Susan Harris‘ studio/shop has a distinct, warm and funky feel to it. Her designs carry this feeling too. You may have admired one of her shirts on someone and wondered where it came from… well, the secret is out.  And you can feel good about buying her clothes since she reuses previously-worn worthy articles.  Her shop is located on Tecumseth just south of Queen St. West.  She will also have a booth at the One of a Kind Show from November 22nd – December 2nd.

We’re a long way off from achieving the full Toronto waterfront plan, but there is undeniably steady improvement happening on Toronto’s shoreline. It’s been especially nice seeing the park spaces evolve over the past 5- 10 years. I hope they soon get completely interconnected so that the entire space becomes one big continuous public nature walk. Here are a few of the waterfront parks I’ve visited recently: HTO is the newest, opened in June of this year. It’s quite modern and elegant; they brought in white beach sand, put up some cute umbrellas and planted beautiful little trees (are they weeping willows?). It’s pretty, both in daytime and at night. And startling in its urban setting just south of the dome and CN Tower.

Just a five minute walk west from HTO at the foot of Spadina is the Music Garden, which Yo-Yo Ma helped design. It has an amazing open-air amphitheatre, beautiful flower gardens, and as you might expect from the name they do play concerts here. And if you hop on your bike and head about 20 minutes further west along the lakefront bicycle trail, you’ll eventually hit Humber Bay Park. I especially like this one for the views; the park is on a peninsula that juts out into the harbor, and from the tip you get spectacular skyline views of downtown, like this one I found on Flickr. I’ll post a photo of my own next time I’m out there. There’s heaps more to discover. Get thee to the waterfront! P.S. Expect posts to be a little infrequent during these last few lazy days of August.

Technorati Tags: parks, picnic, water