roxton mini - surplus wool blanket and duffle: $125


roxton mini - red/brown leather and surplus wool blanket: $135

bellwood bags (big and small)

bellwood (big): $195, available with canvas or wool body


bellwood (small): $185, available with canvas or wool body

Oh, hello there!

How was your summer? Since it's officially fall (yesss!), it's definitely time for an update.

Two new styles, to start:

jarvis tote: $255 (CAD), also available in grey/blue canvas.



roxton: $240 (CAD), also available with in brown leather.

I was never good at keeping up journals...

Taking a bit of a summer vacation, but be back soon!

Making things is an unavoidably wasteful business; we inevitably end up with piles of fabric scraps, no matter how carefully we plan our cutting. But we do try to save some of our scraps for future use so they don't all go into the landfill.
(This is especially important now that the garbage strike in Toronto is in full swing - ugh!)


(Here's Mhairi printing)

One thing we use our tent scraps for is to make our 'jack&marjorie' labels for inside of the bag. To do this, we use this great little machine: the print gocco. It is basically a mini screen printing machine that is super-easy, fast and tidy to use.
There are a few different machine sizes available; this one prints postcard size, which works pretty perfectly with our smaller scraps.

The machines are from Japan (can't you tell by how cute it is?!), which is where I bought mine.
Unfortunately Riso, the company that makes it, decided not to produce the machines and supplies anymore, despite outcries from the online crafting community. But there are still places online the components can still be found.

Happy Canada Day, Canadians!

millicent and kang (cecil)

These are my great grandparents on my father's side, Millicent and Kang. This photo is something I really treasure: I've amassed a good photographic history of my ancestors on my mother's side of my family, but on my dad's side this is all I have.

Aside from that, how rare is it to see an inter-racial couple in a photograph of this age?

edit: my dad told me that my great-grandfather actually went by the name Cecil. He also said this photo is likely over 100 years old, since my 95 year old granny believes it was taken before she was born.

I was given my grandmother Marjorie's sewing box (yes, that Marjorie) a few months ago -
It's pretty cute, with lots of vintage-y looking sewing stuff inside to look at, but there are a few things that especially stand out for me:



My grandfather Jack (yeah, that Jack) worked for a moving company, and it seems that these were business cards he gave out to the 'lady of the house'. It's a sewing kit! (With a 'so/sew' pun no less, which I normally hate, but I guess since it's so old it's okay).



I'm not entirely sure what this is - a long thimble? Whatever it is, it was given out by the Bell Telephone company (where my grandmother did actually work for a time). On the other side is says: "Tell your friends about good job openings at the Bell".

Imagine getting something like this nowadays; at best it would be strange, at worst, offensive (a major corporation distributing sewing notions with ads looking for 'girls!'). But that's what makes all this stuff so charming, I guess.