Inspiration and updates

Some folks may have heard me grumble when I wasn’t able to go to Toronto a couple of weeks ago for their Doors Open event. I’ve wanted to see the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant for a while now and it’s only open to the public once a year. I’d been looking forward to it for months. It’s a huge Art Deco building and I think it’s beautiful. Here, have a look at this article to see why I’m so fascinated. A week before the event my back acted up quite spectacularly, so a day involving 8 hours of driving was just not going to work.

This past weekend was Doors Open in Ottawa and I tried to make up for missing Toronto. I first went and had a look at the Blackburn Building. It’s an apartment building that opened in 1936 and has a nice interior atrium.

When  I was inside I kept thinking back to my high school Latin classes: conpluvium and impluvium. The atrium is glassed over, but the plentiful rain outside helped me remember Mrs. Bell repeating those words. I tried to ignore the garish flowers.

That building was ok, but there wasn’t enough detail (at least not accessible) to fully spark my interest. I trudged through the rain up to Sparks Street, then all the way along until I got to the Supreme Court of Canada. This is another Art Deco building, completely designed by Ernest Cormier. I passed through the security checkpoint, put my keys and wallet in my pockets, and gratefully shed my soaked raincoat.

This was more like it:

I walked around slowly, carefully taking it all in, all the carefully designed details of the building. I found quite a few things that were beautiful to my eye:

It’s an impressive building. It has gravitas.

Outside, Justitia and Veritas stand on either side of the steps:

Round the back, you get a lovely view of the Parliament Buildings:

On the knitting side of things, posting my goal of finishing two projects is helping, despite the other knitting design tasks I have on the go. My Issey Scarf goes to school for drop off/pick up and to swimming lessons. This week I finally attached the second ball of yarn! I draped it around my neck and now I’m thinking I might want to use the full 3 balls, but I’ll keep weighing the second one as I go so I know how long the scarf is when I’m half way.

The Emily 2 progress is even better: I’m finally doing the border. This means lots of beads on each row and long long rows, but there are only 8 more rows to do, so expect a finished object picture shortly!