Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2012, Visual Recap
I love Maker Faire so much I became a founding member of Vancouver’s Maker Foundation, which was set up this year by Emily Smith, the woman responsible for launching the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire. We have big plans. I’m so very excited to be a part of it. I had Mighty Ugly going all weekend, with the unwavering help of four of the most dedicated, amazeballs volunteers in the history of working for free. Diana, Donna, Fiona and Amanda, THANK YOU. My brain hasn’t fully recovered from the whirlwind, after which my parents stayed in town for another week of awesome visit,...
Read MorePleasantly Surprised: The New IKEA in Richmond, BC
Because I don’t write a traditional crafts blog with projects and tutorials and I don’t write a traditional lifestyleorwhatever blog with photos of my house and projects and tutorials and I don’t write a traditional business blog, it’s not often that I receive press releases that are actually related to what it is that I do write about. Oddly, there was a time when I was approached far too often about promoting winter car mats to my readers. Anyway, I have a point. Which is that a few weeks ago I was quite surprised to be invited to the media preview of the spanking...
Read MoreVancouver Mini Maker Faire
There’s so much I want to say about Vancouver’s first Maker Faire that I’ve put off writing this post for nearly three weeks. In the interest of getting over this block, I’ve decided to write a series of posts about it. To sum up, Maker Faire blew my mind. It was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, and I generally have a lot of fun. The vibe of creativity and community was nearly palpable. There was an utter lack of pretentiousness – no matter a maker’s passion, ideas were shared and lessons taught. It was like a creative, educational UTOPIA....
Read MoreAfter the Riots
The riots here in Vancouver after the Canucks lost Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals on Wednesday pretty much broke my heart. When I woke up Thursday morning, I found a Twitter message from Amy Swenson asking me if I’d like to write about it for a sports site run by women writers. It was exactly what I needed to do to work though my thoughts and feelings about it all. She put me in touch with the editors, and you can find my essay here. Please comment over there – I’d love to know what you think, and I’d love to give the site lots of comments after they gave me a...
Read MoreMaker Faire Excitement
Oh how I wish I could attend the Maker Faire in California next weekend. (Or the one in Detroit in July, or New York in September…) Next year, I hope! But I’m not terribly disappointed, because next month Vancouver will host its first community-organized Mini Maker Faire. Sanctioned by O’Reilly – the folks behind MAKE magazine, CRAFT online, and Maker Faire – these smaller, local “mini” events are pretty freaking awesome. And the one in Vancouver is going to be anything but mini. It’s going to be huge. And I’ll be there, doing a Mighty Ugly...
Read MoreSpreading Around the Awesome of Vancouver
One of the things I love and hate about my city is the passion people put into complaining about it (myself included). To an impressive extent, the complaining is in a productive context and isn’t just aimless whining. But it can seem at times like the default attitude here is that everything sucks. Last winter I followed my friend Lisa‘s good advice to enter contests, and I was lucky to win an Olympics transit pass from Vancouver Is Awesome, a local blog I’d only just discovered. I schlepped across town (by bus, natch) to meet the editor, Bob Kronbauer, to pick up my...
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I write here about creativity, business, crafts, books, pop culture and other stuff that forces its way out of my brain.
