here is hazel

Just a couple of unedited snapshots from some shows I visited within the past few months.

First row: Do you want to hear a story? Yes, I want to hear a story @ OCADU Student Gallery

Second row: Lost in the Memory Palace: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller @ Art Gallery of Ontario

Third row: The Mr Pickles Fan Club Gemma Correll Solo Exhibition @ Magic Pony - see more coverage at Amanda’s blog

Fourth row: OCAD University Grad Ex 2013

Other events not pictured: The Game of Thrones exhibit @ DX and The Mass Exodus fashion show @ Ryerson. Didn’t go to TCAF this year, sadly…

Some photos of my visit to The Happy Show last month. I love that there were things drawn on the little nooks and crannies of the venue, including the bathroom stalls. Overall a very fun show.

Hand-painted type on a bench in Scaborough.

Going to make an effort to look for cool typography around the city and document them here. This chalk lettering is on a sandwich board outside Noce restaurant along Queen St. W.

I wonder who made it?

Beatrice at Miliken Park.

Queen St. West

Justin at John’s Classic Pizza on Baldwin Street, Toronto.

Oh look, pretty dresses!

Originally posted on GUISE:

Two days ago Amanda and I had the chance to watch Mass Exodus, the annual runway show featuring collections from Ryerson’s fourth-year fashion design students.

This being my first year in attendance, I didn’t expect to see such a great breadth of designs, all with varying cuts, fabrics, and styles, within a span of just one hour. It was overwhelming, in a good way.

Still, I couldn’t help but wish the show went on for a few more hours. Sixty minutes was simply not enough to give all 58 collections the appreciation and attention they deserved. The construction of many of the pieces were so good it was hard to keep my constant exclamations of I’d so wear that! to myself (sorry Amanda).

Aside from those in the photos, other notable designers whose work stood out to me include Kendra Pegg with her androgynous ensembles, Alexandra Boultzi’s troupe of Japanese warrior women, Lia Valdez’s highly provocative fetish pieces, Monica Saraguro’s lace-fur-and-leather collection, Kelli Kikcio’s menswear, and Alexandria Julian’s cast of Little Mermaid ballet dancers, complete with a tights-clad prince!

Thanks to the Mass Exodus crew, you can watch a live stream of the whole show right here and see photos on Flare.com.

I wasn’t able to grab some treats during Toronto’s Macaron Day, but here is the box of macarons I bought for a friend’s birthday back in February. I usually head to Nadège to satisfy my craving for this cute confectionary, so this time around I tried something different and stopped by Petite Thuet on Yonge Street to see how theirs measured up to my regular pâtisserie.

It’s clear how differently they brand themselves from Nadège just by taking one step inside the store. At Petite Thuet I saw breads inside baskets, a shelf stocked with jars of jam and a casually-dressed person behind the wooden counter. While Nadège could be described as minimal, sharp, and very high-end, Petite Thuet lies at the other end of the spectrum with words like rustic and laid-back coming to mind.

As for the macarons themselves, I found Petite Thuet’s to be a bit larger, contained more ganache, and had more food colouring than its counterpart. When I opened the box after a long and bumpy bus ride home, half of the treats from Nadège had cracked shells (see photo #7). Now this could be entirely my fault for not carrying them horizontally or as carefully as I should have, but it was still a very disappointing thing to see.

They also had an inconsistent amount of filling, which you can compare between photo #2 and #6, the latter of which shows an orange macaron with practically no ganache to separate the two shells. Was this another result of the bumpy bus ride home? Should the blame lie on the baker at this location? I honestly don’t know. So let’s move on to what matters most: the taste!

As I said before, this box of Nadège macarons was a gift, meaning I didn’t get to taste any of them. But from previous visits to Nadège, I can confidently say that their Rosewater macaron wins against the version at Petite Thuet, which was much too sweet with the unnecessary pink sugar sprinkled on the shell and which made me feel as if I was eating perfume—blech! The brown hazelnut macaron was lovely, though it tasted like it had a bit of coffee flavour in it? That was confusing.

The ultimate test came down to the pistachio macaron, my all-time favourite flavour. I definitely prefer the light green colouring on Nadège’s pistachio macarons but since there was a larger volume of ganache and meringue on the macaron I bought from Petite Thuet, I’d have to go with theirs.

I could go on and on about macarons but this blog post would become longer than that english essay I have to finish by next Tuesday, so I’ll end it here. I still plan to try Petite Thuet’s salted caramel macaron which I keep reading about, as well as Nadège’s nine other macaron flavours so this isn’t the last you’ll see from them.

ALL PHOTOS © HAZEL LLANES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.