Rare Hands Good

January days are slow and peaceful here. But, as always, we've got new stuff coming in. And all local, y'all!

Ok, so our newest line Rare Specimens is something that I'm really excited about. Jane, on the other hand, is bashful about it. That's probably because she's the maker behind these natural mineral accessories.

Jane has always dabbled in jewelry making, but it's hard to find the time for our crafty side, right? I'm really thrilled that she's motivated about it again, because I mean, look at these earrings. They're lovely.

Eleven years ago during March Break Jane and I went to Florida. With her dad. It was one of the defining moments of our friendship, as road trips tend to be. While we were there, we combed the beach looking for "rare specimens" to bring home with us. As Jane is interested in using natural materials, the name is a nod to that. So obviously, I like that a lot.

Yay for Jane!

This past weekend, our store was home to an intimate acoustic performance from Toronto band Hands & Teeth, in anticipation of the release of their first full length album Hunting Season. They left a limited number of copies at the store, and if how fast their EP Enjoy Your Lifestyle sold here were any indication, these will go fast too. The album design was actually done by our friend and bandmate Adam, and I am really smitten by it. Just a really awesome and talented bunch of people to support all around.

We're super excited to now be stocking Good Night, Day knits. Knit here in Hamilton by Tara-Lynn, these sweet pieces are luxurious and super soft and warm. All of her designs are named after different small towns in Ontario, and it's such a genius and heartwarming idea.

Jane and I are both in love with the dip-dyed Meaford Cowl. We just can't seem to get a photo that will do it justice. The colour variations are so subtle, yet so very stunning.

I gave Jane the camera for this one and instructed her "more cowl, less face." If this were a school assignment and I were the teacher, I'd probably give her 40% on her composition. But, she tried. She should stick to jewelry making.

18 Days

Internet, meet Kate & Liz.  If they look familiar, it may be because you recognize them from one of the zillion other things these girls do.  Like running Knit Nights at The Brain, planning craft fairs, making amazing installation walls for school projects, running beautifully curated vintage shops, working for Jenna Rose, and so much more. These ladies are dynamos. That's a word right?

Anyway, they have a new project up their sleeves, and it's going to be pretty damn exciting.  In 18 days, at the February Art Crawl, they will be celebrating the grand opening of Needlework.

Needlework is going to be a fabric + creative workspace, with all sorts of amazing fabric, super interesting classes, sew by the hour facilities, patterns, books and more.  It's going to be awesome, so mark your calendars. In the meantime, you can follow along with their progress over here on Kate's Blog, or over at their new website, I Love Needlework.

February 10th: super awesome things happening.

(photos from kate the hunter)

Hands & Teeth: Live at White Elephant

Did we ever tell you our dear old friend AK is in the band Hands & Teeth?  Did we ever tell you that the band Hands & Teeth is awesome? Both of these things are 100 % true.

These guys say they are a "rock and roll band from Toronto with a particular penchant for vocal harmonies", I say they are super effing cool. Cool enough that I'm pretty sure that our dear old friend who is in the band  is going to become a full on rock star any day now.  We're excited for this, but mostly so we can say "we knew him when...."

Anyway, Hands & Teeth just put out a new album, Hunting Season, and it's great. If you don't believe me you can listen to it yourself over at exclaim where the whole thing is streaming.  Or, better yet, you can come see them play this Saturday at White Elephant, for free.  They'll be at the shop at 3pm, promoting their new album and their show later that night at Casbah with a lovely little White Elephant set.   It's going to be good.

To repeat: Hands & Teeth. Playing live. 3pm. Saturday January 21st.

Back At It

Last week was kind of a write-off. Post holiday blues. But we're back in the swing of things over at the shop and online. Tons of stunning new pieces over at Ainslie Wood Co. (and hey, have you checked out our lookbook?) I died a little on the inside when I found that white tiered lace dress.

Over at the bricks and mortar, tonight is the first Art Crawl of 2012. You can check out the rundown over at H Mag. We'll hope to see you there.

2011 Retrospective, Part 2

And so continues our year in review... man, it was a good year.

In July we made a picnic themed window, and hung an amazing vintage fringe bikini. An old lady later came into the store and told me "I normally would never come in here, but I saw that other lady come in first. I thought this place was a strip club because of that bikini".

In August we finally got a nice big White Elephant stamp and we began custom printing our bags. Lindsay, Krysten, and our newest intern Carly are AMAZING at this. Seriously.   Carly is our newest intern at the shop, and although I don't have a picture of her, you'll just have to trust us that she's adorable and has helped us immensely.

In September Hollie, Gary, Mike and I accomplished a dream as old as our shop, and finally painted a big White Elephant mural on the side of the building.

We were also pretty busy with this little thing called Supercrawl.... maybe you've heard of it?

October was another amazing and busy month. We re-launched our online clothing site, Ainslie Wood Co., and got to visit the lovely ladies of Victoire again for the You Love Vintage and Vintage Loves You Sale. It was gorgeous dress overload. As an added bonus, Hollie finally got to see the Parliamentary Cats!

In November we started carrying a new artist in the shop, Marianne Chénard, and spent a lot of time getting ready for the busy Christmas Season.

In December we built one of my favorite windows yet, a beautiful lace and doily wonderland featuring an honest to goodness TEE PEE. Then we took a week off and slept the entire time, or something like that.

I can't wait to see what 2012 has in store!

2011 Retrospective, Part 1

2011 was a good year at the shop. 2011 was a busy year at the shop. So busy, it's going to take me two posts to cover all the things I wanted to.

In January, our interns Krysten and Lindsay started. Hollie and I are so thankful for all the help they've given us, and the things we've got to accomplish as a result of their help. These ladies are pretty awesome all around.

In February, all four of us undertook a crafty window display that ended up on the Canadian Living blog. Not too shabby.

In March, we put up a window display we've used a couple times in the past, but I always love it.  We also spent a lot of time getting ready for our first ever visit from the Victoire Ladies. It was so lovely to have them come down. Party time.

New sign alert!  In April we finally picked up our new sign, one that lots of people in the community helped us to get after our first one was stolen.  Dear new sign: I love you.

Man, May was so exciting I need a break just looking through it. All of us undertook a big project re-painting our outdoor bench in some bright spring shades.  We hosted the first ever James St North Pop Up Shop with the ladies from Victoire, preloved, Robber, Fieldguided and Yarn Over Movement.  I think we can safely call that a success.   We also finally got around to creating our dream window display.... White Elephant Featuring KITTENS!

In June, our store became the backdrop for Spenny's new show, Single White Spenny. Seeing White Elephant all dolled up as Spenny's Funtastic Novelty Emporium was pretty amazing.  We also hosted Jenna Rose's 5 year anniversary party during art crawl, and loved every minute of it.

See? Busy! We'll do part two later this week.

Lookbook: Faded Forests

We’ve been working on something for a while now, and today we are so excited to be able to show you. Probably over a year ago, Hollie had the idea to shoot a lookbook for Ainslie Wood Co. After a lot of work, and a truly amazing amount of help, it’s ready.

We hope you enjoy the first official Ainslie Wood Co. Lookbook: Faded Forests.

We named it Faded Forests after one of Emily Dickenson’s letters, but more so, because have you seen those pictures? If they are not the embodiment of faded forests, I don’t know what is.

I mentioned we had a lot of help, and when I say a lot, I mean WOW I CAN’T BELIEVE WE HAVE SUCH NICE FRIENDS. There are a lot of people to thank, so let me get through this.

First and foremost, we probably wouldn’t have undertook such a project if we didn’t know an amazingly talented photographer who was gracious enough to volunteer his services. Jesse Senko took all the photographs, provided most of the art direction, and turned a pretty simple photo shoot idea into something magnificent. Most of these shots were taken in total darkness, or at the very least, in absence of any real sunlight or flash. Do you know what kind of skills you need to have to pull that off? Serious skillz.

While we’re on the subject of Jesse, there are a lot more Senkos to thank. All the photos were taken up on his family farm, and his entire family was warm and gracious as a group of nine mostly-strangers took over their home with clothing racks, makeup applications and hair teasing. Jesse’s wife Melanie even cooked us an amazing meal and had snacks on hand all day. All of the Senkos are lovely, lovely people. Thanks guys.

We also lucked out by knowing a couple of uber-babes who modeled for us. Do you know how many beautiful and gorgeous friends we have? A lot. The modeling was done by Heather (co-owner of The Brain), Jessy, and Fehn. Hollie and I spent a good portion of the shoot going “Oh my god I can’t believe how pretty you are!” These girls were all serious troopers, putting up with something like a 10 hour shoot, and wearing skimpy dresses (or fringe bikinis) while standing in a freezing cold windy field. In some of the shots that we didn’t use, you can see gigantic goosebumps on their skin. Troopers I tell you, super babe troopers.

That’s not all though, not even close. When our hair and makeup assistant cancelled on us THE NIGHT BEFORE the shoot, we were in a complete panic. Hollie was going to try to learn to apply makeup via the internet that night, until some people stepped in and saved our asses. Hollie’s sister in law Allison Cillis did all the makeup, and it was just what we were hoping for. She did an amazing job. After some panicked twitter posts looking for someone who could do hair, the power of the Internet saved us and sent us Lee-Anne Wilson. Lee-Anne was nice enough to entertain a 10pm call from me asking if she could work with us on a shoot the following day, and then she delivered. Hollie and I had always imagined wind-swept, wavy, hippy chick hair, and that is exactly what we got.

Seriously, the entire shoot day was great. It was cold, raining, cloudy and took a million times longer than any of us thought, but it was so fun. The team of people that worked on this project made something that could be long and unpleasant into a fantastic experience. Even though we were working, it felt like we spent the better part of our evening just hanging out in a cabin in the woods, drinking some gin. If all photo shoots are like that, count me in.

We would also be crazy not to thank our amazingly talented friends Hubert Marczuk from MethodGroup for the amazing job he did with the lookbook website, and Mike Jerome, Designer to the Stars, for putting up with all our design requests as usual. They both put up with a flurry of emails from Hollie and I that almost always start with “that looks great, but can you do this…”
and were really both the sweetest. We had never met Hubert before this project, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. He’s great. MethodGroup is great, and as an added bonus, he designed the site so that the pictures are always to scale. Try dragging and changing the size of your browser frame… it’s pretty neat.

Ok, I think I have everyone covered. Do I? Oh god I hope I didn’t miss anyone. Thank you to all our amazing friends who helped us. Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for looking at our lookbook.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Check out the full lookbook here.

Whitewashing

I picked out a colour called "Swan Wing" for all the trimwork in our house. The name sounded beautiful and sad (I've always associated swans with a kind of noble sadness) and as the woman who mixed the colour for me said "well, it's white."

If I had an infinite amount of time (and patience to live in a torn apart environment) I would scrape all the layers of paint off of all of the woodwork in our home. Layers upon layers of faded olive and peach and cerulean blue, all obscuring a rich warm wood. I've previously moaned over how much wallpaper we scraped off the walls of this house initially, but right now there's nothing I'd rather do than chip away inch by inch the remnants of all its past lives.  A cathartic process which I've come to actually enjoy, I suppose.

Sometimes though, you just have to cover things up with a fresh coat of paint. It really does make everything look better.

2011 was so good to me. It was one of the best years yet. I am sad to see it go, but I am also humbled with gratitude for all that has happened, and all that will continue to happen. That means the hardships and the blessings.

I haven't really given much thought to resolutions. I once read that if you make small resolutions all year, instead of in one big go, you'll have a better chance of sticking to them. So that's what I try to do - keep doing, keep making, keep thinking, keep trying, keep learning, keep changing, keep failing, keep improving. All that stuff. I try to do it all with a good heart.

It's pretty much all that I can do.

Break Time

We'll be closed at the shop until January 3rd, 2012. We'll be making good use of all of this spare time by visiting family, friends and watching all the Die Hard movies. Maybe The Long Kiss Goodnight, too, we'll see how it goes. We were so overwhelmed with all of you who shopped and supported local this year, and we're so thankful for everything that 2011 brought. We hope Santa was good to all of you, and that 2012 will bring much love and joy to you and those that you love. See you in the new year, friends!

Gift Guide Round Up

Don't freak out or anything, but you only have two days left until Christmas!  If you haven't picked out all your gifts yet, you might be panicking. You might be pretty nervous right now, thinking of the terrible crowds and huge line up you'll have to face at the mall.  You're sweating just thinking about it, aren't you?

Don't worry. We've got your back.  If you missed our Holiday Gift Guides over the last two weeks, here's a quick refresher. Each one is linked back to the original guide.

For your girlfriend:

For your boyfriend:

For your best friend:

For the baby boomers:

For children:

For your daughter:

For yourself:

And there you have it! Surely that puts your mind at ease. We'll be open today from 11am - 8pm, and tomorrow (Christmas eve!) from 11am - 4pm. Happy Holidays everyone!