Wij worden door klanten beoordeeld met een By clicking on Report you are accepting the Terms and Conditions of Gumtree.Actually, this photo was taken just before we left - that's fellow blogger Suzanne Carillo on the left, and yours truly on the right.  We were both somewhat overdressed for the weather.  I'm wearing a vintage dress I found at Beacon's Closet in New York last fall, thrifted denim jacket, and a hat I purchased at the show from What'll I Wear, a vendor that had very reasonable prices, and from whom Suzanne also made a purchase, but I'm getting ahead of myself..... Suzanne and I arranged to meet at Gadsden's Toronto Vintage Clothing Show held at Wychwood Barns this past Sunday.  I have attended the show in previous years, but Suzanne had never been, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for some shopping, eating, and yakking, three favourite  blogger activities.  The show is relatively small, with approximately 30 vendors taking part, so it can be covered in a couple of hours.

There were floral patterns everywhere, reflecting the long-awaited arrival of Spring (the weather was beautiful - sunny and around 17 degrees celsius).  The 1930's dresses on the left are from Emma Paige and unfortunately, I can't remember where the tunic and pants were from.  It was a challenge to identify the vendors as very few had signs on their booth and some of them didn't have any business cards. Carry your own little mini-ocean with this bag from Claimed Vintage Renee Piche always has great eye candy at her booth and this year was no exception.  The three large (horsehair?) flower brooches in the centre are by Hattie Carnegie. Robin Tillmanns of Factory Girl Vintage had a very unique way of displaying pieces of jewellery at her booth.  The photos are all of her mother-in-law at various times of her life. This lovely dress was on display at the Union Label Vintage Booth Apparently rompers are big this year (one piece with shorts - romper, one piece with full-length pants - jumpsuit) as we found quite a few on the racks. 

This one at Factory Girl Vintage was hands-down the coolest one at the show (many thanks to Suzanne for putting up with being asked repeatedly "can you hold this while I take a photo?").   The sleeves are open along the top with ties at the shoulder, elbow and wrist.  I'm wishing now that I had tried it on, because really, when is that opportunity going to come up again?backpack lusaka More rompers - Robin Tillmanns of Factory Girl Vintage holds a quilted cotton one, and the one on the right with the racy side cut-outs from Wild Thing Vintage.b207 backpack I saw this young woman trying on this amazing bold print opera coat from Wild Thing Vintage  and she decided it was coming home with her.timbuk2 q laptop backpack uk

This young lady was the coolest gal at the show.  Her sailor-themed outfit was just adorable, and if that wasn't enough, the extremely realistic tiger head at her feet is her backpack ( I couldn't stop thinking of Richard Parker from The Life of Pi).  She found the sailor's jacket at Factory Girl Vintage at the show and it fit her perfectly.womens yavapai backpack I asked Suzanne to take a photo of me with actor, antiques expert, props supplier and charming guy, Yank Azman.  alfie deyes backpackHe was one of the first people I talked to when I started coming to the Gadsden's show a few years ago, and I took his photo, wearing the same hat, and same gangster face in 2012 (you can see it in my post from that show here).  swiss gear laptop backpack ibex

He's been very supportive of my blog over the years, forwarding my posts about vintage shows to other vendors, etc., which I greatly appreciate. After a light lunch we visited our respective favourite bakeries in the neighbourhood.  I made my annual pilgrimage to Leah's Bakery for some of their chocolate peanut butter Rice Krispie squares while Suzanne picked up some eclairs from Pain Perdu Patisserie.  dofe backpackShe raved about them, so I had to try one, and it was as delicious as promised, and they are small, with real custard filling, as opposed to those giant, edible oil product-filled things you can find at doughnut shops. Self guided cycling sessions at a simulated altitude of 2,710m (15% oxygen). Train at your own pace whatever your goals may be. We utilise state of the art Watt Bikes and Star Trac Spinning bikes in our advanced altitude chamber. Take your training to new heights with a quicker workout and greater calorie burn.

Self guided running sessions at a simulated altitude of 2,710m (15% oxygen). Walk on the treadmills with a rucksack in preparation for trekking at altitude or run at your own pace for accelerated fitness gains. We utilise state of the art treadmills in our advanced altitude chamber and monitor your progress every step of the way. One hour consultation with one of our experts. In your appointment we will talk to you about altitude, explain the risks and give you important tips and advice on how best to cope. We then perform a health review that includes monitoring you whilst passively breathing altitude air up to 5000m to see how you respond to low Oxygen air. High intensity interval training class at simulated altitude of approx. 2,710m (15% oxygen). Participants should be mentally prepared for what is a short, but hard session. These short, intense workouts provide improved athletic capacity and condition, improved glucose metabolism, and improved fat burning.Since moving to Toronto I have been looking for a place to work.

My office in our home is a glassed-in back porch, and it is freezing in the winter, and so hot in the summer that the feeling of sweat dripping down my cleavage is something I now associate with writing. Every time my life with Mike changes, either because we have moved houses or had a child or switched cities, my home office dies a little more. My office is always bottom of the pole, the first thing to go even further south due to other housing considerations. I attribute this situation partly to being a writer (“I can do my work anywhere! All I need is a pen and a paper! A rock and something sharp!”), and partly to being a woman (“Oh, I can make something of this little corner! Don’t worry!”), and partly to being what I will here term “the organizing parent,” the person who has given up a sizeable chunk of her ability to make money in order to raise young children. Half a decade ago – at a point when I needed one so much less – I had a perfect home office.

Painted robin’s egg blue, with built-in bookshelves, it had its own little balcony and actual, opaque walls. Before children, my work life was safe.Mike is at a bustling office on the other side of town. He comes home when his work is done. I am in my torture aquarium, and it’s 31 degrees in here. I am writing this while the 15-month old Annie slaps the glass door that separates my slightly fungal feng shui disaster box from the rest of our home. My office is always bottom of the pole, the first thing to go even further south due to other housing considerations You can see this glass door slapping is a regular occurrence – Annie goes at it with both hands like a pint-sized Stanley Kowalski (only instead of “Stellaaaaaa” it’s “Mamaaaaaa”) – because the entire lower portion of the door is covered in little hand prints, equal parts banana, Baby Mum-Mum and milk saliva. So, welcome to all my readers! And may I offer you the grand tour? Here is the bookshelf that has been co-opted by art supplies for Beatrice’s easel.

Here is the easel. Note how gigantic the easel is. Here are two panda bears and two dollies wearing bibs in a play stroller. Here is an actual stroller, non-play, its basket filled with Baby Mum-Mum wrappers and dried-out wipes. Here is yet another stroller and a tricycle, and because it rained last night, here are all the cushions for the patio furniture. Underneath it all, somewhere, is me, hair plastered to my forehead, taking time out from trying to connect my feelings to yours in order to look up portable AC units and easy-installation door blinds on Amazon. For the last six months, I have been looking for a library – the right library. The Toronto Public Library branch closest to the house, the Deer Park Library, rarely has free seating. I have on occasion sat in the children’s section on a tiny plastic toadstool of a chair. But typing with your knees at your chest in a kiddie chair on a play rug can feel like two steps back for someone trying to escape Banana-hands Baby-land.

The Toronto Reference Library, with its Balzac’s café and its cute shop selling all manner of hipster paper goods, and its regular loudspeaker announcements of lectures beginning in 10 minutes is, for me, too distracting. A few weeks ago, I left the Reference Library for the nearby Yorkville Public Library, where I sat near a large man carrying three large backpacks, one which, I am sure, was entirely filled with urine. I have gone to the public libraries in Forest Hill (swarms of loud students, very disturbing yellow decor), Wychwood (people sitting on the floor, no power outlets) and on Mt. Pleasant (an in-your-face celebration of Tourette’s Syndrome). For a while I thought I’d found my spot at the Emmanuel College Library, an insanely beautiful neo-gothic University of Toronto library for theology students, but I soon discovered that too many popish oil portraits staring down made locating my matzoh-fed funny bone ever more difficult. The elephant in all these imperfect rooms was Robarts, the main University of Toronto library, on St. George Street.

I would tell friends about the oil paintings with Mona Lisa eyes in Emmanuel and the urine-bag man in Yorkville, and they would all ask me why I didn’t go to Robarts. Robarts had a lot of space and a lot of quiet. The answer lay on my own bookshelf. I lived in Toronto in the early 2000s. I had a Robarts card. I liked Robarts for its quiet, for its books and for its incredibly weird Brutalist architecture (something any Montrealer feels very at-home with, thank you Mayor Drapeau). In 2003, when I was 30 years old, I took books out. For a number of reasons, not least leaving Toronto in a medical emergency that had me back in Quebec for over a decade, two never returned. The books were not lost. The books simply stayed with me: Returning them this week felt like playing karmic lute strings. Approaching the returns desk seemed like such a big deal to me, I was half expecting alarm bells, or alternately streamers and confetti, once the books were scanned in. The librarian did her scanning and said nothing.

And then the only reason she said anything was because I was standing there, looking idiotically expectant. “You know those books have been out for 13 years,” I told her. It was incredible to me that I was even still in the system. Sartre wrote that a man who gets on a train is not the same as the man who gets off, and yet, here I was, same as the person whose information was entered so many chapters ago. The librarian looked into her computer. “You owe us $4710.00,” she said. I cut a deal with Robarts: $50 a book. There was also another $135 dollars in late fees from other books I’d borrowed in 2003. When I told Mike about my negotiation with the library, how I got off for a mere $235, he chastised me for paying anything. “It’s enough that you brought the books back,” he said. There are things I can’t explain to Mike, and this is one of them: something about clearing slates and fixing things. Something about being alive, and able to bring those books back without the help of a cane or wheelchair.