We kicked off May with an afternoon visit from Dawn and Nicky. I had been working on some felt inspired by all the daisies blooming on the grass in the park. Really enjoyable hearing about Dawn's recent travels in Uzbekistan and Turkey and hearing about Nicky's work as an English professor at SFU and her weaving and costuming projects.  

Daisy-inspired wool felt. I used pre-felts (incompletely felted wool fabric) to form the daisies.

May the Fourth be With You! Although I failed miserably to photograph our experience (other than these two quick shots just before our destination), I did manage to lead a ride from the AP Fieldhouse to Deer Lake Park for the Burnaby Blooms Festival. It was a small, skilled group of riders, but I pre-rode the route and made a map just in case. We started off with coffee and scones and enjoyed ride on mostly separated bike routes. Yaaay Burnaby!! 

We finished up the sewing on Graham's sailboat cushions May 9 and he brought everything home to be installed.

Laura, an accomplished clay artist, who I ran into at Burnaby Blooms, was interested in making a pair of coveralls. She diligently visited over the course of the month to adapt my pattern, cut out her chosen fabric and serge & sew the pieces together.

Wednesday Friendsday crew celebrated Nicole completing her classes and gaining Wednesday night freedom with a potluck, glitter tattoos from the thrift store and a better than usual jam. Download the file below to hear a sample.

Oh my! Souper Sunday on May 18th was spectacular! We met local family Krysta, Krystal and their two kids, Ellen, Patrick and their four kids who came all the way from Oakridge, as well as Jessica, Ian and Jason who were all mending. I made a vegetarian lentil soup with all of the above ingredients and it was a pretty sweet time all around. Since I have a lot more Makemobile bookings on Sundays in the Summer, I will probably not be able to host any more Souper Sundays until the Autumn.

Wet felting Wednesday afternoon May 28 was the hottest day of the year so far and pretty quiet. A nice day to wet felt under a tree in the park. I met a few neighbours and park users, one being George, who rides his bike all the way from UBC several times a week and another was local singer/songwriter Susie Ungerleider!

These photos are from several Wet Felting Wednesdays in April - April 9, 16, 23.. I take my felting supplies outside and felt in the park and talk to neighbours. There's an RSVP form if you want to attend an upcoming Wet Felting Wednesday - or contact me if you want to do wet felting on a different day.

Nicole and José of The Magic Triangle came to visit April 12. We made some tiny paintings on the "Swirl Art Junior" from the thrift store. They play shows often! Go see them and buy their music. 

Souper Sunday April 13. Graced with the presence of Random Old Lady aka Barb Shaw and Jason Harder aka The Cycle Driven Gardener. It seems like all my friends are super heroes.... Good times - they both played songs! I made Potato Leek soup.

Sharon Kallis from EartHand Gleaners came to visit April 14th. She showed me her new obsession: Card Weaving - and we did what friends do: I helped pin the back of the neckline for her to alter her gloriously striped hand-grown, hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-woven, hand-sewn vest!! 

A few metres away from the Fieldhouse grows the Community Garden - complete with espaliered apple trees and happy bees. Mmmm April had such bee-youtiful blossoms! 

I met some of the Community Gardeners and we agreed to co-host a Free Market in the park. So I drew some birbs and made a poster. The crow is based on a photo of local celebrity corvid, Canuck the Crow. RIP.

Heather and I at the first "Souper Sunday" on March 30th. 
"Latergrams" are what my friend Sharon calls the posts you don't post right away. You find the photos in your phone and get them up when you can, while living your life, not devoting every moment to digital documentation. In a year it won't make a bit of difference that 7 weeks has passed. 
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Repotting plants, sewing aprons and making cards also all from late March.

Here's the poster that I made for the Fieldhouse in April.  At first i made a grey, boring poster and realized that it wasn't great. So i tried again to make a colourful, hand-drawn poster, illustrating things we do at the Fieldhouse & hoping this would call out to the colourful, creative part of people. I hung them around the neighbourhoo.d and neighbours have gotten in touch. We've shared bike rides and crafting jams since then. I'm happy to report that Posters Work!