Beyond Words

Highlights of FilKONtario 24

allisona — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:31:33 GMT

This list got long!

Friday

- Having Debbie there for one night!!!! Thanks to Walter for being able to transport her to and from the con. And a tremendous thank you to Walter for driving me to and from the con, too! He saved me a great deal of convoluted bus intrigue.

-Friday dinner with Morva and Alan. Lovely and never often enough.

- Gary E.’s animated Filk Waif antics. Too much fun and I really loved the little songs you did as concert intros, Gary!

- Learning that Kari Maaren is the Filk Waif next year!!! Yay, and that means I get to hear a whole concert of Kari's wonderful songwriting next FKO, which is cool.

- Hearing conchairs Peggi and Judithkick off the show. They are silly when they are together, yes they are :).

- Shaya and Pug’slovely concert! Shaya’s gorgeous hand-made harp! And their delightfully talented sons, Rafe and Simon, playing harp and keyboard! And watching Rafe and Simon play with Kapo and Tipper, the official con dogs.

- Awesome concert by Cheshire Moon. I had never heard Lizzie sing before. She’s a force of nature. Such an expressive performer!

- Heather Dale and Ben. Need one say more? Joyous, lilting, moving. She sang the song about the princesses coming to Quebec and the sailor falling in love and I cried. I bought her “Celtic Heart” CD in the dealer’s room.

- The lovely CD Crystal gave me! Thank you, Crystal!

- Gary’s fun Media Filk Circle! UT managed to squeeze in -one- song before Debbie had to leave :). Jodi and I did a few more songs, too, and I accompanied Karen singing “I Am Stardust”, which I always love doing.

Saturday

- a relaxing breakfast with Gary and Sheryl, though it was probably more relaxing for me than the Filk Waif! :)

- Jewelry buying in the Dealer’s Room. Just like it was so much fun buying Theresa’s jewelry at FKO when I discovered it a year or two back, this year I binged on Leslie Hudson’s new line of jewelry. So pretty!

-Lunch with Errol and Debs. They wanted tips on how to be a good Interfilk guest at OVFF this year (aside: Go to OVFF! Marvel at the exotic Canadian invasion, eh?). Jodi and I were willing to give advice, but then we roped Dave Clement and Elizabeth into the lunch with us because no one knows more about being a good con guest than Dave. Plus Dave is GoHing at the same con where Errol and Debs are Interfilking!

- hanging out at the craft tables cross-stitching, rainbow looming and talking teacher talk.

- Gary’s lively Waif concert and his talented crew of back-up musicians!

- The awesome and wonderfully friendly Copy Red Leader (also part of the Canadian invasion at OVFF!). I’m Spaceman Spiff and I rule the sky... Devin and his super cool layering guitar tracks! And Leslie and Devin speaking dialect in Star Wars-ese must be heard.

- Interfilk guest Piers Cawley, who was just mesmerizing with his collection of British ballads and humourous songs.

- Soooooj. Heather, Ben, Lizzie, the wonderful baritone guy and their drummer (forgive my memory on names!), all being mad and being more than OK.

- Filk Hall of Fame banquet! Banqueting with Walter, Errol, Debs, Kari, Karen, Anne and Gary McGath. Hearing moving speeches from FHoF inductees Kathy Hamilton and Michael Longcor. Cheering for inductee Talis Kimberley, knowing she is FKO’s GoH for next year! And lots of silly inside jokes about placecards where Howard managed to put us all in our place. Literally :).

- Backing up Errol and Debs and playing African percussion with Kari while they sang their parody “Circle of Wenches” at the beginning of the Interfilk auction. Watching Kathleen, Walter and a host of others act out the song below the stage. There’s a video over on the FilKONtario Facebook page. It’s cute. Go find it.

- Singing into the night with Joey, Gary E., Gary M., Kathleen, Morva and Dave, Crystal and Steve among others.

- hearing Joey sing more than I’ve heard him sing in quite some time. Hearing Joey always takes me back to my earliest and most magical founding days of filk. Makes me sentimental.

- Gary McGath’s Death Star polka. Yeah :).

- doing fun duetty things with Jodi like “Bring Me A Star” and Dr. Horrible’s “My Eyes”.

Sunday

- a lengthy breakfast with Joey, Walter and Jodi

- Jill’s “Biology” song in the Penguin Insta-song contest. Adorable. Loved it. She won first place.

- An amazing, powerful, emotional, magical Filk Hall of Fame concert. Too many fantastic performances to mention them all, but I will mention Judith’s performance of Talis’ “Good Night, Sarah Jane”, Michael Longcor’s “Imagination” and Bill Roper’s“I Am The Destroyer”.

- Leading everyone in “Home To FilKONtario” to end the con, always a tremendous honour.

- A great, fun, energetic jam led by Gundo and Tomto end my hours at FKO 24.

- finding Kari's "Being Watson" in the FKO 24 Songbook, because I really love that song. Speaking of which Kathleen's rendition of Jane Maillander'sparody of Heather Dale's "Joan" based on "Elementary" was cool enough to make me want to check out that show.

To the concom: It was an amazing weekend and thank you for making it happen. Wow, next year is FKO 25. A quarter century and I’ve been to every one. I don’t see that changing, FKO will always be home, and I’m pre-regged for next year! Everyone come next year and join FKO for their four day Silver Anniversary!

Merril Collection Filk Concert

allisona — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 18:08:48 GMT

I had a wonderful time last night at the Merril Collection filk concert in downtown Toronto. There was a terrific line-up of performers all singing on the theme "21st century filk". Cool to see how each filker interpreted that theme and I heard a lot of great new songs. I sang Seanan McGuire's "Missing Part" ('cause Firefly came out in 2002) and Lena Gabrielle's "The Peverell Story" ('cause The Deathly Hallows came out in 2007) and led a finale of "ISS (Is Somebody Singing?)". So much fun, and thank you, Peggi Warner-Lalonde, for organizing the evening.

Note: I have no idea how to edit photos over here anymore since Flickr stopped supporting LJ. Hope these turn out OK! I know they're too big :-/.

Save Your Stitches- Part 4

allisona — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:01:41 GMT

Save Your Stitches- Part 4, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

Hooray, I've been having all kinds of trouble with Flickr, but it looks like I've gotten them worked out.

Here's part 4 (of 18) of the monthly blackwork project I'm working on right now.

allisona — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 16:27:02 GMT

Isn't this cute? One of my students stitched it and gave it to me for Valentine's Day. When I asked her how long she'd been stitching she told me it was the first piece she'd ever done. Pretty impressive! And I was touched she gave it to me. It's up on my teacher bulletin board now.

Not A Drop to Drink

allisona — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 23:54:48 GMT

Sigh, we haven't had water in over 24 hours. There are big trucks and machines working out on the street, but we don't know what's actually happened. We keep scooping containers of snow from the backyard for some water purposes, but it's getting very inconvenient. You don't realize how often you turn on a tap during the day until you can't!

allisona — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 23:58:52 GMT

Each year in February our staff has a gift card lottery. We each throw a ten dollar gift card in a hat and hope for the best! For two weeks two teachers a day are picked and taken out of the running. The last three teachers standing split the gift cards- 9 for first, 7 for second and 5 for third. I won! Yay! And here's my haul of gift cards!

Blah

allisona — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 15:29:47 GMT

Blah, bad cold, so I couldn't get down to the filk at Bakka Books today. Disappointed. One the other hand I just learned that Graham and Becca Leathers are going to be the guest of honour next year at the UK filkcon, which is awesome.

Spinach and Kale Soup

allisona — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 03:24:05 GMT

Made spinach and kale soup for the first time tonight and it was really good. Added some chicken, garlic, chili flakes, mmm. Still pleased with having read the book "The Calorie Myth", because even though I haven't gone to a total SANE food routine I've taken enough inspiration from the program to have changed my eating habits around radically in the last few weeks. Lots more veggies, protein and fruit and nuts, a lot less starches and sugars. And in a time of winter blues, small victories count for a lot.

Second-Hand XBox

allisona — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 02:48:07 GMT

So, in our never-ending quest to find motivating exercise in the winter we decided to invest in a second-hand Xbox 360 today. It's an older model, but since we mostly want it for dance programs and exercise programs it should suit our purposes. We had been using a Wii for that, but I always found the batteries weren't working in the wands and it would take a few hours to charge them up again, which worked against the spontaneity of wanting to exercise. The Xbox you just turn on and go. And we can dance and exercise without wands, which is good, too. I'm happy with where my food routines have gone in the last two weeks, so let's see if we can integrate the exercise back in there, too, at least until it's warm enough to start walking again.

PianoMania

allisona — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:43:07 GMT

The most fun iPad app I've played around on lately is "PianoMania". It's a step-by-step program on how to play the piano. What's cool about it is that when you prop your iPad up on your piano keyboard the app wirelessly reacts to your keyboard playing, streaming the songs for you to play and evaluating you on notes correct, timing, etc.. If the song is hard you can set it to stream just right or left hand notes for practice and you can set it to slow down or speed up as you get better. Each song also has a backing track, which makes adding your part more fun. It also has a lot of contemporary songs and seems to be adding more all the time. So you may end up practising songs by One Direction or The Fray or Psy, but that's OK :). It's free for the first few levels and then you have to pay by the month, six-month or year after that. Effective, though, and plenty addictive.

Eating SANE

allisona — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 02:30:39 GMT

I finished a book last night called "The Calorie Myth" by Jonathan Bailor. It promotes an eating and exercise lifestyle he calls SANE. The book made a lot of sense to me and I've found myself intrigued to look into the program further today. Have any of you ever followed the SANE eating or exercise program? If so, what did you think of it? I am badly in need of something to shake up my health habits during these winter doldrums.

allisona — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 23:47:33 GMT

Here's a t-shirt I cross-stitched recently with a favorite quote from "The Princess Bride". Don't know if it was the turquoise shirt or the bright thread colours, but it was very difficult to take a decent photo of the colours!

Silver Birch Judge

allisona — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 19:56:57 GMT

So things are pretty low key this weekend. John and I tried going out for a winter walk, but despite the warm-up it's slippy and icy, so we're not even going to do that.

I'm sitting here instead reading Silver Birch books. The Silver Birch Award is a special honour given to Canadian writers of children's books. Ten fiction and ten non-fiction books are picked each year in different age categories to compete for the awards. The Silver Birch award goes to books geared to students in Grade 4 to 6. What makes the award special is that students themselves cast the final vote on the awards. Each year our school has a Silver Birch club run by our librarian where students get the chance to read the Silver Birch nominees for the year. They are encouraged to read all ten books and they must read at least five to be eligible to vote in April.

Each student is given a passport and as they finish a book they must go talk to the Silver Birch judge for that book (a teacher who has read the book). The teacher will ask them a few questions to guarantee they have read the book and then they will sign their passport. So I picked two of the Gr. 5-6 non-fiction books on topics that interest me- "Draw Out The Story: Ten Secrets to Creating Your Own Comics" and "Learn to Speak Film: A Guide to Creating, Promoting and Screening Your Movies" to judge this year.

Just finished the comic one and I'll be settling in to read the film one tomorrow. It is cool how in this age of web comics and You Tube how relevant these topics can be to creative kids this age.

allisona — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 20:45:44 GMT

New Year's banners my students made to hang in class. The template was by "Mr. Hughes" over at teacherspayteachers.com. They're fun and colourful. I like them.

First time I'm trying to do a photo post through my iPad and send it from my classroom. Let's see if this works.

Back to School, kind of...

allisona — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 16:26:31 GMT

So it's been an interesting week so far.

We got back to school after the Christmas holidays yesterday to find next to no heat in the school, during a cold snap in Ontario. Fun. We spent most of the day in winter coats, dreading the next day, when the temperature was supposed to plummet.

So now it's the next day, the temperatures are at about -40C, so all the school buses are cancelled. I have eight students in class today and our room is a bit warmer, but still somewhat chilly. We've put three classes together (about 25 showed up) and they're in the warmer library right now watching "The Princess Bride", which I brought from home.

Maybe by tomorrow I'll have heat -and- students and we'll actually get something done :).

Aside: It's always fun showing "The Princess Bride" (one of my favorite movies ever) to a new group of kids. They act just like the boy in the movie- don't quite know what to make of it when I first put it on, but by that half-way mark they're utterly engrossed. "Gasp, did you see?? That guy has SIX FINGERS." or "She married the prince! No! How could she do that??" or watching the fire swamp scene from between their fingers. Hee hee hee. It's fun to watch another generation fall under its spell.

Teachers Pay Teachers

allisona — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 22:57:12 GMT

May I just sing the praises here of the website teacherspayteachers.com ? It's a commercial website where teachers can upload units and activities for sale and other teachers can download them for a small fee or often for free.

I went looking for fresh New Year activities for my Gr. 4/5 class for when we get back tomorrow and within fifteen minutes found a really fun 2014 goals/resolution mobile, a clever, wonky story-starter sheet for writing about their holiday and a cute craft box for doing a 2014 prediction activity.

Before Christmas I found a full science unit for teaching Structures combining the Ontario Curriculum for both Gr. 4 and 5 in the same lessons. Awesome.

Great site for Kindergarten right through to Gr. 12. Love it. And it's nice to know you're putting money into the pockets of fellow teachers, too.

Lost and Found

allisona — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 23:03:55 GMT

Hate it when this happens....

So I'd lost my wallet- couldn't find it anywhere. Mentally retraced all my steps and due to being off of work and having Christmas money in my pocket I hadn't used the wallet since Tuesday, though I was carrying it with me. It could have fallen anywhere. So I called the bank to cancel cards, started writing to friends who I've visited recently to get them to check around.

And within ten minutes of cancelling the cards? John finds the wallet haphazardly fallen onto a dining room chair. Obviously, the -one- place we didn't look.

Of course.

Sigh, there are no words...

New Year's Eve Party 2013

allisona — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 16:04:45 GMT

New Year's Eve Party 2013, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

Thanks to Tom and Sue for a very fun New Year's Eve party last night! There was lots of music-making and feasting and good times!

All the best to everyone in 2014!

Ice Beauty

allisona — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 21:41:21 GMT

ice storm 003, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

Huh, since Flickr reconfigured everything I can't figure out how to put more than one photo in LJ anymore.

So I'll post one more photo here. Despite the destruction and power out I was really struck on the drive to Hamilton yesterday how gorgeous the trees looked covered in ice. It was one of the most exquisite drives I've ever taken. With the sun shining behind them the forests looked like crystal, like something out of a fantasy landscape. Just breath-taking. And then you would pass a home with a huge old splintered and destroyed tree or big branches that had fallen on power lines and fences and we found ourselves using the same mantra all along the road- "So gorgeous... and plenty treacherous, too.".

Ice Storm 2013

allisona — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 21:32:21 GMT

ice storm 2013, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

We were lucky enough to keep power during Southern Ontario's big ice storm, though we did spend three days without cable and Internet. Lucky in comparison to others in the area, I know. For example, see this photo of our neighbour's car enveloped by a fallen tree. We have a few big branches in our backyard, too, but driving from Richmond Hill to Hamilton it was really astonishing to see just how much damage there has been to all the trees in the area. Some of our friends in Toronto (hello, Tom and Sue!) are still without power and I hope they will all be warm back home soon.

We had a lovely Christmas in Hamilton with my Dad and sisters and then a snowy, slippery trip back to Richmond Hill. We're going to settle in tonight with an Irish coffee and Christmas Doctor Who.

Rainbow Loom Christmas

allisona — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 19:26:10 GMT

Rainbow Loom, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

So I've been enjoying making Rainbow Loom bracelets while watching TV and since I'd built up quite a pile I decided to make enough to give to my students for Christmas.

The kids still love making the bracelets, too. For the last two weeks or so I've been allowing students to stay in one recess a day to work on them. My group has expanded from two initially to about 8-9 now. Word has also spread into other classes and I've been getting requests from them to come and loom, too.

So I told them that if they are still interested (I am aware of how quickly fads come and go at this age...) I would start a one lunch hour a week Rainbow Loom Club in the new year to let the kids work on bracelets and exchange how-to tips with each other.

As for me, I think I'm going to go back to cross-stitch for my Christmas break. I have ordered some treble clef charms, though, to make some bracelets to take with me to FilKONtario.

SFContario

allisona — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 22:32:39 GMT

SFContario, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

I had a wonderful time last night at SFContario in Toronto! I finally, finally had a chance to see Seanan McGuire in concert, since she was the con's writer guest of honour. Oh, I enjoyed it -so- much. Seanan is a fabulous songwriter and she has one of my favorite singing voices in filk. And -Amy- was there, playing fiddle and sounding fabulous and making me cry. We later dueted together in open filk on Aryana's "Still Beautiful" and I was very happy. Kudos also to Alan Polard, who had to learn a whole concert worth of guitar parts in a very short time! It all sounded great.

And I was wondering what to do with the pile of Rainbow Loom bracelets I had made in the last few weeks, so I took them to the con and gave them away to all my filk buddies. That was fun enough that I may do it for FKO, too :).

Rainbow Loom Bracelets

allisona — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 03:47:14 GMT

Rainbow Loom Bracelets, a photo by Allisona on Flickr.

So has this fad hit kids in other areas of the world as hard as it has hit here? Making Rainbow Loom bracelets is the most popular activity in my classroom this fall with both boys and girls. I went looking for a kit to buy out of curiosity and they couldn't be found for love nor money. They were sold out everywhere. It's just in the last week that the second wave of merchandise is starting to show up in the stores again and I bought one on the weekend.

For those who haven't seen them, a rainbow loom can be configured in many different ways to allow many different weaves of bracelets to be made. The bracelets themselves are made out of small brightly-coloured rubber bands which are then attached together with plastic "c clips". YouTube is the place to go to find dozens of different bracelet patterns, with more being invented and added every day. After experimenting a bit, some of the weaves remind me of crochet and some of the weaves remind me of the spool knitting I did as a kid.

I can see why they have such tremendous appeal to kids. Making them made my inner nine-year-old pretty delighted. My adult crafter self was pretty happy, too. Interesting to see many of the kids, though, have avoided buying the kits altogether, though, using forks, pencils and their fingers to make their Rainbow Loom bracelets. I'm not shedding many tears for Rainbow Loom, though, as kids are still buying their rubber bands by the bagful at $4.00 a bag.

There's a couple of my bracelets in the photo, mostly variations of the fishtail weave, which is my favorite weave. There's a few other weaves I really like, but can't quite master yet. One of these days I may have to get my Gr. 4 experts to show me how to do them :).

Is Somebody Singing?

allisona — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 23:29:33 GMT

John is continuing to edit through the concert songs from Urban Tapestry's 20th Anniversary concert at FilKONtario last Spring. This video is our cover of "Is Somebody Singing?", the song collaboration by Chris Hadfield (former Canadian Commander of the International Space Station) and Ed Robertson (of The Barenaked Ladies). It's a wonderful found filk Canadian song and I know fellow Canadian filkers Heather Dale and The Stone Dragons do covers of this song, too :).

Thanks again to Tom Jeffers for letting John include his video footage in these clips and mega-thanks to John for capturing this important concert for us.

Oops...

allisona — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 15:45:55 GMT

So being that I came out of the wisdom tooth experience fairly unscathed yesterday I said "Yay, let's walk to a hiking spot! And then let's hike! And then let's walk home! And later let's walk to the mall!".

And this morning my body said, "What the heck are you doing? You're supposed to be RECOVERING."

So today I'm recovering a bit more and hiking vicariously through someone else by reading a travelogue about a guy walking the Pacific Coast Trail from Mexico to Canada. Fascinating stuff, but a little crazy. (The first 700 miles of trail are desert, lack of water and rattlesnakes).