UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who came by the sale! We still have lots of great items/Christmas presents, and are open by appointment until December 21, including evenings. The fire’s on – come by! Just all in advance to make sure someone’s here: 604-216-1103. Thanks!

Sorry to inject something mercenary into our regular programming, but Ouno Design’s holiday studio sale is this Sunday in Vancouver, for any of you who live around here. Sunday December 13, 11am – 6 pm, 636 Keefer Street. Snacks and drinks. (And we’re open by apppointment until Christmas – contact info here.) Yes, it may be snowing this coming Sunday, which can bring Vancouver to a standstill needlessly, but this neighbourhood isn’t far off sea level and the snow won’t stick, the street is wide, the driving won’t be too bad, and the fire will be on.  (UPDATE: the streets are totally passable as of 12:30.)We’ll be selling our usual – lots of bags and pillows made from vintage textiles! Pillows make good presents. They’re like paintings in that they change the room – but they’re softer and cheaper. But there’s no need to buy – feel free to come hang out in our church studio. It’s an open house. Open church. Click on photos for more info.

Hallowe’en is over but this fantastic Japanese raccoon figure survives. I wish it could stay there all winter. It was seen at this cool little bungalow – brick, which is unusual for Vancouver – a block away from the studio. The owners refurbished it and landscaped it themselves, but I was still taken aback by their pumpkin carving skills.

PS Addendum to this post: Scott Plumbe, the carver of this tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) pumpkin, wrote in to say he took a night photo of it below and he has kindly let me add it here (see link for story). Farther below that is the “No Face” pumpkin carved by his wife Rosemary a few years ago. No Face is a character in my favourite animated film of all time, Spirited Away by Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Scott, not surprisingly, turns out to be a professional illustrator. This is an interesting way to meet your neighbours. See also this post on a house a few doors down from Scott and Rosemary’s.

These photographs are from my husband grandparents’ house, a blue Edwardian two-storey that still stands in Strathcona, Vancouver’s oldest residential neighbourhood. The house is less than a block away from our studio and very close to where we both live. Strathcona was – and is – home to many of Vancouver’s early Chinese immigrants.

These are bare-bones interiors. My grandfather-in-law, Kai Nang Chan, worked at a laundry for sixty hours a week and sent all his money home to China to help care for his family. I’m probably blinded by my love for my in-laws, but there’s something dignified and even sweet about these rooms, despite the fact there’s absolutely no hint of pleasure or comfort in them. It’s nearly penal. Taken around 1958, these photographs were meant show my husband’s father what awaited him if and when he could afford to come to Canada to join his parents. I’m not sure what’s so enticing about oilcloth floors and floral wallpaper, but I love the detail of the lovingly-posed electric guitar put there by the one son who “made it”. You can see the guitar below in the bedroom of the youngest son, Alan, who came to Canada with his mother following the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act. He and his mother are seated together in the following photo. Alan embraced all things western: he had a ducktail and a leather jacket to go with the electric guitar. Vancouver, especially the East End, still had a frontier feel in the 50s. There was an elderly uncle – or family friend, it’s sort of fuzzy – who wore nothing but cowboy gear. Chaps, hat, spurs, the whole thing, and walked around Strathcona in it. I know my husband has a photo of him, but unfortunately an embarrassed photographer (probably my husband’s grandfather) told him to take the hat off. But he’s still in full chaps. This era in Chinatown’s history is well-documented in Wayson Choy’s award-winning novel The Jade Peony.

The house today: