Tuesday 27 September 2011

Beehive Excursions: The Toronto Garlic Festival



This past weekend, I visited the first annual Toronto Garlic Festival at The Brick Works. Many of us Bees have been very excited about garlic this summer. There was a really good crop of it at the farm, and we've been enjoying it in almost everything we cook. We've also been dreaming about making our own garlic braids. We've learned a fair bit about it, and I think we'll be giving it a try next summer.



Who knew that there were so many varieties of garlic?? The number of types of garlic was almost overwhelming! It seems that "Music" is the most common variety in Ontario. It has large cloves, is quite flavourful, and stores well. We picked up a number of different types, and plan to plant some in our garden this fall.



Mmm, pickled garlic scapes. We discovered garlic scapes this summer and became absolutely obsessed! They are the leafless flowering stem that comes from the plant, which are removed so the plant focuses it's energy on bulb growth. They are so delicious lightly sauteed in some butter and served as a side dish. Or just eaten straight out of the pan. Or you can make a tasty pesto with them.



In addition to the braids and bunches and bags of garlic you could buy, there was also a selection of delicious food containing garlic to eat. Needless to say, we had extreme garlic breath by the end of the day. But it was ok, because so did everyone else.

Thursday 15 September 2011

Knit Night On The Brain!




This past weekend in Hamilton was amazing. Supercrawl was so so good. The best ever. I was so impressed and thrilled to share such a great Hamilton event with some friends and family who were visiting. And we completed our giant knit façade of The Brain, which we've been working on since June/July.



We were literally knitting and piecing the installation together as it was going up. And many of us were knitting non-stop in the week leading up to the deadline. Towards the end we pulled out the big guns to speed things up - mega huge knitting needles! Thank goodness for chunky yarn and big needles.



We couldn't have done this without our friends and family. In addition to all the knitters that helped with the actual creation of the piece, we could never have installed it without the tireless help of Gary. THANK YOU GARY! Sky Jack operator extraordinaire. And Kieran and Mike. HEROES. And thank you Heather who patiently let us take over The Brain, inside and out.



Oh, and that amazing knit recreation of The Brain logo? Yeah, that was Courtney. She's the mastermind behind this entire thing. Not only is she speediest knitter I've ever met, she's also a genius when it comes to making up patterns. Three cheers for Courtney!!!




And now it's done. Our first giant Beehive project! If you swing by in the next little while, you can still check out the yellow section with The Brain sign, which is still up.

Thursday 8 September 2011

On The Brain


We are busy busy busy busy bees (how many times can we make this joke?). Our knit installation for Supercrawl has been taking up all of our time for the past couple of weeks. Knit knit knit knit knit knit knit. We'll finally be installing the whole thing tomorrow, and it will be available to view tomorrow evening at the art crawl and all day Saturday at Supercrawl on the facade of The Brain at 199 James Street North.

Over 70 knit scarves, 2 knit window boxes, a knit sign for The Brain, half a dozen crocheted flowers, 18 constructed wood frames later and we're ready. It's going to be incredible. We do hope that you'll be able to check it out. It couldn't have been possible without the local crafting community stepping up and pitching in. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Okay. Back to knitting for us. See you this weekend.