to be able to play like this.

Amazing underwater camouflage: Thanks to Reid for this link. If you're anything like me, you'll want to watch this several times. :-) Keep an eye on the plant in the middle as the camera approaches....



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my office cave

I took the photo of my office yesterday (the view from my desk) to post in a comment for Lisa Yee's blog where she wrote about writing spaces. I can SO identify with what she said:

A few people commented on my office, when they saw my last blog. Well, here's the lowdown on writers' writing spaces. Writers do best in spare spaces. Not having clutter around frees the mind, liberates the spirit, and energizes the creativity. Only, this doesn't work for me. I NEED to be surrounded by STUFF. Everywhere STUFF. I must tell you, though, I know EXACTLY where everything is. Except for the things that are lost.

Jeff is opposite of me when it comes to clutter, as is his mom. When his mother last visited, she walked into my office and said, "Oh Debbie, I had no idea you were like this!" Ginny, by the way, owned a gorgeous white condo that looked as if it came straight out of an interior design magazine. I was terrified of eating or drinking anything red in it! Hence the inspiration for this strip. :-)

Anyway, this is what my office space looked like before we moved in:



See the photo at the TOP of the page to see what it looks like now. To Beckett's clan: The reason you never see the wonderful quillow you made for me in my office pictures is because Jeff likes it so much AND it matches the rest of the house, so we keep it upstairs in our living room. I use it on a daily basis, and I love the little pocket where I can stick my feet to keep them warm. :-)

Here's what the other half of my office looked like, when the previous owner lived here:



The left corner you see in the photo turned into my office desk corner. We insulated the walls and ceiling, added insulating flooring and carpet, drywall. Here's what my office desk corner looked like, shortly after we set up funiture:



Here's what it looks like now:



If you click on the image above through to Flickr, you can see the associated notes with various objects.

The rest of the house is nothing like my basement office. Jeff agreed not to touch anything in my office (his tendency is to tidy up clutter wherever he sees it :-)) without my permission. My bookshelves are already overflowing; eventually I'm hoping to be able to put some of my books on other shelves in the house, but we need to figure out an organized system first. My tendency would be to stick anywhere there's space, which isn't the optimal solution, I admit.

For the first couple of months, I did try to raise the blinds in my basement office to let in a bit of natural light...but then I gave up on pretending I was interested in what was going on outside. When I'm working, the rest of the world fades away. So now I use my window alcoves as more shelf space. :-)




I love my home office: it's my cave, my sanctuary, my den of creativity. It's much more ME than the rest of the house, though I do love our house. In my Office Cave, however, I'm surrounded by mismatched colours and books and fabrics and stationery and craft supplies and music and, well, STUFF. And there's a tree in the corner with a reading chair below.

It's about as close to my Dream Office as I could ever get in this lifetime.

:-)

So what about the rest of you?

What's YOUR office like? And what would your dream office be?

Links O' The Day

Winterbells: soooo cute! Probably too cute for some of you, but I'm a big fan of the Orisinal games because of their cute artwork and mellow music. Looks kid-friendly, for you parents out there.

Curveball: Geez, I feel old. I still remember the days of Pong...

Yearly Squirrel Report: Thanks to my friend John Chew for the link. This is a genuine report in Lincoln, Nebraska, which has been nicknamed "the squirrel report" by city officials: an administrative report on how many outages the city-owned Lincoln Electric System has experienced in the past year and what caused them.

How To Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else): I'm still amazed and somewhat horrified by what some people blog about. Despite the list of tips given in this helpful article, I still say that the best strategy is NOT to blog about anything you wouldn't be willing to have published in a national magazine or newspaper.





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deviantART delivery and print quality

As I mentioned before, so far I'm going with deviantART as an online prints service. They offer a wide variety of prints with a choice in finishes. I ordered some sample prints about two weeks ago, which arrived yesterday, and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. Each print came protected in a cardboard sleeve, and the colours seemed fine to me. I ordered the "matte" finish, and I've also ordered one in "lustre" finish (should arrive in about a week) to compare.

I'm still going to do more investigating before I start "officially" publicizing my print shop but if you're curious, you can see what prints I have available now. And thanks so much to those who have already purchased prints! I haven't figured out if there's a way of finding out who has made purchases, but I do know what prints have been bought. I've decided to remove the small white margin from the print shown in the photo above, by the way, to make it consistent with the other Little Nightmare pics. The change(s) should go through once my newly uploaded images are approved.

I recently discovered Imagekind, which is apparently a Seattle-based startup in acquisition discussions with Amazon. Imagekind has a more professional-looking site, and also sells frames for your prints. There are tiered levels of services for artists. I've signed up for the free account (200 MB bandwith/storage, up to 24 images) and am going to check it out.

I realize that I could probably get much higher print quality by taking the files to a pro print shop but unfortunately I lack the time and motivation. A growing number of people have been asking about buying prints so I figured I could do this by using an online service that did pretty much EVERYTHING for me, even if it meant I'd get a smaller cut. Anyway, I'm using my deviantART print store for now, but will continue investigating.

Thanks to those who answered my Morning vs Night people survey in Inkygirl yesterday! I've posted the results today.

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated! Accompanying blog topic: Useful software For Writers (Part 2). I also posted a survey for writers about what question THEY tend to dread. :-) Please feel free to post your answer in Will Write For Chocolate. Click on the image below for a bigger version.

Links O' The Day

Body painting: Incredible examples of body painting by Guido Daniele. Amaaaaazing! Be sure to click on the hand painting section (the one with the hand painted like a cheetah).

Pooktre Tree Shapers: The site could use some design help, but the shaped trees are impressive...they look like a younger cousin of the Ents. :-)

RiverStyx.com: I limited myself to only exploring a little bit of this site because I could tell it was a potential time vampire. At first glance, it looks sort of Myst-like, sort of educational. I'd be interested in feedback from any of you who are brave enough to explore further.




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