travelling shoes: tkaronto with mumsy!
this past weekend, mumsy and i headed to tkaronto (toronto) for our first trip together in a decade (rather than a full family trip)! dad and i conspired on it for her xmas gift after i was reflecting on how much fun we’d had on our last trip ten whole years ago, which was also spent in ontario with my nan and one of mum’s good friends. i looked up workshops for us to do together and found a scarf weaving workshop with joanna schleimer at the workroom in the lovely parkdale neighbourhood, and we were set!
tkaronto is a city that i really enjoy visiting, but it’s definitely not a city that i’d want to live in, and it’s not a city mum would want to live in either. she’s not one for giant cities, and while i’m comfortable traversing them thanks to the time i lived in london, the daily grind of surviving in one regularly is not something i’d choose. i do love the opportunities they offer with food and culture and workshops though, so it was fun to spend time with mum doing something we both enjoy (textiles) but haven’t had much chance to do ourselves (weaving with a floor loom).
the workshop was fantastic - we had beautiful weather the whole weekend so the sun was shining into the shop while we worked. our fellow students were a mother and son duo and we got along great. joanna is super knowledgeable, which is great, but even more importantly, she was very good at teaching total novices how to work our floor looms. the workshop was scheduled for 7 hours and our task was to weave a 6-foot herringbone scarf, which was possible because the tedious (i think) work of warping the looms was done before we got there. full disclosure: i hate warping looms and it’s the reason i’ve avoided starting on any projects on the floor loom in my basement. also i’m always busy, but the real reason is that i hate warping. i was still skeptical that we could finish the scarves in time, but everyone was actually finished an hour and a half early with beautiful projects!
other highlights of the trip included spending the end of our trip with one of mum’s long-time friends, eating delicious food at the tempered room, queen mother cafe, and chantecler boucherie, and not eating the $21 avocado toast at the fairmont’s in-house restaurant. i personally don’t think i know any millennials who can afford $21 avocado toast, but hey, if you can, you do you (personally i’d go with grabbing groceries at that point, but that’s probably because we just got very ripe avos for 40 cents each…). this trip was a bit of a whirlwind, but i’ll be back in town in a couple of months to present at a conference, and i’ll conspire on some more trips with mum with dad’s help… next up might be my birthday trip which i’m delaying to later in the year once i’m done dealing with all my giant projects. if anyone has suggestions for nice accessible hotels with good pools in orlando, lemme know!