East Coast Tour Recap

I had a blast visiting Toronto, Brooklyn, and Winnipeg on the East Coast lag of the Hoopla Book Launch Tour. Here are a few photos from my trip:

In Toronto I visited the eclectic Kensington Market. There was a car turned into a garden and some interesting graffiti.

I also got to spend some quality time with Diane Yee, who has designed both of my books, and her cute son Sullivan. We ate chocolate-garlic ice cream (yes, you read that right), Korean food, and the most amazing salads at a restaurant called Hibiscus. We also visited the Textile Museum of Canada which has a really fun hands-on room where you can play with looms, test your fibre knowledge, and play with all sorts of textiles.

Beautiful embroideries at the textile museum.

Next up was the Toronto launch of Hoopla at the stunning Type Books on Queen Street West. Everything that I’d heard about this book store was accurate. It was beautiful and it had a well curated book selection.

I managed to eat a lot of wonderful Italian food in Toronto. Thanks to Jessie, Mike, Diane, and Alia for introducing me to some very good restaurants, including Terroni.

And, on my way to lunch with Alia, I noticed a young girl and her grandmother finger knitting on the Toronto subway.

Next up was Park Slope, Brooklyn where I fell in love with each and every brownstone.

After some lunch with Dory Kornfeld who kindly showed me around the ‘hood, I bought some linen embroidery thread at the well-stocked Fibre Notion.

Then I took off to Textile Arts for the Brooklyn Launch of Hoopla with artists Richard Saja, Iviva Olenick, Annie Coggan-Crawford and project designers Malarie Burgess and Erin Stanton.

Textile arts is a wonderful space.

The day following the event, I had an epic 14 hour walk around Manhattan.

Then it was back to Canada. Hello Winnipeg! Winnipeg was the friendliest place that I’ve ever been.

I arrived in the middle of their Nuit Blanche festival, an all night art party near the city art gallery. Both yarn bombing and embroidery were on-site.

The next day I met Takashi Iwasaki. We had an event together at the stunning McNally Robinson bookstore which is as epic as Powells in Portland and Strand in New York City.

Takashi’s embroidered works:

My days in Winnipeg concluded with some sight-seeing of the Osborne and Exchange Districts, and some of the best sushi that I’d ever had.

Next stop, San Francisco! If you are on the West Coast, please take a look at my San Mateo, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle event details on my book tour page and come out to stitch & bitch, listen to a talk, or just to say hi.