Here it was, my one weekend in August that I’m not standing in my tent at a craft show. Since I am officially in screaming panic production mode (Christmas is coming! I’m going to Paris!) the weekend was spent in the studio. Of course, this weekend happened to be one of my all time favourite weekend here in Toronto. It was Taste of the Danforth, an entire weekend devoted to street food and snacking. Snacks!!! Tasty little morsels on sticks!!! I do love food on sticks. My studio is smack dab in the heart of the Danforth, also known as Greektown. For a kilometre the street is closed down to traffic and every restaurant and cafe pulls out tables and serves snacks for cheap. Awesome!

So what’s a bead-making production queen to do? There are 500,000 people (seriously) outside my door wandering around snacking yet I have a HUGE list of beads to make. It took some discipline I’ll tell you but with a serious strategy in place I finished the weekend with a full tummy and a kiln full of beads. Fortunately it rained on and off for 2 days so that cut down on my wandering. The rest of the time? On Friday I did a quick wander and scoped out all the snacking possibilities. Then I mapped out my plan. I set production quotas followed by snack rewards. Make 3 bracelets, get a plate of calamari. Make 15 pairs of earrings, get an order of loukamades (greek honey balls that are to die for). Top snacks were the lamb and rosemary in phyllo pastry, masala dosa (curried potato and onion in rice flour crepes), and of course a lot of gelato. And you wouldn’t believe how many beads I made!