This Week's Favourite Things! Feb 10th - 16th, 2014

Wow I can't believe a week has already passed since I wrote my first "favourite things" list last week!

This week we have:

1. This video: "Clarence" by "This Way to the Egress".  I must say a couple of the folks in this video look and/or sound familiar... but maybe this is just a symptom of getting close to the Egress...



2.   The story of how Canadian speedskater Gilmore Junio gave up his spot in the 1000m race at the Sochi Winter Olympics so that his teammate, Denny Morrison, could have a shot at winning a medal.  He did!  Such a nice story!




3.  Another happy Sochi/Canada story! Sprouts, Chickpea Flatbread, and Red Cabbage Sauerkraut from Gali's Healthy Kitchen.  

Gali Makogon and her daughter Evgenia are both from Sochi Russia; Gali is at the Halifax Seaport Market every Saturday selling her delicious, healthy raw vegan food; Evgenia helps her out.  If you can't wait for Saturday you can buy food from their home too.   I am now addicted to their sprouts, $5/container, this week they were radish. I ate them all before I could take a photo! Living food! So good with sauerkraut and flatbread..  Items of Gali's will end up on my lists again I'm sure as everything she makes is delicious! I copied these pics by Evgenia off Gali's facebook page, I'm sure they won't mind!

sprouted chickpea flatbread

fermented red cabbage sauerkraut, good for your guts

Gali Makogon at her table; all pics by her daughter Evgenia

4.  "Metal Arts Village"  In Tuscon Arizona.  A friend sent me a link to this video which seems to be a cool example of artist live/work spaces.  In this case it seems that one of the metal artists is a lawyer who was able to front the dough to help create a village, providing live/work spaces as well as opportunities to share equipment and collaborate.  Neat idea!

Link to the Arizona Public Media Story that is the source of the video... I took the video off this post as I couldn't figure out how to make it not start automatically every time my blog is clicked on!


5.  Geronimo Stilton children's books.  I haven't actually read any of these books but I'm really intrigued.  I asked an 8 year old relative what books she's into these days and she mentioned these ones.  There are a lot of them! They're based out of Italy and have been published in 35 languages... 

This is super inspiring because after writing my first list of favourite things I also wrote my first "monkey story" : "The Story of the Monkey with the Banappleloupes".  which I've been editing down to be more kid-friendly and earn parental approval.  Suddenly I have ideas for many more "monkey stories" featuring purposefully gender-neutral monkeys and hopefully promoting things such as sharing and environmentalism in a subtle, entertaining way.

Judging by the lack of 'art' on my blog lately you can see I've been taking a break from my clay studio.  Partly because my glaze shed is all frozen up and partly because of economic issues that will be addressed 2 monkey stories from now: "The Story of the Monkeys who liked to make Banappleloupeholders and the Monkeys with Banappleloupeholder Stores".  But before I write that one I'll be posting "The Tale of Two Monkeys Who Wanted to buy all of the Trees in the Forest" which will be about 2 monkeys that get into real estate investing, but with different objectives.

For now "monkey stories" seem to be a very low-cost quick way for me to scratch my creative itch while using some of my animal behaviour/conservation biologist background.  And it doesn't dry my hands out like clay does.  We'll see what happens!

Eventually I'd like to add illustrations to the posts with "mokey stories", and maybe even record my 80 year old artist friend Helen Opie reading them aloud if I can get her to agree, she has such a nice voice for that sort of thing I think!