workin' girl

Long weekend.

Ahhhhh…

And a labour day it was. I actually started making jewellery again, instead of just working all day around items used to make jewellery!

And it’s my birthday this week! Maybe I’ll even give a piece of the jewellery to myself (okay, not yet… all proceeds are given straight to the student loan centre!). I know that my Frenchie wants to get me something jewellery-ish, and hopes to buy me a tool (which is rad) but unfortunately there are no tools I want under $300. Which is a bit excessive, since he’ll be laid off starting next week and, though he has a job lined up already, it’s not determined when it will start. So a $300 tool is out of the question. Still, I don’t think he’ll be impressed if I tell him to go pick up a pack of saw blades for my birthday present. But that’s probably because he doesn’t know the true greatness of the rounded-back Herkules blade…

Or, maybe I can amalgamate a work station or two into a proper bench instead of the IKEA kitchen cart. Wait… that’s also too much $$$... maybe later.



But check out the broken saw blades! Granted, I did a lot today, but still. Herkules saw blades… Herkulese saw blades…

Last days of school

The last time I walk into 889 W Pender St. as a student. Glorious!




End-of-school classic. This was not mine, actually; I switched up the brand for the occasion. hahaha... And at my family's party we opened an 11-year-old bottle of champagne my mom won during a hula-hoop contest on a cruise. Who knew hula-hooping would prove to be actually useful?!




And my entire class. This is one of those few pictures where the majority of us look sane! Amazing, considering all we'd gone through...

Sing that Vitamin C graduate song to yourself... You know the one...

So, I've graduated! Yaaay!

At least, school is finished. I have equated school finishing with graduating, though that has yet to be determined. But I'm counting on graduating, at any rate.

If we had a yearbook, mine would probably go something like this:

Name: Katie Montgomery

Birthday: September 4

Favourite Quote: "Is something buuuurning?"

Favourite Activities: Running for the bus, having instructors fired, burning hand from budget Bread Garden cups, and imitating awesome accents, poorly.

Most Likely To: Actually bother to return to LaSalle to harass administration staff.

I’ve excluded the oft-accompanied awkward picture for your own benefit.

But, as often with school finishing, it’s bittersweet. I can’t say that I haven’t waited to get the heck out of there. What stands out is that everyone in the class had forged a connection unlike that of any class I’d ever been to. It’s not like we just dragged ourselves (Ok, we often DID just drag ourselves) to class with random people and try to remain as anonymous as possible; we championed each other, stood up for each other; supported each other professionally but, most importantly, personally.

So now I supposedly am a certified jewellery designer, who certifiably misses the people who made her year.

P.S. Thanks to my mom, who took this extremely blurry photo of me at the grad show. Check out my model, A.K.A. Katie Holmes (not my doing). Don't you love where the lights are shining? She's one sassy, sassy girl... No wonder Tom likes her, she's practically an alien with the way it's glowing...

And thanks to Nicole L.D. for her fantastic photo/painting of the chandelier!

Dressew Mafia

I have a love/hate relationship with Dressew. You know, the gigantic warehouse of a material shop, a veritable candyland for people who love tulle, felt, and just… well, lots of crap. Fun crap, though. I don’t think I’ve ever walked out of there without a bagful of relatively pointless, yet amusing, stuff. Groucho glasses? Ridiculous ballerina skirt? Black lace umbrella? (Okay, I managed to use that one for my grad project. But really, a lace umbrella?! Almost as bad as Rihanna’s silk umbrella..ella..ella).

As much as I love the entertainment value, I can’t believe how angry the people who work there are. Not so much the younger set, but those older women are vultures! I feel bad for the other people working there. And they all seem to be named something like Gertrude (Gertie on a good day), or Mildred, or Edna. I think part of their enjoyment is watching people wander around while trying to decode their obscure, anger-filled retorts. For example:

“Excuse me, can you tell me where the bathroom is?”

“MILDRED HAS THE KEY!”

So now the poor sucker who just wants to use the bathroom is quivering in fear while trying to figure out exactly who Mildred is without needing to ask someone else.

I also enjoy how a person who works in customer service tries to avoid both the customers and the requirement to provide them with any service. There are the people who don’t even stoop to answering queries; they merely point to one of the various signs which plaster the place. If you’re lucky, the sign might even pertain to your question! But chances are, it probably won’t! Ahhh, ‘tis a sad day when Canadian Tire’s customer service is held in esteem (especially since they, too, are nearly unaware of what it is).

But anyway. I really must go and get a 12-foot feather boa and an iced tea tumbler shaped like Frankenstein’s head.

Wanted: home for me!

I think I have to work on turning into a hermit. Or a hobbit. Some kind of “__it” creature. Housing in Vancouver caters primarily to the unsociable, light-fearing, wealthy, dirty clothed, enclosed-space-loving sect. Maybe it involves some sort of religious belief in order to find the situations liveable. I have actually seen ads demanding that no friends visit and no alcohol. I understand no drunken raging parties… fun as they are, landlords are trying to protect their investment… but honestly. No friends? Isn’t that more worrying than actually having friends? “It’s great, there’s no noise from down there. It takes deep concentration to create a plan of mass destruction, you see. Just as long as he doesn’t interrupt American Idol, we’re cool…” And you should see what happens if the merlot comes out. The already-inflated homeless population in Van increases by one.

Frenchie and I were recently turned down for a suite because we’re a couple. Fair enough, one person makes less noise than two! But the nice thing about getting a couple is that at least the ‘lords know all of who they’ll be dealing with. Case in point: I rented a place once and the landlords made a serious point of making sure I was single. And when I rented it, I was. Had just gotten out of a previous relationship and had no intention of finding anyone in the foreseeable future. And with that I met my Frenchie.

So by the time I actually moved in, I was no longer single. And it evolved to where he was a full time resident with me. Definitely not something I, or my landlords, had originally counted on.

So what if this single tenant finds love with Lindsay Lohan? And Lindsay wants to pull a Britney and go all cheap ass? Maybe she’ll find it cute or quaint to live in a groundlevel suite. After all, when you’re unconscious 68 percent of the time, it don’t matta where you are.

So the search for housing goes on. And I persist to drive back and forth from Richmond several times a day on my day off. What else would I rather be doing? Making jewellery?

My new present... to me!

So we might have a venue for the final grad show. Yay! No thanks to me for this one, but I have been thinking about it a lot. Does that count?

I just got a Canon Rebel XTI digital SLR camera. I’ve been drooling over it for too long and finally convinced myself that it was a justified purchase (investment, anyone? Haha!). So the weekend was recorded in glorious detail. At least the parts where I didn’t feel like I was harassing anyone by photographing them… the Frenchie doesn’t count. By Saturday he was already acting like the paparazzi was after him; swatting the camera away while sprouting various futile deterrents. When I actually have anything exciting to show (which won’t land me in hot water) I’ll post some pics here! Right now there’s not much to see. I took 20 pictures of an old rope. Yep. Some pictures are worth a thousand words, others are just dull.

But, dammit, these are dull in a very sharp, clear, detailed manner!

I'd better look good for this

I needed my car fixed this morning. Quickly. I wasn’t prepared to wait a few days for it to be fixed so I succumbed to the unfair laws of the universe and put on makeup just to drag myself up to the autoshop for the consultation. I needed the opportunity to default to batting my eyelashes in case I was told something that I didn’t want to hear, but was within the realm of the mechanic to change. And those eyelashes would be much more effective if they were longer, blacker, thicker. I didn’t need to use them, but something worked since my car will be fixed in 3 hours. Yay!

So while I’ve been waiting I’ve been trying to make some sterling wire earrings. Wire is just one of those temperamental things… Could be the entire reason for making a piece. Alternatively, could destroy the will to make it. Today it is the latter. So now I have an almost-fixed car while being surrounded with pieces of bent wire.

Also, as much as I despise CNN and believe they are overly effective in creating mass hysteria, I really enjoy that they have used the word “tussle” in a news headline. Hehe. Tussle!!!