21. August Nelson to Frank Slide

A morning with Alison and Emily visiting the Craft Connection http://www.craftconnection.org/ store in Nelson. A craft co-op with over a 100 craftspeople. It was so inspiring to see some of the work, the displays.
I loved the clay puppets, mixed textile work, art clothing, feather earrings and eyelashes ;).
And the ironwork, and the lamps, and the paper mobiles, the wooden letters, the garden arch - just to name a few of them. Excellent high quality work.

And in the Gallery 378 the most wonderful paintings of Corre Alice http://www.correalice.com/gallery_2012.html I was SO impressed.

After goodbyes, and a caffe latte, we headed to the Rockies - a bit of gray subdued the beauty, but we know that the sun will be back. The towns we passed were not the prettiest in the world, and we wonder where the town planners were when these plans were made - or if they were made. Pictures are not needed. But a collage of car dealers, malls, restaurants, schools, signs, tire stores, gas stations, more signs, drug stores, fruit stands, a house, old cars, painted shacks, resorts, all thrown on one long "drag" - sorry Canada, it is a shame that the nature and beauty gets covered with these very ugly towns that we just want to get out of. Nothing beautiful there. Just as if a many jigsaw puzzles got dropped on the floor and someone picked up all the pieces, threw them into one big box, and then scattered the pieces out when someone needed some room.
Imagine the designs that could be, if the Scandinavians could blend the design with the Canadian nature.