Toronto

Vicki and I went to Toronto today. We'd originally sort of planned to drive into downtown (yes, I know that's not usually a good idea)... but then I realized that the Molson Grand Prix was this weekend, and so there were road closures and stuff. So we drove into Mississauga, took the GO train, and then the subway.

Our first stop was the Textile Museum of Canada. Unfortunately, we arrived before they opened, and so we wound up wandering through an art exhibit at Nathan Phillips Square. We stopped for a bite to eat at a coffee shop there. As we were leaving, I noticed an article in the Globe and Mail on how today's work environment results in ADD in the workplace (I was interested because I work in a chaotic environment - that's what comes with working for an email-based company. There's no way that I could decide to read and answer my email only twice a day :) ). The lady tidying up practically shoved that section of the paper into my hands, so we took it with us to read later :)

The Textile Museum was awesome. The current exhibit is on Wandering Weavers, and it showcases textiles from a number of nomadic cultures. There's also an interactive section on fibers and textiles. I assume that section is for kids, but since there were none there at that time, we played with the stuff :) Half of the museum was closed since they're setting up a new exhibit, so as we were leaving they gave us half of our admission fee back. That was a pleasant surprise since we'd already decided that what we saw was worth the $10 admission.

We then walked down Queen Street and poked into the shops there for a bit. I think that I'm not quite cool enough to shop there :) I ended up buying a top from some nameless store. We both really liked the dresses in Fashion Crimes, although they were quite expensive for what you got (the construction on some of them was not really up to par IMHO). Most of the dresses were 50s-inspired with crinolines, and many had some sort of applique on them. This store also had lots of gloves.

When we were finished walking, we took the streetcar down to Dufferin St because we wanted to go to Designer Fabrics. They have a lot of great fabrics there, and it's fun to go through and just touch all of them :) Some of the fabrics there are exquisite (and you pay for it, too!). It is definitely the place to go if you want upscale home decorator fabrics, dupioni silk (which comes in about 100 colours), or embroidered silks, all at very reasonable prices considering what you get. We actually ended up spending more time in the trims department than the fabric department. Vicki bought a bunch of trims and stuff to use in garments that she'll sell through her (and Ruby's) store on etsy.

Did I mention that I was wearing new shoes that I just bought last week for all of this? Ummm, yeah. That might not have been the smartest thing to do (although the shoes look fantastic and were mostly comfortable through the day).... by this time, my feet hurt. We took the streetcar to the Long Branch station and then the GO train back to the car. We finished up with "dinner" at Demetre's, and then came home.

It was a very long, but very fun, day.