Know what I can't get enough of?

Acorns. That's right. These wee acorn necklaces were custom made for a bride-to-be, who will be giving them to her flower girls as gifts. How cute! I've never accessorized children before, I'm very honoured. Cross-hatched brass caps sit on top of brown freshwater pearls, while tiny olive-green swarovski crystals float nearby.

Why you shouldn't read with headphones on...

Ever notice how the lines of certain poems, when taken out of context, sound like rap lyrics?

...Run your hands across the wheel. Stop
at ten and two, check the rearview, pop
the clutch and...nothing - shit - the thing's been up on blocks since 1982.

See? Now that's Elizabeth Bachinsky's poem "B&E" from Home of Sudden Service (Nightwood Editions, 2006), but it could just as easily be something off of Straight Outta Compton (Ruthless Records, 1988). Wait, there's more:

I know the hoe is never tired
it never needs to sleep or pass
the day just sitting in the shade
you made the hoe so straight I can't
chop down its purpose Boss it's good
for one thing only nothing else...

Maurice Manning, "can I say whew to you now Boss" from Bucolics (Harcourt, 2007)

Should I talk with the chalk of my white inside

On the board of my minstrel-blacked outside

Should I bleach my bile-name or mash it to a stink

Should I read for you straight or Gunga Din this gig

Daljit Nagra, "Booking Khan Singh Kumar" from Look We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber and Faber, 2007)

Hemitrichia Serpula and Adventures in Lost Wax

I was flipping through a copy of Mushrooms of Ontario and Eastern Canada the other day, hoping to find some good photos of the classic Amanita muscaria to help me create a field of felted mushrooms. Instead, I came upon Hemitrichia serpula (a distinctive slime mould with a fruitbody consisting of networks of canned-spaghetti-like veins) that I thought would look awesome in metal.

Out came the wax and spirit lamp! I got to work creating wax models of what I thought this shroom would look like if it were some forest fairy bling.

The waxes were then cast in sterling silver, and after a little magic and waving of hands, turned into these wacked out necklaces.