Collecting

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Collecting

     I thought I'd get off topic today and write about collecting. My father liked to go fishing and naturally he took my brother and I fishing as kids. We continued long after my father had passed on, and the sport "stayed in our blood." When my wife and I moved into our house in 1992 (which seems a century ago), I got to decorate the downstairs bathroom. Unsurprising, I decided to decorate with fish memorabilia. 

    Naturally, when I decided to decorate with fish items, I had trouble finding them. There are millions of fishermen and lady fishers, but try and find fish decor items and I might as well be looking for moon rocks. Over time though, friends and relatives to our house would bring us fish  gift items. After about 18 years, I had had enough items and ran out of wall space, and I gently asked people to stop bringing me fish items.


   So today's blog portion is about my fish items in my bathroom. I decided to "clean up" the images for 2 reasons. The first was because the camera captures a lot more detail than the human eye. There was lots of dust, dried water marks on the wall, toothpaste splatter, and poorly-composed framing in a confined area. The bathroom is only 12 feet x 12 feet  or 3.75 meters x 3.75 meters.

My brother lugged this item from Calgary

I found this in a nice sailing novelty store in Montgreal

This was bought at a Christmas Gift Item Convention

The topmost item is from Native Indian Art from British Colombia (Canada).

The 2 metallic/wood brightly-coloured fish are from a sale

at our Montreal Museum of Fine Arts store.

Assorted glass, plastic, and wood items from all over.

The bottommost is from our friend who bought this for my birthday.

It's a reproduction of a fish decoy lure.

I only learned about fish decoy lures maybe 8 years ago. I assume, they're used during ice fishing. You drop the lure in the hole in the ice (probably shallow), wait for a fish to come by, and you spear it.

Spearing is illegal in Quebec.

A keychain holder

My sister bought me this item, and the magnets were my purchases.

Another keychain holder.

I use it as a towel holder - it works well.

Another birthday, and another gift from my brother in Calgary

A corner view of my bathroom with a collective photo of many items.

A view to the left of my sink.

I gave a student from Newfoundland money to bring me back something "fishy" from Newfoundland, when he went home for Christmas break. He purchased the small yellow dory boat in the lower right corner.

An upper view of the previous photo to the left of  my sink

I did a small favour for my doctor.

When he went to the Philippines to visit his family he brought back these fine porcelain knife rests.

During a meal, you can place your knife or fork on them.

I have a great picture framing salesperson who always has great ideas for what I might bring him.

I leave it up to him to create interesting new ways to present my items. In this case, he decided to glue them to a piece of thin clear plastic. That worked out just fine.

Now, how could I have a fishing entry without actually talking about fishing!

My brother asked me several years to go fishing with him in British Colombia.

We went in the the third week of August. I didn't know what to expect, although I knew that this place was a 5-star fishing resort. I'm used to "roughing it", so you'll see that this was not for the "rough at heart".

The "resort" is called  the West Cost Fishing Club

http://westcoastfishingclub.com/