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I managed to do two talks in two days from the same set of slides that were, in many ways, totally different.

I talked about Library 2.0 stuff to McGill SLIS students on Thursday and then to professional librarians (mostly) today. Good talks, interesting people, all followed up with some delicious food and grand socializing in Montreal, one of my favorite places. If anyone would like to see my list of links and handout, you can see them on this page: Library 2.0 - links & resources. The pdf is sort of large, but the list of links goes to almost all the websites I talked about, and the handout is the standard “places to find me online” if you want to explore a little but don’t know many people using the tools yet.

Thanks to everyone who came out and listened and responded and limboed and chatted with me.

My weekend was full of gushy pumpkin guts, fresh-baked bread, ripe red apples, and yellow river leaves.  For this, I am thankful...



Montreal's Atwater Market -- always a feast for the senses!





This bakery (above & below) was the model for the patisserie  in my MG Contemporary novel that's making the rounds right now.  Needless to say, my research was extensive!





On Saturday, we took advantage of the warm temperatures to hike Mount Baker in Saranac Lake.










On one bright fall hike each year, we always collect a few leaves to press.  These are sleeping between the pages of my phone book now.  On Thanksgiving, we'll shake them out to decorate the table and remember the smells of late October...

April is a busy month for us, we have four birthdays to celebrate now (including mine) and of course Easter. For my birthday Bradley took me to Montreal for a lovely long weekend staying at the same B&B as we did before. The weather was gorgeous this time, so we had a great time walking around and I had some handmade coupons from Bradley for both a ribbon spree (see above) and a button spree (see below).
Another one of my other Bradley presents that I loved was the blue floral fabric I used to whip up this large messenger bag before going away. I used some dark brownish khaki twill for the exterior and used pale blue twill to line the inside, and the floral for the outer flap, and to line the pockets and strap. This bag turned out to be exactly what I needed, light enough to carry around all day but big enough to stuff full of extra things on the way home. The fabric is Denyse Schmidt's "flea market fancy" and comes in a variety of colours.
Other than crafts shopping we also did some geo caching (Bradley's current passion) and ended up hiking around on some nice trails on the mountain. We also saw a very inspiring show at the Beaux Arts museum, about Disney and the artists that inspired Disney. I had the thrill of seeing some of Beatrix Potter's artwork in person, including a sample illustration for Alice in Wonderland that she made to send to publishers. Why on earth she wasn't commissioned to illustrate more books before publishing her own is beyond me.

The other highlight of our trip was finally meeting my extra-talented fellow illustrator, Susan Mitchell. I'm planning to post more birthday and Susan goodies in my next post!

And finally, before leaving I was commissioned to illustrate a book for Scholastic, and so that's been keeping me busy since then. It's a wonderful story (with a lovable dog in it) and it's been a real treat to work on it. Of course I'll be sharing the artwork for that in the next little while.