Dorothy Reinhardt Designs

Etsy Treasury that made the front page

2011-01-16T12:40:00.001-08:00

San Francisco Etsy Team Sampler Show

2010-05-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

SF Etsy Sampler ~ A Tasty Trunk Show!

I'm happy to announce that I'll be one of the artists exhibiting/selling my work at: the SF Etsy Sampler at the Artist Xchange Gallery in San Francisco. This is the first-ever SF Etsy Team Trunk Show!

Artist Xchange:
3169 16th St. San Francisco (at Guerrero)

June 12th from 1-6 p.m.

Nibble on free refreshments while sampling the superb work of 20 talented Etsy artists from the San Francisco Bay Area. At the SF Etsy Sampler, you'll find an assortment of awesome art and irresistible handcrafts -- delectable jewelry, terrific textiles, fun accessories, beautiful home decor, fabulous fashions, and yummy bath and body treats.

There's something for every flavor in the SF Etsy Sampler: sweet, spicy, a little bit nutty, rich, dark, or thoroughly decadent.

The following are the artists who will participate in this show. Click on their names to go to their Etsy shops to see more of their work.

Aimee Diane Designs

Crafty Girl 05

Crooked Sister

Dorothy Designs (ME!)

Lemonade Handmade Jewelry

Yarrow Jewelry (my tablemate!)

I hope to see you there. I will be showing some NEW flower designs.

At Last...Nest Boxes!

2010-03-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to have nest boxes in my yard for the cavity nesting birds we have around all year, such as Chestnut backed chickadees and Pygmy nuthatches. I read on SFBirds that there were some nest boxes available, so I contacted this guy, Andrew, and he came out today and hung 2 boxes out back. He makes them out of reclaimed redwood and they are $25 each. He hung the first one in this sickly holly that we have at the very back of our yard. It's the highest tree we have left after our huge Monterey pines went buh-bye a couple of years ago. I had Andrew hang it so I can see it from my kitchen window. This photo was taken a lot closer up.

Here's a view from directly below.

There was not another suitable location in my yard, so I asked my neighbor if she would like one in her yard. We put the 2nd box up in a pittosporum in the yard next door. I think the birds are really going to like this location, as it is very hidden.

It's a Jungle Out There

I've been focused on making fabric flowers and prepping for the Art Fair, and it's been raining a lot. The net result is...whoa...the backyard is way overgrown. Here's one of my planted native plants, a pink flowering currant. And it's being true to its name and putting out pink flowers. Nice.

These ceanothus are doing very well. I saw that a neighbor around the corner had this variety doing quite well in his yard, so I shopped for these. It's also known as wild California lilac.

Speaking of wild, this is arugula gone bad. I planted this last spring, and it has taken over my raised bed. It's an arugula jungle. I found a few stray carrots growing in here and pulled them for my supper.

Borage always does well in our yard. I like to pluck the blue blossoms and use them to decorate potato salads.

And in this corner, we have rosemary running riot and bay standing its ground. I love the blue flowers on the rosemary, and so do the bees. Time to get out the pruning shears. Gotta love spring.

I cleaned and filled all the bird feeders, bird baths, etc. Calling all chickadees...we're ready for you!

More Flower Power

2010-02-22T18:27:00.001-08:00

I've been cranking out the flowers lately. The one above is made with rick rack. I like some of the more subtle colors it comes in, like this color which is called "hyacinth." I love that I had a vintage button that matches both the color and the spiraling.

This grey and black and white number has a cool vintage button too. It's such an unusual shape.

I've been reading up on the Etsy forums tips on how to improve your photography. I'm experimenting with different backgrounds and props today. Ace has been enjoying the photo session. I had to banish him from the studio because he kept knocking everything over. I also decided to resort to using Steve's better camera and a tripod so I could avoid the blurry photos and having to spend a lot of time trying to correct the colors.

I love this antique white wired ribbon rose with the similar colored chiffon scarf in the background.

The color on this fuschia rose is amazing.

I had fun making this camel/brown eco felt flower. I like how the chunky burgundy button surrounded by wooden beads works on it. I had a necklace that fell apart decades ago and I rediscovered the beads in my button box.

Mauve wired ombre ribbon rose. I could easily spend a fortune on ribbon. Better start racking up some sales here. Go to my shop now and browse, okay? I just uploaded a bunch of new ones.

Flower Frenzy

2010-01-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Some of you have already heard the news: I opened a new shop on Etsy. In case you don't know, Etsy is a cool website where you can buy handmade and vintage items and art supplies directly from all sorts of artists around the world.

As Steve will attest to, I have become a bit obsessed with making fabric flowers lately. Ace is thrilled with all the craft supplies he can get his paws into. He especially likes stealing the buttons off my work table and batting them around the floor. The flower above is one I just finished this morning, shown on my new favorite sweater that I got at Macy's in Monterey (not even on sale.)

Here's the white and yellow version with some of the faux stamens. I just love using the stamens and the cool vintage plastic buttons I bought from an Etsy shop. I can't wait until I start making enough $$ so that I can stock up on some of the vintage German stamens that I have seen online at Blumchen's. I don't know exactly why, but I find these millinery supplies completely fascinating.

I'm trying to make some spring-y looking flowers lately, since it's starting to be Spring here and it will soon spread to other more Northerly parts of the country. The green button on this pink and white flower is one I've had in my button box for years. I bought it at the oddest little shop in the Kensington Market district of Toronto. It was a tiny falling apart shack run by a real character. The shop was packed with old buttons, some of them covered in years of dust. I wish I could go back there, but it's probably gone.

I'm making a lot of these flowers out of eco-fi, which is a felt that is made completely from recycled plastic bottles. So my products here are "green" as well...cool. I'm atoning for my sins of drinking water from plastic bottles for all those years before I got my metal water container. What did we do before water bottles?

My friend Jean snapped up this pink and chocolate confection right away. I swear, that gal is the best friend anyone could ever have.

I also made a blue version, which is still up for grabs at my shop. I am having a blast collecting all the fabrics and ribbons and buttons. (Unfortunately, I am also collecting a whole lot of receipts for ribbon, fabric, etc.) When I try to sleep at night, my mind keeps coming up with new designs and color combinations I want to try out.

I also went to the Fillmore Goodwill store this week and bought up a bunch of wool sweaters to experiment on with fast felting or fulling. In the old days this was known as "ruining a good sweater" by washing it in hot water in the washing machine and coming out with something shrunken and fuzzy. Now it is hip and groovy to do. It's recycling, or as the fashion hipsters call it, "upcycling." I have to hide the wool sweaters because Ace loves to rip into them with his teeth. I think he likes the wooly scent. Stay tuned for new flowers made from these upcycled sweaters, okay?

Flower Power

2010-01-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

I took an all-day seminar in making fabric flowers called "cabochons" yesterday at the Sewing Workshop. The instructor was Candace Kling, who is the author of the book The Artful Ribbon. All I can say is, "WOW!" It was so cool. The purple flower shown above was the easiest one to make, surprisingly. It is made from wired ribbon that I got at this cool shop called The Ribbonerie. Warning...don't go in there...you will be a lot poorer when you walk out.

Shopping for the materials for the class was an adventure in itself. I'm not a sew-er, so I was not familiar with where to buy fabrics. I visited Fabrix, in my old neighborhood, on Clement Street. This is a good place for good deals on fabric, no frills, but the people who work there are nice. I got this lovely dark red silk fabric that I used to make the above rose.

I also got to visit Satin Moon Fabrics, which is almost across the street from Fabrix. Satin Moon opened in that location in 1973, a year before I moved there. It's run by two sisters and they have absolutely gorgeous fabrics. The tiny store is packed with treasures.

This flower and the one above it are made from rick rack. I was never a fan of rick rack, I always thought it looked tacky, but you can make some cool little flowers from it.

This orange rose reminds me of Arts and Crafts period paintings. This was made with expensive hand-dyed silk bias ribbon from Britex, a downtown San Francisco institution where I could easily spend a million dollars.

Here's another cute little flower made from rick rack.

This green flower was made from bias cording. I learned about so many new things yesterday: tacky glue, fray stop, doll pates...it was mind boggling. The other students in the class were also very interesting. There was a man named Bill who makes costumes for the SF Opera and worked for Beach Blanket Babylon. He was a wealth of information. There was also a woman who owns a hat shop on Valencia. I was worried that my lack of sewing skills would be a problem, but it was all sewing by hand and gluing and stuff, so not a problem. I am psyched to delve further into this new world.

Christmas Ornaments Project

2010-01-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

Last year Martha Stewart Living magazine ran an article on how to make these pretty Christmas ornaments that look like Wedgwood jasperware ceramics, which I love. My great-grandmother, Nana, had a cookie tin in her kitchen with a Wedgwood jasperware design on it, which I remember admiring during our Sunday visits to her apartment.

Since I now have a little collection of these cool cookie molds from House on the Hill, I decided to try my hand at making the ornaments. My partner in crafts, Sharon Morris, decided she wanted to make some too. So one pre-Christmas afternoon, we embarked on this adventure.

The first thing we had to do was mix the proper color acrylic paint into Paperclay. This was nice, squishy, messy business. The latex gloves from my earthquake emergency kit came in handy. Good thing we covered the kitchen table with brown paper. (The floor was not so fortunate.) Sharon mixed up a batch of green.

I decided to work on blue. The article gave formulas for how many tablespoons of each color per pound of Paperclay to mix in. Once we got the colors nice and evenly mixed in, we followed the directions in the magazine and sprayed the molds with mold release spray and then packed in some Paperclay and set about to unmold the ornaments. Easier said than done!

The directions don't tell you this: the mold release spray has to dry before you can start molding and you need more than one coat. Even with the spray, the Paperclay was sticking in all the detail areas of the molds, so we had to scrub them out with toothbrushes, dry them and then respray with mold release spray and let that dry. Our patience wearing thin, we resorted to the blow dryer.

The pieces continued to stick in the molds. The acrylic paint we mixed in for color made the Paperclay much wetter and stickier. I decided to mix more Paperclay into mine. They still weren't unmolding cleanly, so I gave up on the mold release spray and tried brushing the molds with cornstarch. Voilá! (After finishing the project, I went to the Paperclay website and they recommend using talcum powder.)

The green was even more problematic, as the formula for the green color contained more paint than the blue did. Steve got home from work, and we still had the kitchen table all in a big mess struggling with the green ornaments. After mixing more Paperclay and cornstarch into the green mixture, and compromising our standards a bit, we were done.

Now the ornaments were to be left to air dry overnight. I guess that "room temperature" is a relative thing. It was typically chilly and wet here in San Francisco, and the darn things weren't drying after 3 days. I put them on my drawing table and trained my lamps on them up close. After a day of that treatment, they did dry.

The ornaments dried a bit lighter in color and much lighter in weight. They are quite durable now too. I brushed off any remaining cornstarch. The next step in the process was to sand and smooth the backs and sides of the ornaments. An emery board worked well for the edges. This created a bit of dust, but it was easy.

Now to paint the raised details in white acrylic. This was another process which took a lot longer than I expected. I ended up needing to paint 3 coats to get the white to look opaque enough. Mixing in some white gouache helped with the opacity. I used a tiny brush to get the little detail in the branches and sun's rays.

Using tacky craft glue, I glued loops of grosgrain ribbon onto the backs of the ornaments for hanging. I cut out decorative paper to glue over the ribbon. To finish the ornaments, I glued more of the ribbon on the edges.

It was lots of work, but a nice result. I love how the details on this cow one show up.

Finally, I put each ornament in a cello bag and tied them with colorful ribbons. Ready to ship back home to the family.

A few of my favorite things...

2009-12-09T12:28:00.000-08:00

I've been busying myself with holiday projects lately. I made the ornament "tree" on the left side of the mantle. I saw a similar one in Martha Stewart Living magazine years ago and thought it was really cool.

Here's a closeup of the tree before I put the smallest ornaments on it. I bought a styrofoam cone and spray painted it red and used a hot glue gun to attach all the little ornaments. There are over 250 ornaments on this thing...doesn't look like that many, does it? When I was mostly done with it I found out where I should have bought the supplies in the first place: The SF Flower Mart. Specifically, Shibata Floral. I got the fresh 15' evergreen garland at the Flower Mart too.

I love to bake Christmas cookies. I bought some springerle cookie molds from House on the Hill. Springerle, according to H. o' the H., originated in Bavaria and Alsace as early as the 1600s. The other day I tackled making some cookies using one of their recipes. These 2 shots show the molded and trimmed cookies unbaked. You need to let them dry overnight so that the designs will not puff out too much when you bake them.

The cookies puff up like little pillows when you bake them. The smaller cookies need to bake at a very low temperature. They are only supposed to turn a little golden on the bottoms when they are done. It was hard to get my oven to a low enough temperature. Later that evening, when I tried to make dinner, the oven was acting oddly. Dinner was still raw after an hour of baking at 375 degrees. So, perhaps the oven is now broken. My oven is over 50 years old and has been showing its age.

I decided to decorate the cookies with a little edible gold luster dust. It's nice because it highlights the raised designs. All I did was brush it in with a soft brush.

Here are some of the bigger cookies.

So, now it's time to pack up the cookies and ship them off to my family back east. I hope they like them. Thursday Sharon & I are going to make some Wedgewood Jasperware style ornaments using paperclay and the cookie molds.

Harvest Time...Chard...Carrots!

2009-09-30T10:34:00.001-07:00

Back in June, I planted these seeds in my raised bed in my urban back yard.

I've been harvesting rainbow chard and carrots from my little raised bed lately. They are so colorful, it makes me happy. Here's my recipe for chard casserole. I made this up because most of the recipes I found used only the leaves and told you to toss the stems. This upset my "wasting food is a sin" mentality. Anyhow, read on and you can make it too.

I used about 2 large bunches of rainbow chard for this recipe. Separate the stems from the leaves. I like to use kitchen scissors for this. Wash the chard. Dry and chop the stems and one onion and saute in a little olive oil until everything's translucent. Pour the mixture into an oiled baking dish and spread evenly with a spatula.

Sprinkle this mixture with a little salt and pepper and shake on some plain breadcrumbs and grated parmesan cheese to lightly cover. This forms sort of a "crust" or base for the casserole.

Next, lift the leaves from the water you've washed them in and tear in pieces and shake off most of the water and place them in the same saute pan. Cook, turning with tongs, until wilted.

Remove the cooked leaves from the pan with tongs, shaking off most of the moisture. Distribute the leaves evenly on top of the stem base and pat down to even the top. Sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper and some freshly ground nutmeg.

Now top the leaves with some grated cheese. I like to use gruyere because it has a nice nutty flavor that complements the chard.

Beat some eggs. I normally would have used 6-8 eggs for this size (9" x 13") pan, but I only had 5 so, 5 it is! Pour the eggs evenly around the dish. Top with some pine nuts for added visual appeal and crunch. Now bake this puppy in a 350 oven for 30-45 minutes, until the cheese on top starts to get golden brown.

If you stick a knife in the center of the casserole, it should come out clean. If not, bake a little longer. Let cool for 5-10 minutes before cutting into squares to serve.

I roasted the whole carrots in the oven at the same time and marinated and grilled some chops for this dinner. We served it with Toasted Head Chardonnay, which I like because it has a weird name and an illustration of a bear spewing flames on the label. Normally I don't buy it because it is too expensive, but Safeway had it on sale last week.

I usually serve the chard casserole as a main dish, but these chops needed to be cooked that day. It's really good as a brunch dish, especially good to bring to a potluck too. It's good served warm or at room temperature. It reheats very well. There's still some left if you want to come over for lunch.

What blog post would be complete without some pictures of Ace? Here he is at 6 months old now, getting big and getting into everything. Yesterday I opened the refrigerator and he went right in, straight to the back.

I'm thinking of planting some fava beans for a winter crop. I'd like to grow some different colored beets too. My beets grew so fast this time.

Late Summer

2009-08-29T15:47:00.001-07:00

It's hot today. It was even hotter yesterday. This is Ace's first heat wave. He doesn't know how to handle it. He's been crashing out on his back in different locations, trying to stay cool.

Last night it was so hot that we had to open the door to the kitty cat "forbidden zone,"otherwise known as the bedroom, to get some air circulation. Ace wasted no time in checking it all out, including diving right under the covers.

Of course, he had to check out both ends of the situation.

The garden is soaking up the sun's rays while the daylight is still lingering into evening. The scarlet runner beans are getting some beautiful red flowers, despite the entire pot having been blown over completely upside down by the wind a couple of weeks ago.

The crops have grown so much I can hardly believe it. I hope I can get to the carrots before the gophers find them.

The Santa Barbara daisies are flourishing. Cabbage moths were chasing each other this afternoon. I seem to have a lot of dragonflies and bees too.

The bees really like this flower, appropriately named Bee Balm. The hummingbirds are going after it too.

This week we introduced Ace to the shed, which has a shelf with a kitty perch with a great view of the bird baths. Ace has been enjoying the birdy circus, although he tries to lunge at the towhees who hop too close to his screen window.

Another new thing for Ace this week is combing. Unlike any other cat we've had, Ace enjoys having his tummy combed. He's purring away here.

Miraloma Ranch

2009-08-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

This land used to be a ranch long ago, according to the historians. Having given up on trying to grow tomatoes in the fog, and tiring of battling the kikuyu grass, I have decided to stick to cool season vegetables only and garden in containers. This is the first time I have gotten scarlet runner beans (above) to grow in my yard.

Here's the raised bed, planted with baby beets, 4 different types of carrots (including purple ones and red ones and white ones,) Merveille de Quatre Saisons lettuce, and Bright Lights chard. I am using floating row cover, which is making a huge difference in the growth rate of the plants. It keeps the moisture and warmth in and the critters out. For the time being anyhow, knock wood.

I have at least 4 different kinds of thyme growing in this pot. I have finally found the right combo of sunlight and water, as much as I can manage to give them.

The other night I thinned the beets and lettuce and I made myself a nice beet salad with feta cheese and toasted walnuts and I had steamed beet greens on the side. Mmmmmm.

We've been invaded by pocket gophers for the first time in 26 years here. They dig and mound up the dirt and wreck your lawn and whatever else they can get their grubby paws on. I have only a tiny lawn in the back and they are ruining it. They are actually sorta cute. If you click on the link you can see a photo of one. There are tons of them in Golden Gate Park.

We tried Molemax, which Steve got from Orchard Supply Hardware. The guy at the store said to Steve, "You can buy these things...none of them work..." It's supposed to make the soil smell bad to gophers. Another non-lethal method I'm trying this week is pictured above. It's a stake that you put three batteries in and stick in the ground and it makes a sound that's supposed to drive the gophers away. My neighbor told me, "They don't work." The jury's out on this one. I've yet to resort to plastic explosives, a la Carl Spackler of Caddyshack fame.

Let's forget about the #$&*%ing gophers and concentrate on how sweet Ace is. You can feast your eyes on more pictures of Ace by clicking here.

What's New with Ace?

2009-07-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

Ace had a visit from his cousin Christina from San Diego. It's hard to say which one of them enjoyed it more. They both had a blast. They would have played together all day, if we let them.

Keeping Ace out of trouble is almost a full-time job. He has discovered that there are lots of yummy wires hidden behind the computer. This is a very good place to lie down, stick your paws out from under the monitor and bat at mom's fingers on the keyboard. Cool things happen when you walk across the keyboard too.

Sometimes a wild jungle beast appears hidden in the leaves of the Schleffera. He's just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. I'm scared, aren't you?

Another cool pastime is trying out various sleeping poses. This is a cute one curled up in his bed with Kitty. When we brought Ace home, Kitty was bigger than he was. You can see that the tables have turned.

Here's a less dignified on the couch pose. Growing so fast requires putting in a lot of nap time. Ace is no slouch in this department.

A few of Ace's loyal subjects like to keep watch over him while he sleeps. When they are not keeping watch, they spend time migrating to inaccessible spots, such as way, way under the couch.

Steve says we now have taken over 500 photos of Ace. He is 4 months old today.

Ace is getting bigger

2009-07-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ace has added a few new fans to his fan club lately. Here he is posing with his new members Linda and Janet in the bathroom, which is his favorite room.

Ace likes to get on the toilet so he can check himself out in the mirror on the back of the door. Sometimes this leads to accidental closing of the door. Oops. He's looking quite handsome here.

One of Ace's new tricks is deposing stuffed kitty from the top of the scratching post. He does not like having her up there, or catnip mouse either.

After knocking her off, he gives her a good thrashing. (This is an "action shot" which is why it appears blurry.)

Ace assumes his rightful position of King Kitty.

But sometimes Ace is in a more contemplative mood, quietly gazing out the window at the neighborhood doings.

And sometimes he just likes to sleep on his favorite pillow.

Mom's Birthday

2009-06-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

One nice thing about being back east in May for Surtex is getting to celebrate Mom's birthday in person afterwards. We had a cookout and birthday cake in my sister Nancy's backyard.

Here's Nancy in her sunroom/music room, where she gives piano lessons.

Here's a nice shot of Nancy's husband John and his gorgeous daughter, my step niece Katlyn.

We took a drive with Mom up to Farnham's in Essex.

There's a beautiful view of the salt marsh from the restaurant. We saw an Eastern Kingbird and a Snowy Egret from the window.

After lunch we took a dive around Rocky Neck, Gloucester. We felt compelled to turn around and take a drive-by photo of the "No Photographing" sign here.

Mom enjoyed her little outing.

Not getting anything done

2009-06-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

I am getting nothing done this week, except if you count opening cans of Purina One Ocean Fish and Tuna Kitten. Ace has some on his little nose.

We also play tickle tummy.

Looking out the window at the big outdoors is ok, but somewhat overwhelming.

Looking cute for the camera is good.

It's all so tiring...think it's time for a nap again.

Meet the new Boss

2009-06-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

We picked out a new kitten from the SPCA yesterday. He's SO tiny, only weighs one pound. He purrs right away when you pick him up. He's just too cute for words.

Marblehead May

2009-06-03T09:55:00.001-07:00

Marblehead in late May is a pretty gorgeous place to be. Azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs and wisteria are all in bloom. Steve took this really pretty shot in a small alley in old town on Memorial Day. I love the rough hewn granite steps, the cascade of white azaleas and the crisp American flag flying on the well-kept colonial house.

They have a contest for Best Windowbox during the 4th of July Arts Festival. I think people were getting warmed up for it already.

Although the harbor was not yet full, people are starting to get their boats in the water for the summer.

Steve & I had lunch at the Barnacle, my favorite little seafood shack, right on the water near Fort Sewall. No waves were crashing over the windows on this quiet afternoon like they were when Karin Rhodes & I ate lunch there during a high tide winter storm a few years back.

It was a warm still day, and we spent some time sitting in the shade on the benches at Fort Sewall, looking out the mouth of the harbor towards Children's Island.

My old pals George & Jean drove down from Vermont for a visit. We spent a perfect early summer day downtown with them.

This day there was a bit more of a breeze, and a lot more activity in the harbor. Here's a nice shot of the Corinthian Yacht Club with someone sailing by.

We met up with Jim Davenport and Karin Rhodes at "the Bench" and shared some laughs and memories. There's nothing like hanging out with old friends.

Post Surtex

2009-05-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Here's our agent, Sharon Morris, in our booth at Surtex '09. We had banners printed to fit within the booth panels, which made our setup and take down SO much easier this year. Also, the booth had a more pulled-together look, since we designed the panels to compliment each other. I like how the little striped awning at top makes it look like a shop. "Hello! We're open for business."

The 10' x 10' booth looks a little cozy here in this shot with the Deb Melmon, me and Sharon Morris behind the counter. We found the attendance to be better than some feared, a little bit slower perhaps than the past couple of years. Surtex started charging non-buyers $150 to get in, so I think that cut down on the numbers of people just looking.

These are my two panels, well, the top portion of my two panels.

Marjaleena and Greg did not come from Australia this year, so the booth next to us was empty and covered over. At the last moment we found out that we could use one of the aisle panels for extra signage. Deb & I nipped over to Kinko's at Bryant Park and muddled our way through using one of their PC's to create a last minute sign with my White Roses image that I had brought on a flash drive.

Here's the "view" from my room at the Hotel Wolcott. It's an older hotel near Herald Square. The lobby is magnificent, all gilded and crystal chandelliered. The bathrooms are narrow and feature "attack" shower curtains that kept billowing and clinging to me. But it was clean and quiet and the cheapest hotel on Travel Planners list. Beware the numerous sales and room taxes and charges they tack on in NYC...ouch!

Carol Eldridge and The Captain were our gracious hosts at the Boston Yacht Club in Marblehead.

Steve flew out to join me in Marblehead after the show. I took Amtrak's Acela Express train to Boston, which was really relaxing compared to flying. I saw swans with cygnets and osprey flying and on their nests from the train.

My brother's cat Coco was there to welcome us for our stay at Mom's house in Marblehead. The rest of the photos are on Steve's camera. He's coming home tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Workin' Hard

2009-05-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hey, here's my latest design. A set of the 12 Days of Christmas ornaments. I am working away like a fiend getting myself ready for Surtex.

Even More Bouquets to Art

2009-04-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

I took a lot of pictures, as you are probably getting by now. There were hundreds of arrangements, so these are only the ones that I really liked and the photos turned out not blurry. This framed one was with the Hartnett trompe l'oeil still lifes. It's a painting of books in a window, not in this photo.

I liked the lush colors and the branches bursting into leaf at the top of this one. It sort of screams out, "SPRING!"

This oddball piece has a large seashell as a base, and barnacles and these pitcher plants hanging down. I think it was to go with a glass sculpture. I like how the green plants look like coral.

These dark curly ferny things at top were very popular this year. I'm not sure which work of art this went with, but it's cool.

Pretty soft salmon color flowers again. This piece went along with the portrait of a boy in the background.

You can see the scale of this one with these ladies in behind it. The bottom fuzzy part was all composed of proteas.

I love this exotic combo of plant materials. This piece was in the pre-Colombian art section.

This modern art one is a little bit too literal, but fun.

This piece was hung in the entrance way of the museum. It's huge. The flowers around it are anthuriums, so it give you some idea of the scale.

This was another of my favorites. The way this arrangement of spiky greens mimics the green glass sculpture is exciting.

This flower-encrusted dress form was not the only one in the show, but this is the photo that came out. They did a good job with picking up the colors from the painting.

I could not resist this cute doggie made out of pussy willow tips. Nice. Like the floats in the Rose Bowl Parade.

I marvel at how well this design goes with the steamboat painting. They even got in the smokestack and the smoke with some green vines.

The designer wrapped different colored strap-like leaves around to evoke the flat shapes of color in this abstract painting. Very creative.

You can thank my mom, who bought me a museum membership, for these posts. Thanks, Mom!

More Bouquets to Art

2009-04-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

It was interesting to me how well the floral designers were able to come up with arrangements that went so well with the portrait paintings they had chosen. This blue one is gorgeous. The woman in the painting is wearing a hat wrapped with blue gauze. The designer has wrapped the pedestal with blue gauze as well.

This rather formal full length life-sized portrait is nicely complemented by the tight bunches of yellow roses in this design.

This is one of my favorite paintings in their collection. It is a John Singer Sargent oil painting of a woman at a restaurant at night. I like how the designer used dark reds in the flowers to evoke the mood of the painting with the red lamps. The dark calla lilies are amazing.

This pretty fluffy pink arrangement looks nice with the soft Impressionist brushstrokes and pinks in this portrait. And the orange ranunculus standing in for the woman's red hair is a nice touch.

I think this one is a bit contrived, but it mimics the shapes, colors and mood of this formal portrait of a girl in a bonnet.

Oops, I almost forgot this one. It's hard to see the formal portrait behind it of a woman in a long black dress. I like the cascade of white orchids in this one.

Bouquets to Art

2009-03-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

I went to the de Young Museum over a week ago to see the annual Bouquets to Art exhibit. I was not as bowled over by the exhibit this year, maybe since it was not the first time I had seen the show. This first piece was my favorite of the show. I love this piece because it really evokes the feeling of the composition and colors of this painting of the box of trinkets and still is a very beautiful flower arrangement on its own.

This piece is designed to go with the Arthur Dove print in the background. I like the black cascade of folded leaves on the right and the limited palette. In the closeup, you can see the gorgeous form of the white roses, almost like gardenias.

This arrangement was the first one I saw in the show. I really like how it looks like a waterfall, similar to the painting of Niagara Falls it mimics.

I can't really put my finger on why I love this one that goes with the still life of fish. I do like the muted colors of the flowers and the shapes.

This flight of fancy is almost not a floral arrangement, but more of a sculpture. I like how it conveys the exuberance of motion and color of the gumball painting.

Again, I'm not really sure what compels me to like this one. It has the feeling of winter to it, like the painting.

Here's my second favorite one. I love how they have suggested the colors of the rocks with the roses and the spray and water with the blue-green foliage and white flowers. Pretty.

This abstract painting/floral arrangement is so cool. I love how dynamic and loose it is and simply colorful. It is almost getting lost in the painting.

I think I like the ones where the designer has been very imaginative, rather than so literal with their piece. Some of them I would never in a million years have come up with or thought of myself, so they are very surprising. Several designers made really bold choices with the pieces they picked to complement. There was so much to see, it was hard to take it all in at once, so I'm glad I took a lot of photos.

I have more photos, but I'm going to spread them out in a few different posts. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the blog so much lately. I've been chasing deadlines and messing about on Facebook. More to come.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

2009-03-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

My hairdresser was taking her kids to school this morning and they saw a huge rainbow on their way. Her kid said to her, "You mean rainbows are real?"

And the Winner is...

2009-02-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's me! I picked 18 out of 24 winners for the Academy Awards this year. 75% correct. Usually I get less than half of them right. (Actually, everybody did pretty well this year. I really tied with Steve, who was very gracious and conceded victory to me since I hardly even win.) It was a fun show, quite entertaining.

I liked the segment where they showed James Franco and Seth Rogin sitting on the couch laughing their asses off at the serious movies. Only Ben Stiller was totally off key coming on in that weird wig and fake beard and acting stoned.

I was skeptical about Hugh Jackman as host, but I enjoyed his jokes and singing and dancing. I missed the one big musical number because I was in the kitchen putting the dinner together. We liked the new format where they had 5 of the previous Oscar winners on stage speaking about each of the nominees' performances. I think it was nice because instead of there just being the one winner, everyone was acknowledged.

I do sort of enjoy it when some of the actresses wear something totally hideous or they are really falling out of their dress, so you can make fun of them. Only Mickey Rourke had a really weird outfit this year to go along with his alien-like body and face. Steve has been keeping up the family tradition that his mom started of mispronouncing names. He was calling Mickey Rourke's co-star in The Wrestler "Melissa Ptomaine."

Well, maybe it's because I actually saw so many of the nominated films this year that I did so well picking the winners. We made an effort to try to see them, going along with all the seniors to the late afternoon matinees on the weekends. I'm glad that Slumdog Millionaire got a bunch of awards. I thought the movie was refreshingly different.

These are a few of my favorite things

2009-02-20T16:12:00.000-08:00

I am always amazed at how huge flowers come out of bulbs (and seeds.) It's so dramatic. I bought a bunch of hyacinth bulbs at Sloat Garden Center back in September. I also got this pretty crackled glass forcing vase. My helpful spouse, who needs to have everything put away at all times, shoved the plastic bag of bulbs into a corner in the shed. They sat there forgotten for a couple of months, until I discovered them. They are supposed to be stored in a cold dry spot. It was warm and they sweated inside the plastic bag and most of them had mold on them. I washed them off and left them out (horrors!) to air dry. Then I stored them in the fridge, where I had planned to put them in the first place. Most of them finally got planted in my front yard, where they are now pushing up spicy fragrant flowers.

I took this bulb out of the refrigerator just last week. After one day, it started to open up (see photo at top.) Now look at it one week later:

I was hoping this one would have blue blossoms, but it looks like it's a white one. They were in separate marked paper bags, but the bags disintigrated. I just can't believe that these little bulbs, which withstood so much abuse, are able to turn into such amazing creations so quickly. It's like magic.

Here's another amazing thing. It's a folding plastic spork that came with my salad from Trader Joe's. Isn't it cool? Why didn't someone think of this sooner? It's so compact. You can put it in your pocket and sit down and it won't break. Cool. I would like to give the person who invented this a prize.

I love my Cranergy. I know I blogged about this before. Only 50 calories for 12 oz. and it tastes great. You should buy some so that they will keep making it and I can keep drinking it every day, ok?

I switched to this Crest Pro-Health Night toothpaste last year after my dental hygenist Janice mentioned it. (I love Janice. She's the best. She was talking about retiring, but now...like everyone else, she lost a lot of her retirement savings...I'm secretly happy she's not retiring.) At the risk of sounding like a commercial...after using this stuff for 6 months and going back to have my teeth cleaned, both Janice and I noticed a huge difference...much less tartar.

I designed some new t-shirts and put them up on my Cafe Press shop. Steve asked me to make these as homage to Clint Eastwood in his latest acting/directing project, Gran Torino. I didn't think I was going to like this movie, but I did. The shirts also come in a black version. Steve's boss Eric bought one today. He was my first customer. Having customers is one of my favorite things also.

Speaking of favorites, Steve put up his best 10 movies of 2008 page with his picks for which films will win the Academy Award. I am rooting for Slumdog Millionaire. As for my favorite star, James McAvoy, he was in two of the worst movies of 2008: Wanted and Penelope. Of course I went to see them, because well, it's James. (Even he can't always be perfect.)

I will let you know who the big winner of our Academy Awards contest is after Sunday.

I Miss My Girl

2009-02-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

I still sometimes expect to see Esther coming around a corner. I miss her goofiness. I took this photo of her when I was babysitting for little Anthony. This was his chair, but Esther was being territorial and decided it was just the right size for her.

She often would get her ears turned inside out when she was washing her face and didn't seem to mind it. She looks really goofy.

Esther could not resist ribbon. She loved opening presents, especially on Christmas morning. Once when she was a kitten, I had finished wrapping a gift and put it down on the floor. As if on cue, Esther went right over to the package and ripped the bow off with her teeth. She always made us laugh.

Last Batch, I Promise

2009-01-27T14:30:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to pretend that I'm still in Kauai. Can you tell? I don't know who these folks are. Steve just thought they looked pretty funny.

This is the beautiful Hanalei Valley, from an overlook. It's farmed, mostly with taro plants, which they use the roots of to make poi. This land is also a nature preserve for native ducks and geese and Hawaiian stilts.

This is a field of taro plants.

My favorite place in Hanalei is Banana Joe's, which is a fruit stand where they make smoothies and frosties. They take fruit that has been frozen and put it through a food mill to make a sort of sorbet, only there is no sugar added. It's just fruit. Yum!

Speaking of fruit, it really does just grow on trees there. Here's a papaya tree and a coconut palm.

We went to a luau at Smith Family Tropical Paradise. It was sorta what we thought it was going to be. The food was pretty good. You have to try the poi, but it's definitely an acquired taste. The luau reminded me of Thanksgiving dinner, only tropical. There were about 500 people at this one. We got seated at a long table across from 2 obvious newlyweds. They were cute. Turns out the guy was from Amherst, NY (Steve's hometown) and the girl from Tonawanda...Buffalo. That was pretty funny. The grounds have all sorts of beautiful plants and peacocks.

The show after the dinner was sort of pseudo-Polynesian and a bit hokey. It kind of reminded me of those shows at places like Marineworld Africa USA. We left early. But we did enjoy the happy hour with Hawaiian music at Joe's on the Green at Kiahuna Plantation Golf Resort. I loved the Hukilau Song. The woman who sang on Thursday and Sunday nights brought up some relatives from the audience who performed traditional hula, which was really serious and beautiful...not at all like the coconut bra/hootchie-cootchie girl version one sometimes associates with Hawaii. Click on the Hukilau link to see the Hukilau hula.

Our favorite meal stop (which Chris told us about)was about a block from where we stayed, Susan Allyn's shrimp truck on Lawaii Rd. Food off a truck is sort of the last thing I'd think of when looking for a good meal, but the garlic shrimp and the coconut shrimp were fresh and delicious.

Steve took this photo of Ironwood roots at Ke'e Beach on the far north side of the island. Our guide told us that the sand got washed away by a 40 ft. wave that hit the island a couple of years ago. The trees are still alive.

Here are two more images from the cactus gardens at Moir Gardens in Poipu.

There was an amazing full moon while we were there. Steve took a bunch of photos of it from Baby Beach.

We got to watch the sun rise the last two days we were there. Once when we were headed out for birding and then on our way to the airport. When we took off from Lihue, I looked out the window of the plane and saw a rainbow. Aloha, Kauai.

One fish, two fish...

2009-01-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

We had a bit of a tough time with snorkeling this time around. After 17 years of not doing it, we and our equipment were a bit rusty. My snorkel actually crumbled when I took it out of the storage box. We visited Snorkel Bob's to fill in our equipment gaps. (You can see videos of reef fish at the SB site.) It took us a few tries to work out the bugs and find a place where we could get in without being dashed on the rocks by rough waves, and there were good fish to see. The fish above are raccoon butterfly fish. They didn't mind posing to have their photos taken. Below is a school of convict tang.

We took these photos with a little disposable underwater camera, thus the lack of focus. (I'm fresh out of focusing solution too, dang!) These raccoon butterfly fish are with one of their cousins, a threadfin butterfly fish. They were more elusive.

Above we have an orangeband surgeonfish with a bluespine unicornfish. You can sorta see the unicornfish's little horn on his head. Here's another one.

You can see the blue spines on this guy. They are bright and stick out from the body.

This was my favorite fish. It's a bad view of it, but it's a yellowtail coris or clown wrasse and a saddle wrasse at the bottom. Click on the link to see what the face looks like. It has green stripes radiating out from it's eye. Wicked cool. This photo shows how bright the colors are on these fish, almost like neon. You can also see some colored coral and some sea urchins. Some of the fish shapes were very strange, reminding me of some of the creatures from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie.

This fish is called a Christmas wrasse, I guess since it's red and green. Pretty huh?

I think this one is a ringtail surgeonfish. I love the shape of its tail.

This surgeonfish was gorgeous. Click on the link for a better photo of the face.

There were a lot of these big fish swimming around. Not sure what they are. Gray chub?

A lot of these big fish too. (That's me flashing the shaka.) All these photos were taken on our last day at Beach House Beach. Wish we had known how nice the snorkeling was there from day one. Or that we had stayed another week. Once you get your mask to stop fogging up and/or letting in water, and you start going with the flow, snorkeling is really relaxing. Pretty much all you can hear is your breathing through the snorkel tube. It's just you and the fish. Steve said it was almost like meditation.

Western Kauai

2009-01-19T16:21:00.001-08:00

Steve & I like the western side of the island. It's drier and less populated. The towns are small and dusty and remind me of the western mainland U.S. The photo above is Waimea Plantation Cottages. I would love to stay at this place. We had lunch at the Waimea Brewing Company (nothing to write home about, except for the nicely designed retro posters for beers like "Luau Lager.") Then we walked around the grounds.

I wasn't even going to get into this hammock, but once Steve convinced me to try it, I was loathe to leave. It was so relaxing listening to the waves lapping the shore and feeling the trade winds gently blowing in the shade of the ironwood trees. The plantation grounds contain some gorgeous specimens of trees and plants. I was amazed at this one.

Hanapepe is one of the little towns on the western side. There are many feline residents. This guy posed prettily next to this pot of white flowers on the porch of Banana Patch Studios. This is a nice shop to pick up a souvenir or two of your visit to Kauai. There are a handful of galleries in Hanapepe. Friday night is the big night there, where the galleries remain open at night, and the Hanapepe Cafe and Bakery is only open during the week. We were there on a Saturday, and many places were closed. This grey kitty was guarding the closed bookstore.

We walked across the swinging bridge to the other side of the Hanapepe River. It really does sway a lot when someone else is walking on it with you.

The road up to Waimea Canyon begins in the town of Waimea. It's an incredibly scenic drive up Waimea Canyon Road. Like the Grand Canyon, photos fail to capture the breathtaking depth of the views.

At the top of this road is Kokee State Park, with many hiking trails. Steve took some nice photos of the view from the Pihea Trail, down to the Kalalau Valley. This area is inaccessible by road, you must hike in or take a boat or helicopter tour.

This trail runs along the top edge of the Kalalau Valley and on the other side of the trail is the Alakai Swamp. Along the trail, you are standing at the edge of an incredible drop. This is not a place to lose your footing. The Alakai contains most of the native forest birds on Kauai. They have retreated to this 4,500 foot elevation where they are not preyed upon by disease-bearing mosquitoes.

Back in Waimea, you want to head over to Jo Jo's Shave Ice for a cooling treat. Then you can buy a souvenir Red Dirt Shirt. Click on the link to read the story of the shirts, as it is kind of cool. We talked with the woman working in the store, who showed us her tattoos.

This one is of her daughter, who died of leukemia at age 12.

On the way back to our cottage we stopped at Spouting Horn.

There were lots of humpback whales just offshore here, as well as many other locations around Poipu.

You'd be looking at a sunset, and suddenly see lots of spouting. You don't even need binoculars to see them. We also saw whales breaching, diving and sticking their long flippers up in the air. Amazing.

Kauai Flowers

2009-01-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

It's called "The Garden Island" for a reason. The tropical flowers in Kauai are varied and colorful. This one is plumeria, which is fragrant and grows at the tips of a fleshy tree. We stayed at the Plumeria Cottage in Kauai Cove Cottages, which was a lovely rental on a quiet residential street. Turns out our friends Chris & Jane stayed in that exact same cottage a year and a half ago. Small world.

Here are some yellow flowers that I liked.

I don't know what this white flower is. I took this photo in the Moir Gardens at the Kiahuna Plantation resort. Sandie Moir was the wife of the Kohloa Sugar Plantation's estate manager. She liked to collect plants, especially cactus, and started this garden in 1938. Her plants are really thriving. This garden was one of the few places not destroyed by Hurricaine Iniki. Here's the inside of the flower.

The garden is open to the public for free during daylight hours. They have many orchids, which seemed to all be in bloom when I was there. It was windy that afternoon and the orchids were waving around, so a bunch of the pictures came out blurry, and I could not remember how to use the macro feature on Steve's camera, but I still came out with some good photos. The orchids look really pretty against the black lava rocks.

There are also a number of ponds within the gardens. One of them had koi, which were sleeping.

Here's another plant that I haven't identified, but looks cool.

This plant was very pretty too. Looks like a houseplant, only really healthy.

These gardens surround a restaurant called Plantation Gardens Restaurant, which I wish we'd had time to try out. It was an elegant setting, and the menu looked really good. More tropical pictures coming, I promise.

Kauai Wildlife

2009-01-18T16:09:00.001-08:00

The first day we were in Kauai, Steve walked down to Baby Beach and quickly located this cute fella, a Hawaiian Monk Seal.

They are endangered, so you have to keep your distance, which Steve found out when some women on the beach started yelling at him. The seals come up onto shore to sleep. This seal was rather small, so I think it was a youngster. Every now and then he would scratch his head with his flipper. He has a very sweet face.

The next day another endangered species, the Green sea turtle, decided to haul up on Poipu Beach for a little snooze. The lifeguards had to blow their whistles and get people to move their towels so that she could get up to where she wanted to be on the sand. I had never seen such a big sea turtle.

This female White rumped shama was very obliging. She came right up to our table while we were waiting for our lunch. The shamas were introduced from Malaysia in 1931.

The Red junglefowl were brought to the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesian settlers for food. Many of these birds escaped their cages when Hurricaine Iniki hit in 1992, and now they are everywhere all over Kauai. They are pretty, but somewhat of a nuisance.

We enlisted the help of Dr. Carl Berg, who runs Hawaiian Wildlife Tours, to take us around the north side of the island to observe some birds. Carl has lived on Kauai for many years and is a font of information on the local floral and fauna and directly involved in conservation efforts on the island.

We went to Kiluea Point lighthouse to see some of the seabirds there. It's a gorgeous spot.

A family of Nene, Hawaiian geese, (state bird of Hawaii) strolled through the parking lot just as we were about to leave. They have been successfully reintroduced here, and nest near the lighthouse.

Also nesting near the lighthouse, and the highlight of the day for me, are Laysan Albatross. Carl took us around a residential area in Princeville where they nest in people's yards. He explained that the birds nested there years ago before the houses were built, and the chicks get imprinted on the area where they are born and return to it to nest. The residents are very protective of "their" birds, sometimes even naming the chicks. It was still a week or two until hatch time, so these birds are sitting on eggs.

You can't tell from this picture, but these are huge birds with 6 foot wingspans. They are pelagic birds, meaning that they spend most of their lives at sea, only coming ashore to nest.

We also saw nesting Red-footed boobies, White-tailed tropicbirds, Great frigatebirds, a Hawaiian coot chasing two Common moorhen away from it's territory, Black-crowned night herons, lots of Cattle egrets, a Wandering tattler and Hawaiian ducks that morning. During the week, I also saw Spotted doves, Zebra doves, Common mynas, a Northern mockingbird, a Western Meadowlark, Japanese white-eyes, Northern cardinals (yup, the same one as back east,) Red-crested cardinals, Pacific golden plovers, a Hwamei, House sparrows and House finches.

We attempted to bird (on our own) up at Kokee Park. Wet slippery muddy slopes, morning mists, trees not yet in flower and uncooperative out-of-sight birds made for a disappointing day. The only endemic bird I saw there was Apapane. The best birding is in the Alakai Swamp, which can be reached by hiking in 2 miles on the aforementioned slippery Pihea trail, or driving way in on an unpaved road, where 4-wheel drive is highly recommended, to reach the Alakai Swamp trail. The trail map says, "...thigh-deep mud is not uncommon here." We didn't attempt it.

This green anole posed patiently atop a garbage can right next to Jo Jo's Shave Ice in Waimea. I got a cool book on Hawaiian wildlife that Carl recommended, Hawaii, The Ecotraveller's Wildlife Guide by Les Beletsky. It has pictures of the reef fishes, trees, plants, animals, as well as birds and this lizard and some geckos.

I've got a lot more pictures, so look for the next installment to come. Aloha for now.

Aloha

2009-01-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Aloha, we are back from a week in Kauai. It was a wonderful trip and we have a lot of nice photos for you, so stay tuned.

Christmas At Our House

2008-12-29T13:51:00.001-08:00

Christmas Day at our house was a quiet affair. We had already put up the tree and Steve had arranged "The Village," which is a collection of little houses and figures that were his mom's, on the mantlepiece. We'd had thunder, lightning, hail, rain and lots of wind on Christmas Eve...which is probably why Santa only left us a handful of presents under the tree this year. What? You think it might be because we weren't good enough? Awwww....

The sun broke through the clouds and we decided to get some fresh air, heading out to Ocean Beach, where a few bold kite surfers skipped along the whitecaps and choppy waves. It was still chilly and windy out there. We had a blustery little hike on the Coast Trail along with happy dogs and their happy humans. Lots of the dogs were sporting new Christmas duds.

Someone found a unique "canvas" to draw on along the trail. You never know when creative inspiration is going to hit.

The next day we received the phone call that the weather was clear enough across the pass, so the Oregon Reinhardts were going to make the trek. We flew into action, preparing for their visit. Here's a shot of the happy group by the Haight St. entrance to Golden Gate Park.

The logistics of gathering up and transporting 12 people around a holiday weekend busy city were a challenge, but everyone rose to meet it. The cousins enjoyed each others' company roaming the Westfield Downtown Center, dropping some cash at Abercrombie's and the food court; while the adults quietly dined at a bistro around the corner. The visitors stayed at the Nikko in 4 diamond luxury, rather than attempting to crowd into our already crowded tiny house.

Here's Pete and Deb enjoying big city life for an evening.

Saturday we all met by the park, enjoying lunch (table for 12??) at Park Chow before walking through the park and taking in the view from the de Young museum tower.

Niece Kaya enjoyed the view from the tower, as did nephews Sean and Luke.

Steve & I left the group to explore Haight Street and beyond while we hurried home to get ready for the triple birthday party. I got these flowers at Safeway and tried to recreate an arrangement I had seen in Martha Stewart Living magazine for probably 1/3 the price.

We can fit about 10 around our dining room table, so we set up a big kids' table in the living room for volunteers Kara, Patrique and Sean. The giant mushroom lasagne worked to feed the hungry crew. After dinner, Uncle Steve showed some Reinhardt family home movies in the garage to round after round of rowdy laughter.

We all sang Happy Birthday to the three birthday boys, David, Steve and Luke before feasting on cake and Christmas cookies. The Oregonians returned to their rooms at the Nikko, except for Luke, who had his own night out on the town. He met some celebrants who were happy to buy him a drink when they found out it was his 25th birthday.

It was a long drive for a couple of days' visit, but I think everybody had a pretty good time.

Happy Holidaze

2008-12-24T14:36:00.000-08:00

Steve wore his traditional holly bow tie to work on Christmas Eve. I picked him up from BART and we went over to the library to drop off/pick up books. Steve was excited to go to West Portal because he had a full Noah's bagel card to turn in for a dozen FREE bagels. They were out of the normal ones, so he got these gross red ones. Then we popped next door to Peet's where they were giving out free coffees today. You are supposed to donate to a charity, so we did. Nothing makes Steve happier than getting things for FREE. Merry Christmas, dude.

Steve took this shot of me and Gloria at Steve's company holiday party last week, long before my feet started to kill me and the endless skits, videos, speeches, presentations made me beg for mercy. Gloria is always so fashionable. That night she was looking very elegant in this long red suit dress.

The HR department did a lovely job on the centerpieces. I would not have thought that black & white table settings would work for Christmas, but they sure pulled it off. They even had silver chargers and deep red silk napkins. Very chic.

I rescued the Christmas cookies last night from an imminent ant attack. They are now safely stored in the fridge. (The cookies, not the ants...) We're going to Marie & Mark's tonight for a quiet Christmas Eve supper. Then tomorrow we're hanging out at home and cooking a turkey breast. We're anticipating the arrival on Friday of either: 10 Reinhardts from Oregon or, nobody. It depends on how bad the snow is in the Siskiyou pass Friday.

Happy Holidays everybody!

Christmas Baking

2008-12-18T10:54:00.001-08:00

Years ago I found myself unemployed before Christmas and had a lot of time and not so much $$$, so I decided to bake a whole bunch of cookies to give to family and friends as gifts. They were pretty popular, so I kept it up for many years, even after I was back to working full time.

I used to make about a dozen different kinds, tie them in little saran wrap packages with color-coded yarns, package them up in decorative tins, wrap the tins and then box them up and mail most of them across the country. It got so that people would start calling the beginning of December asking, "When are you making the cookies?"

It got a little out of hand when I found myself getting so stressed out about how I was going to get them all done that I was getting sick, so I reluctantly decided to end the tradition.

I guess I got bitten by the Christmas baking bug again this week. Steve's been crying because Mother's Cookies company went out of business and he can't get his favorite seasonal gingerbread men anymore.

So I pulled the box of cookie cutters off the top shelf and dusted them off. I used to really have the methodology down, so I could crank them out quickly. I'm a little rusty. I can't believe I used to mix them by hand for years before Steve got me my Kitchen Aid heavy duty mixer.

There's never enough counter space in my 1960s designed kitchen, so the kitchen table gets covered with cooling racks.

The icing is the messiest part, but sort of the most fun part too. Now the trick is to store them somewhere the ants (and Steve) can't get at them all before Christmas. I'll never forget the one morning the day after Christmas when I was sitting at the table having my coffee before going to work and noticed a line of ants snaking from the windowsill across 3 walls and directly into my tin of Christmas cookies that I had been saving for us until Christmas. Tears were shed.

"All I need are some tasty waves..."

2008-12-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had planned to tackle some yard work, but it was such a gorgeous day and hey, gas is down to less than $2/gallon...so we headed down the coast to Santa Cruz with a plan to meet our friend Jack for dinner. We noticed huge waves all along the coast heading south. Arriving in Santa Cruz with hours to spare before Jack would get off work, we drove along the pedestrian walkway which runs by the shore north of the Municipal Wharf.

A crowd had gathered near the lighthouse. We parked the Accord and went to check it out. We know next to nothing about surfing, but found out that this spot is called Steamer Lane, and can be prime surfing territory when the winter swells are up.

Steve caught some of the action with his new(ish) camera. Here are some of his shots.

I was transfixed for a couple of hours watching these guys. These were not your beginning surfers. It was amazing watching the sets of waves come in and the surfers trying to position themselves to catch a ride or at least not get totally smashed by the waves. Sea lions were getting in on the action too, leaping and diving into the waves alongside the surfers.

There was a group of professional photographers and videographers catching the action right in front of us. I don't know if you can even see the tiny specs that are the surfers in this photo. (Maybe you can if you click on the photo to get a larger version.) Steve had to use his zoom, which is not quite like the lens this woman is using.

The diehards were still out there even after the sun had set. I was serenading Steve with "If everybody had an ocean across the USA..." as we headed out.

A few weeks ago, we happened upon some more "tasty waves" by Fort Point in San Francisco. It's right under the Golden Gate Bridge. If you've seen the Hitchcock movie Vertigo, it's where Jimmy Stewart pulls Kim Novak out of the bay.

This was also not surfing for beginners. I've never seen the waves so big there before or seen so many surfers in the water. It was cool.

Like Californi-ay...

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T15:55:00.001-08:00

We're having a nice quiet Thanksgiving Day here in partly sunny San Francisco. I made pies earlier. Pumpkin and apple. These photos are for my niece Casey, who is celebrating Thanksgiving in Senegal and is slightly homesick.

I'm thankful for living near Pt. Reyes. Steve has to work tomorrow, so he took last Friday off and we went up to Limantour Beach. This Ring-billed gull hung out by our blanket the whole time we were there.

It was a glorious day. We took a hike on the Muddy Hollow trail, which we later found out was actually closed (oops!) They are doing construction on it, but it looks more like DEstruction if you ask me. Supposedly they are returning the landscape to a more "natural" state. We saw a Virginia rail, which is a fairly common bird, but hard to see, as they are secretive. Steve saw a mammal swimming in a pond. We thought it might be a mountain beaver, but not sure.

When the sun started to go down, we drove up the hill to a lookout spot and parked the car. I got out to watch the sunset and I heard coyotes calling back and forth to each other across the canyon. Some calls were close to us. Finally the coyotes came together and started all yipping. It was such a wild sound. Really cool.

I hope you all are enjoying your Thanksgiving Days.

Sanibel Shell Shadow Box

2008-11-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

I finally put together this shadow box of shells that I collected at Sanibel Island, Florida in 2001. I've had the idea to do it as part of my bathroom redecoration for a long time, but just got around to completing it this week. I got a nautical chart of Sanibel Island off the internet and printed it out at a low opacity for the background of the shadow box. I even figured out how to use a hot glue gun.

Sanibel is known for its fine shelling beaches. It is uniquely situated facing east/west on the Gulf of Mexico and the sand extends far out from the island, dropping off very gradually, so the shells do not get crushed, but roll gently onto the shore. They have a shell fair every year there too.

Steve took this picture of a pile of shells on the beach there. So now you're probably less impressed with my collection, aren't you? (I think we might have planted some good ones in this shot.)

I really got into the shelling while there. They even have a shell museum which we visited. The best time to look for shells is just after the lowest tide and early in the morning, before the beach has been picked over. The last day we were there, I got up before the sunrise to go shelling and Steve took this picture. I'm SO not a morning person. The only things that get me up before the sun are birding and shelling.

Steve also took a nice photo of one of the beach bikes that our inn lends out to guests.

One thing you need to know if you are going to collect shells and bring them home is...they get really stinky if they are not washed and dried properly. I put mine in a tupperware container and it was really ripe when I opened it a few days later. Here's the whole collection.

The other really cool thing about Sanibel Island is that a big portion of it is a National Wildlife Refuge called "Ding" Darling NWR. Their specialty is wading birds. You can see spoonbills, ibises, all sorts of egrets there. It's wonderful, but don't forget the bug spray.

Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling was an illustrator, well, a cartoonist. He was also an early conservationist.

Now I want to go back there. They even shut off all the lights on the island at night so that the baby sea turtles don't get confused after they hatch and are trying to navigate by moonlight back to the sea.

My next project is to paint two faux natural history "prints" of these seashells to frame and hang over the bathtub. I hope that these will not take me as long to complete as the shadow box.

Biohazard!

2008-11-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

During my water running class at the Y this morning, 3 of the lifeguards kept circling the pool, staring down at the water and carrying a net on a long pole. At one point, Courtney put on a mask and latex glove and dove down to the bottom in the middle of our class, coming up empty.

Finally they located what they were looking for. Horst blew his whistle and declared, "Emergency, everyone out of the pool immediately!" They wouldn't tell us what they had found.

Reminded me of the famous Baby Ruth scene from Caddyshack.

Ok, well I can't always be highbrow.

I Can Breathe Again

2008-11-05T13:39:00.001-08:00

I feel like I have been literally "waiting with bated breath" for this election to be done already. Here in San Francisco we had 12 state and 22 city propositions to vote on, which I think is insane. The city voter pamphlet was almost 1/2 inch thick! And then the state one was another quarter inch of pages to wade through.

We decided to attend the Troubletown Election Night Party at this bar out by the beach called the Riptide. I know Lloyd and his wife Hae from serving with them on Graphic Artist Guild committees. You may know Lloyd from his illustration for the Airborne package.

Funny, there's a bar back in Marblehead called the Riptide (locals call it "the Rippa.") We got there just as the networks were calling the election for Obama. The place was packed with jubilant people. It was so crowded that we had to stand on a bench outside and peer through the window to watch McCain's concession speech.

Here's Steve and our friend Annie standing on the bench. Annie's from Paris. She did not get to vote, but she is glad that now she can go home for visits and not be embarrassed to live here anymore.

Lloyd had hung an "interactive map" just inside the front door of the bar. They were sticking chocolate dipped madeleines on for the blue states and saltines for the red states.

Our friend David, who's quite tall, managed to stake out a spot by the wall for us, so we crowded in with everybody to watch Obama's speech from Chicago on the video screens. There was a lot of cheering and clinking of glasses and beer bottles. When we got home, someone was shooting off fireworks.

I thought that this piece I heard on the radio was interesting. Perspective from commentator Brenda Payton, who thought her parents would never see "two little black girls living in the White House."

Too bad that Prop 8 passed.

I haven't been posting much lately, I know. I'm still very bummed about losing Esther.

Hanging in there

2008-10-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

Well, we're hanging in there amidst all the chaos of late. Esther is still with us for the time being. She seems happiest lying in the sun. The angle of the sun is lower this time of year, so it shines on the couch. Today it's a little too warm to be in the sun. We're having one of our wonderful fall weeks here.

I spend some time each day trying to get her to eat something. The past few days she seems to only like tuna with lots of tuna water and Greenies, a kind of cat treat.

I like this photo of fences that Steve took with his new camera at Pigeon Pt. lighthouse.

He also took this one of sleeping sea lions on the rocks off the lighthouse. They were very far away. His new camera has a great zoom lens.

We saw this guy at Natural Bridges State Beach doing handstands on the beach. This past weekend a kid was killed at this beach when he was in a sand cave that collapsed on him.

Steve took a lot of photos at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Here's one of a beautiful ride.

And here's one of Laughing Sal, who used to be at Playland at the Beach in SF. I think she is incredibly scary.

Me picking out my pumpkins and gourds at the Straw Maze.

They also have a little petting zoo. This photo of a pig is for my niece Lily.

Jean's visit

2008-09-29T15:41:00.001-07:00

We finally convinced the ever-fabulous Jean Tuttle to come to San Francisco for a visit. We took her to some of our favorite spots, including a day trip up to Pt. Reyes where we dined in the fog at Tony's after a sunny day at Limantour Beach.

The highlight of the weekend was a dinner party for the local friends of Jean. The guests were: Tom and Linda Davick, Bill Russell, Janet Cleland, Jean, Ray Wenzel and Jim Grove.

Steve took this photo of the harvest table setting that Jean & I put together using gourds and pumpkins we got at a pumpkin patch/straw maze down around Half Moon Bay.

Ms. Esther was on duty to greet the guests and, acting as coat check girl, keep close track of everyone's belongings during the party. She took a bit of a fancy to Linda's green jacket.

Speaking of harvest, I've been Googling and trying to figure out how and when to harvest the sunflower seeds I grew. This morning when I got up, there was a marauding gang of 4 squirrels demonstrating the proper technique for me.

Santa Cruz Getaway

2008-09-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Steve was on vacation last week. We decided to take a little road trip down to visit Jack in Santa Cruz. We're off to an inauspicious start here after a "quick" stop at Lowe's to return a broken light fixture. Steve said he was "only going to be a minute" so I stayed in the car. It was hot, so I rolled down the window and had the radio and the fan on. I guess it was more than "a minute," because when Steve got back to the car, it would not start. We had to call a tow truck guy to come and jump the battery. Then we spent another half hour or so in the mis-named Die-Hard Express Battery Service Line. The battery tested "better than new" so we were off, this time for real.

After a gorgeous leisurely drive down Highway One, we stopped at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. The rides were closed and it was pretty deserted, but it was a nice opportunity for Steve to try out his new camera.

This is about as close as I like to get to the Giant Dipper. Steve has been on it.

I guess the healthy eating trend has yet to hit the Boardwalk.

There is some very cool signage on the Boardwalk:

My favorite ride is the old carousel. After snapping a bunch of shots, we noticed that workers were starting to open the rides and test them. We found out they were having a special evening for the new UC Santa Cruz students. They opened up the carousel building and we were able to get some interior pictures. I love the old Wurlitzer. It features a painting of the old Cliff House in San Francisco at the top.

The carousel is quite pretty, with a lot of vintage details.

There is one place where you can grab a ring and try to toss it in this clown's mouth.

Although we did not get a chance to go on any of the rides, we enjoyed our visit.

Anniversary Dinner

2008-09-17T10:16:00.001-07:00

We went to a restaurant downtown called Ducca for our anniversary dinner last night. The waiter took our picture with our Bellinis and appetizers. The arancini were delicious. The prawns were all presentation and had a weird disintegrating texture. Ducca is an Italian restaurant with a Venetian theme. We thought it was a fitting venue for our 30th, since 10 years ago on our 20th, we took a trip to Venice.

The staff was very attentive. Even the pastry chef got in on the action, writing a nice greeting on our dessert plate. This was a lovely dessert, almond crostada with blueberries on top and a little scoop of gelato on the side.

Before leaving, we had our photo taken in front of one of the large screens in the restaurant. One of the paintings is a portrait of the Doge and this other one is his wife. The Doge was the chief magistrate of Venice.

Aside from the prawns, it was a great dinner and a nice celebration.

It Was 30 Years Ago Today...

2008-09-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

We were a coupla crazy kids. It was in his mother's backyard. I had flowers in my hair. We were extremely happy (and so young.) In some ways it does "seem like only yesterday," and in other ways it does seem like a long long time ago. A lot of water under the bridge.

Thirty years has taught me to go pick out my own flowers. I got these peachy keen ones at the local florist shop. The florist told me that he had a woman in his shop the other day picking out flowers for her 70th anniversary. I really can't imagine that one.

83 in Cat Years...

I can't believe our "baby" is 17! She looks so tiny in the first photo where she is all curled up. She looks small because she has lost a lot of weight. She sort of stopped eating. I took her in to the vets and they did some tests and figured out that she has cancer. (This has been one of those "for worse..." parts.) We got her on some meds and she's perked up quite a bit and her appetite is back. We'll be able to buy her some time, but who knows how long? This afternoon she was in the backyard trying to hunt down varmints in the tall grass. We are grateful for the reprieve.

We postponed our anniversary trip to Santa Fe. So we're celebrating at home, still in the backyard.

Indians Take Over San Francisco Beach

2008-09-11T15:37:00.001-07:00

I was driving out by Ocean Beach on Tuesday, on my way to meet a couple of artist friends for lunch. I noticed a band of Indians in full battle dress lined up all along the shore. Whoa!

Not really...it's "art." This guy, Thom Ross, made a bunch of paintings of Indians from the Buffalo Bill show of 1902 and they are installed at Ocean Beach until September 14. Here's the artist in full Western regalia being interviewed on camera.

I took a bunch of photos of the paintings. It was so unusual.

There was a photo taken in September, 1902 of the whole Wild West troupe on Ocean Beach, which inspired Thom to make these paintings. Here's Buffalo Bill in the center.

On close view, the paintings are somewhat loose and stylized.

The studs on their costumes are actually thumbtacks. The artist must have painted some of the costume "beading" with paint squeezed out of fine-pointed tubes.

They had some riders on real horses galloping along in front of the wooden Indians. I think it was for the documentary they were making.

People were walking up and checking out the Indians. They even had one you could climb up behind and it had a cutout for the face, so you could have your picture taken.

You can see Seal Rocks behind them and some cargo ships on their way back and forth from China.

Slow Food Journey - Gems of Marin

2008-09-01T13:26:00.001-07:00

Saturday we joined a group for a bus trip, part of Slow Food Nation, called "Gems of Marin." Our first stop was Allstar Organics in Nicasio. Farmer Marty Jacobsen (pictured above) and his wife Janet Brown grow numerous varieties of heirloom tomatoes, squashes, basil, melons and all sorts of unique crops.
These are tomatillos and various squashes:

Marty's wife grows antique perfume roses and distills the petals into rose water. She also whips up batches of different flavored salts and sugars. I bought some spearmint sugar and rosemary salt. I don't really know what I'm going to do with them, but they are the sort of thing I can't resist. They sell them at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. The blends contain both pulverized herbs and herb oils, so they are extra intense.

Marty is quite a character. Our tour guide told us he was from Wisconsin, so someone asked him if he grew up on a farm. He said, "Heck no, I'm a JEW from Chicago!" He told us he had spent most of his working life as a Creative Director for different ad agencies around the country, the last one being Hal Riney in San Francisco. At our guide's suggestion, Marty led the group as we traipsed through his fields.

Then it was back on the bus to our next stop, McEvoy Ranch. Here's our first glimpse of it from the road.

This gorgeous ranch covers 550 acres of rolling hills outside of Petaluma. The owner, Nan McEvoy, is an heiress. Her family founded the deYoung Museum in San Francisco and owned the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. (Hint: she's got a few bucks...) I have been wanting to check this place out for a long time. It's not generally open to the public.

The ranch is entirely fenced in to protect the olive trees from marauding deer. We did see 3 jackrabbits hopping about. They rent sheep to keep the weeds down. One of the companies that rents them has the cute name, Wooly Weeders.

The place is very tastefully put together. The tasting room features an original Wayne Thiebaud painting of a display of cakes. A guy who I noticed sketching during the trip and I were standing in front of it, slack-jawed. They even have an original Diebenkorn in the bathroom, fer gawdsakes. (Ok, I'll give in and move in here with you, Nan, but only if you insist. Yes, I could be your artist-in-residence. Twist my arm.)

They took us around the olive orchard and taught us all we wanted to know about growing Italian olives for Tuscan-style olive oil. They also grow a lot of lavender, which is the low mounding plant in the above photo. I bought some fragrant lavender olive oil soap. Our tour guide demonstrated the tool they use for harvesting the olives.

It was hot in the noonday sun, so we were glad to go inside to tour the pressing room. They have machinery imported from Italy to grind the olives to a paste before extracting the oil. The grindstones are huge and made of granite.

After tasting a couple of oils, we had our lunch at some tables under umbrellas. The lunch was catered by Della Fattoria. I was the last one seated, and had to sit in the sun. I've been dreaming about how fabulous this lunch was going to be, and I was sorely disappointed. It was a small green salad with a few tiny croutons, a few cherry tomatoes and about 3 slices of cucumber. The salad was fine, but (HELLO!) Della Fattoria is known for their bread, and all's we got was a few crummy croutons. They gave us water and a chocolate chip cookie too, but everyone left unsatisfied.

Back on the bus, we continued on to our next destination: Stubbs Family Vineyard in Petaluma. It's a very small winery which produces Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and some Merlot. The owners built the buildings themselves, and the architecture and decor are very eclectic. They have a lot of interesting wood carvings.

After tasting wine and poking around the grounds, it was time for our trip back. During the bus ride, we learned all about Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) and how they have managed to keep open space and keep working farms in Marin. Thanks to the foresight of a group of conservation-minded folks, we can drive a very short distance from San Francisco and find ourselves in a landscape of beautiful rolling hills and family-owned farms. The areas shown in green below are farmland.

Thank you, MALT!

Ghee Whiz, or It Ain't Easy Being Vata-Kapha

2008-08-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

I planned to meet my friend Lisa at noon Friday on the steps of City Hall to check out Slow Food Nation. I got there early and watched as 2 separate same-sex wedding parties exited City Hall and got into their respective limos. They had these two globes on either side of the steps. One depicts Tidal Energy and the other Wind Energy.

Ghee is a food product made from butter that is used in Indian cooking. I bought this jar (and the dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes) at the farmer's market. I didn't realize that one got a free diagnosis with purchase. The interesting man behind the counter told us that he was an Ayurvedic practitioner and told us (me, Lisa and this other woman) that ghee was ok for us, but he wouldn't sell it to Oprah Winfrey, because she was the wrong type for it. He pronounced Lisa and the other woman to be Vata. He told me that I am a very rare combination of Vata-Kapha and told me to Google it. (I did, and I have to admit that it was remarkably "on.") These tomatoes were bursting with flavor.

I roasted the baby potatoes whole that night with whole cloves of garlic, olive oil and rosemary from the garden. They were crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside. We scarfed them right down. I wish I had bought more now.

Lisa and I checked out the farmer's market booths and the garden and then perused the prepared food stands. During this brief run-through, we came across Alice Waters and Rick Bayless walking around, part of the crowd. Alice is pretty short. I got the impression that I was gazing down at the top of her head, and I'm not tall.

These little fuzzy green jobbies are green garbanzo beans in their shells. Who knew? We tasted them and they taste a lot like green beans. They didn't have that nutty flavor that a dried, cooked garbanzo bean has.

These gorgeous tuberoses were behind the counter at one farmer's display.

Steve met us for lunch. It was unusually hot downtown that day. Everyone was looking for a spot in the shade.

As part of the festival, they planted a Victory Garden in front of City Hall. My friend Diane was one of the volunteers who worked on it. They did a beautiful job. There were several displays, like this one of CA native flowers.

After the festival, the food from the garden will be harvested and given to the San Francisco Food Bank, to be distributed to low-income residents.

Before leaving, I had to stop and watch the performance by these native dancers. I missed the introduction, and they weren't listed on the schedule, so I don't know who they are. Loved the headdresses and the dances were very interesting.

Twain Harte

2008-08-27T16:03:00.001-07:00

We made our annual pilgrimage up to the cabin at Twain Harte for a long weekend. I finished up a big presentation I'd been working slavishly on for weeks Wednesday afternoon and sent it off. Then I made the mistake of letting my guard down for a little bit and by that evening I had a definite sore throat and a cold coming on. This is the second time in a row that I've been sick on our trip up there, and it's gettin' old.

Less swimming time meant I had more time to do something else. I did a couple of watercolor sketches. The top one is of Twain Harte Lake and "The Rock." I usually enjoy swimming out to the rock, but this time I just paddled over on my noodle, being careful to keep my head out of the water. It was still nice to be out in the middle of the lake looking up at the clear blue sky and pines overhead.

I had planned to bring some art supplies, but I was not feelin' so great while we were packing and said, "The heck with it." But then I got up there and went shopping at my favorite store, Twain Harte Pharmacy. They have everything. It's sort of like an old Woolworth's, but with a clothes and giftware section too. They have every type of craft supply known to woman: glitter, pipe cleaners, fabrics, etc. It's pretty cool to browse around there. I found some nice watercolor blocks on sale and purchased a nice (expensive, naturally...) box of watercolors. I figure I can haul them on other trips.

The other thing I like to do up there is hang out on the deck and read and look at birds. This tree, which I think is a cypress, must have been struck by lightning. I counted 23 nest holes in just one of the dead snags. The birds love it. The acorn woodpeckers are starting to use it as a granary. There are at least 6 acorn woodpeckers in this group.

It was quite "birdy" up there this time. The Steller's jays were zipping around squaking and making their presence known. There were several fledgling jays in the group, similar to the Scrub jay babies we've had in our yard. Their crests were sort of underdeveloped and grey instead of black. They had short wing feathers and were often flapping their wings and begging the adults for food.

Other birds seen on this trip included: tons of Turkey vultures, Red-breasted nuthatches, White-breasted nuthatches, Brown creepers, Warbling vireos, Dark-eyed juncoes, Spotted towhees, Anna's hummingbirds, Western tanagers, White-headed woodpeckers, Northern flickers and Mourning doves.

The nuthatches and creepers are fun to watch as they scour the crevices of the tree trunks for tasty morsels. The Red-breasted nuthatches have a very funny call that sounds like a toy tin horn. I hear them calling almost constantly at the cabin.

I read a couple of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith over the weekend. I love this series. If you haven't read any of them, I think you should check them out. I just read Blue Shoes and Happiness and In the Company of Cheerful Ladies. The books make me want to go to Botswana. Apparently I'm not the only one. I read somewhere that these books have given a boost to the tourism industry there.

Although it's still nice and warm and sunny up there in the foothills of the Sierra during the day, you can sense a bit of a nippy feeling in the breeze. The days are definitely getting shorter. And autumn migration has started here in SF.

Labor Day weekend is coming up and we're going to be checking out the Slow Food Nation, which is holding their first big conference in the US here in San Francisco. I'll try to get some nice photos for you, ok?

Waning Summer

2008-08-20T19:21:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we met at a place called Jelly's, down by the ballpark, for a birthday brunch. Marie, the birthday girl, is the one in the center. It was in a sort of industrial setting on a pier near some tugboats, but the food was good. It was also out of the fog.

After brunch, I took Steve over to a nearby park I know from birding called Huffaker Park. It is along Mission Creek and there are these cool funky houseboats. In winter, there is often a rare warbler in that tiny park. It's a little strip of green amidst a very urban area.

Steve took pictures of some of the wildlife there.

These flowers are called "Naked Ladies." The leaves die back and the flowers pop up out of the ground as if from nowhere. They are harbingers of summer's end.

My friend Deb emailed me the other day that she harvested 75 tomatoes from a raised bed she had planted in a friend's yard. Here's my tomato harvest:

Besides the varmints devouring the tomatoes before they can even start to get ripe, my plants are getting their wilt.

I was watering and surveying the damage this afternoon. This chestnut backed chickadee came in to swipe a black oil sunflower seed from the feeder about 4 feet from where I was sitting.

Ms. E. was giving me this baleful look from her perch, so I was persuaded to bring her out for an airing in the eddying swirls of fog.

Dagan's Visit

2008-08-13T12:48:00.001-07:00

Our nephew, Dagan, made an unexpected visit to San Francisco Sunday. We got a call at 10:00 am that he was at Lake Tahoe and was stopping in SF en route back to LA. Dagan works as a PA (Production Assistant) on a reality tv show called The Hills. We dont' get this channel, so we've never seen the show.

That afternoon we made contact again and found out that he and his buddies wanted to go to the Ferry Building for lunch. So we got on MUNI Metro and headed down there to meet them.

After lunch, half of the entourage needed to head out. Dagan and two friends wanted to go for a walk, so we ambled over to AT & T Park.

Right away we encountered a wedding party. The bride looked very young and did not appear to be in a very good mood. I snapped this shot of the bridesmaids wearing Giants colors, orange and black. I did not notice the rude hand gesture that the middle bridesmaid was making until I downloaded the picture. On closer inspection, she is looking at someone other than me, so I don't mind.

We were like fish swimming upstream, as a Giants/Dodgers game was letting out. Dagan checked his iphone and found out that the Giants had won 5-4. There was the usual bantering between Giants and Dodger fans after the game. "Beat LA!" "Go home, you bums!" etc. The rivalry is still alive and well.

The guys went into the stadium and took a few photos on the cable car before being unceremoniously booted out by one of the ushers.

Here's Steve and Dagan at the Seal statue:

The local baseball team used to be the San Francisco Seals and they played at Seal Stadium before the New York Giants moved here to SF in 1958.

We had a nice visit. They are a fun bunch of nice young people. In some ways they sort of reminded me of the newly-fledged scrub jays in my yard. They are trying out their wings after graduating from college. I wish them all good luck as they start out in their fledgling careers.

Sailing

2008-08-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

I created this illustration many years ago for a textbook. My brother used to crew on racing sailboats in Marblehead. A photo of him racing got into a sailing magazine, so I used it as reference for this illustration. Marblehead is a small town in Massachusetts which is very big on sailing.

The best ever vacation we ever went on was when we chartered a sailboat and sailed around the Virgin Islands with my brother. It was so incredible to anchor and just jump off the boat and go snorkeling. It was also just so nice to sleep in a little cabin with the boat gently rocking you. We became "as mellow as seaweed."

Steve & I went to the Rrazz Room last Sunday to see Mason Williams. He's the guy who wrote the song "Classical Gas" which was a big hit in the 60s.

It was a fun concert. Mason Williams had a guy in his band, John Doan, who played harp guitar, a very cool instrument which sounds like a guitar and a string section at the same time.

Mason used to be on the Smothers Brothers Show on tv. Tommy Smothers was in the audience and came up onstage and recited a poem called, "Who Do I Have to Hate for You to Like Me?" Still being a rabble-rouser, which was akward but sort of refeshing.

Anyhow, after the show we were chatting with MW and I asked him about my favorite singer from that show, John Hartford. I hadn't heard anything about him for a long time. He wrote the song "Gentle On My Mind," which became a big hit for Glenn Campbell.

MW told me that John Hartford died of cancer. I was pretty sad to hear that. I have an album of his that has a song on it I really loved called, "The Sailboat Song." See...I was getting around to how it relates. Here are the lyrics, from memory...

The Sailboat Song
by John Hartford

Faint pictures of my childhood lie floundering in your wake
The worries of tomorow at your bow
Your spinnaker a white balloon, your mainsail proud and tall
To me you are the very soul of now

I’m dizzy on your teakwood deck, my arms around your mast
Insane inside your cabin soft and warm
Then drifting off to sleep your fingers loose along my face
In contented disbelief of early morn

To me you are the moment, the present breath of life
As together we are slicing through the spray
The second buried deep within the mystery of your love
Not shades of things to come or yesterday

Faint pictures of my childhood lie floundering in your wake
The worries of tomorow at your bow
Your spinnaker a white balloon, your mainsail proud and tall
To me you are the very soul of now

Western Scrub Jays

2008-08-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

Summer is a dull time bird-wise here in San Francisco. We have a wider variety of birds here in winter, as some species winter here at the coast and then move up to higher elevations for the summer. One of our year-round birds is the Western Scrub Jay. These birds are closely related to the more familiar Blue Jay east of the Rockies.

One pair of scrub jays nested two yards over in our neighbor Denny's impenetrable thicket. They visit my feeders on a daily basis and boss the smaller birds around. Jays are smart birds. They figured out how to feed from the suet basket, which is designed for smaller clinging birds like chickadees. It's funny to see these large blue birds hanging upside down pecking away at the suet cakes.

Now there are four. The scrub jays have been bringing their babies over to the yard this week. They are not the only ones...lots of birds are coming back with the latest crop of fledges. It's hard to tell the juvenile scrub jays from the parents. They are the same size now. The babies have the greyer heads and some of their feathers aren't grown in all the way. They are a bit fluffier looking and occasionally they will start begging one of the parent birds for food. They open their bills and rapidly flap their wings in front of one of the parent birds. They also act a little goofier.

Here's a baby on the bird bath.

Here's one of the parent birds on the alpine strawberry pot. Right after I snapped this shot, the bird gobbled one of my tiny strawberries.

Some people don't like jays. I think they are handsome bold birds and I enjoy their antics.

I can't believe it's August already. Soon it will be fall migration time and then these jays will be joined by our returning winter birds. The seasons are much more subtle here, but it's rewarding to take notice of the little changes.

On a different note altogether...it's definitely TOURIST season here in San Francisco. The lines for the cable cars snake around and all the way up to the next block. Sales of Alcatraz Swim Team sweatshirts are brisk, along with the cold damp winds. I have to say I can't remember when I have seen so many of them here. Steve's hotel is booked 100%. It seems like every other person downtown is consulting a map. Good for our economy, I guess. Many of them are speaking different languages. We are the "bargain basement" for European tourists these days.

"Summer" Doldrums

2008-07-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

It's been 60 degrees inside our house mornings this week. Esther is not pleased. She likes to be wrapped up in this fleece blanket like a big burrito for her morning nap. "Why are you bugging me, mom? I'm chilly!" I've been breaking down and turning the furnace on.

We went to the Festival of Sail on Sunday to check out the Eagle, a sailing barque that my brother is going to meet up with in Panama City and sail through the Panama Canal and back up to their homeport of New London, CT. I told one of the crewmen (they are so young, they look like babies to me) that my brother was excited about joining them and he said that the Panama Canal is "interesting for about the first 15 minutes."

It' a very impressive tall ship. It looks even cooler under sail. There is a video of it coming in under the Golden Gate Bridge last week.

I snapped one shot of the cooks in the galley below dishing up some lunch. Looks like meatball sandwiches, mac and cheese and broccoli that had seen better days.

I didn't get to see the parade of ships coming in under the Golden Gate Bridge because I was doing my civic duty of being a juror for a criminal trial last week. I was even the foreperson of the jury! Nobody else was stepping up, and I wanted to move things along, so I decided, "What the heck?"

Real criminal trials are nothing like what you see in the movies or on tv. The courtrooms on even the most low budget shows look plush compared to the courtrooms in the SF Hall of Justice, which have seen better days. This was a gun possession case. This guy was stopped by the CHP in downtown San Francisco for not having a front license plate. They smelled alcohol on his breath so they asked him to step out of the vehicle and were doing a routine patdown and the guy told them he had a gun in his back pocket. Turns out it was loaded.

I thought it was difficult to decide the case because of the guy's story that he had just taken the gun from a 13 year old son of a friend of his in the projects and was on his way to dispose of it, which is an exemption from our concealed weapon law. There's no Judge Judy there to scream at him, "WHY didn't you put the gun in the trunk?" You're left with a lot of unanswered questions at the end because of so many things that are inadmissible or hearsay evidence. Standing back now, and reading what I just wrote, the story seems flimsy. But in the moment, I guess I get caught up in feeling bad about sending someone to jail and messing up their future, unless I feel certain that they really did something wrong.

On the bright side, I was lucky NOT to get picked for the jury for this trial, which was getting chosen the same week I was booked for jury duty. The Ramos case is about an illegal alien gang member who shot a father and his two sons and killed them for cutting him off in their car.

Necklace

2008-07-30T17:39:00.001-07:00

I've had this on my "to do" list for after returning from Surtex. Now, almost two months later, I finally can check it off. I wanted to make a necklace with some of the silver beads I worked on patterns for with Nina Designs.

I made some earrings to match too.

I purchased the lampwork glass beads for this necklace from Heather Davis. I think they are just gorgeous. The center pendant's text is a sonnet titled Love's Growth by John Donne.

The smaller beads came from a shop in Noe Valley called Forbeadin. My friend Fiona works there. She helped me design and finish these pieces. Thanks, Fiona!

Ya snooze, ya lose...

2008-07-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

I was waiting for this one beautiful tomato to reach the peak of ripeness before picking and enjoying it. Guess I waited a little bit too long. Someone beat me to it.

Do you think this guy is the culprit? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Here he is demonstrating his "hanging by the feet" method of poaching black oil sunflower seeds from the bird feeder. You can see how just well those plastic baffles work to deter squirrels.

I did manage to harvest this Sweet 100 cherry tomato before it fell into enemy hands. Steve says, "Where's the other 99?"

I enjoyed it on top of my healthy lunch.

One of my surviving sunflowers has started flowering. I have high hopes for the other 5.

The sweet peas have blossomed out again. I picked a few bouquets a couple of weeks ago, and the plants were bare for awhile there.

So, you might be wondering where I have been lately and imagining me on summer vacation, lying on the beach soaking up rays and sipping a pina colada. HA! Not exactly. I have been jamming on presentations and getting picked for jury duty for criminal court.

The jury duty part is not too bad. It's for a misdemeanor trial that starts Monday afternoon. It's supposed to wrap up Tuesday, and then to to "the jury"...hey, that includes me. I want to get done Tuesday, because the Parade of Sails Tall Ships are coming into SF Bay on Wednesday at noon. The ships will sail in under the Golden Gate Bridge and sail over to the Bay Bridge. My brother is going to be sailing on the Eagle through the Panama Canal and up to Connecticut. (He is way cooler than me and an excellent sailor.)

I can't tell anyone about the trial until it is over. The judge even told us, "Don't BLOG about it."

I can show you a couple of my new designs I've been working on.

This is a design for a Christmas plate.

TGIF.

Christmas in July

2008-07-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Christmas in July is the title of a Preston Sturges comedy. It was the film that we saw on our first date. We took the bus to City College to watch a free screening. (I should have had a clue at that point, wouldn't ya think?) Anyhow, we've been having a mini Preston Sturges film festival at our house this week. We love The Lady Eve and were laughing out loud. Last night we watched The Palm Beach Story.

You can't even see halfway down our block this morning, it's so foggy. It's a dripping fog. They say that Eskimos have 100 different words for snow, well, we have a lot of descriptive words for fog here. One of our favorites is "VBF", which stands for "Visible Blowing Fog" that's when you can look out and see puffs of fog blowing by. So, although tomorrow is 4th of July, we are donning fleece vests instead of tank tops. And here I am working on Christmas images. Seems like a lot of the manufacturers we met at Surtex will be reviewing images for Christmas 2009 in the next couple of months. I was thinking of digging out the Bing Crosby Christmas albums to listen to for inspiration, so I can have "visions of sugarplums" dancing through my head. But wait, I don't even have any idea what a sugarplum looks like, do you? Apparently, this is what they look like.

A morning check on the garden came up with both good news and bad news. The good news is: 1.)The sweet peas are blooming.

2.)One of the tomatoes is ripening. This is a Sungold cherry tomato, and it's turning yellow, despite adverse growing conditions.

Ok, now the bad news:

I'm pretty sure this is a gopher mound in my tiny patch of lawn that I struggle to maintain. Well, it's not as bad as our previous rodent problem of 7 dead mice under the floorboards of our shed during a heat wave while Steve was out of town. It's all relative.

Girls' Summer Lunch

2008-06-25T11:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we got together for our quarterly Girls' Lunch. In the summer we like to have it at Janet's house in Marin so Linda and I can escape the fog of the city. It was toasty warm in Janet's backyard and we had a lovely afternoon.

Here's the lunch:

Janet got these great Pesto Tarts from Delicieux Fine Desserts in Fairfax. They sell them at the Marin Farmer's Market. They each contain many entire cloves of garlic, but they are cooked perfectly so that they have a silken texture and great taste. Be forewarned of having overpowering garlic breath afterwards.

Janet is catsitting for her neighbors. This guy spent the afternoon alternating between coming over for attention and crashing out in the shade.

It was an idyllic day for all of us. After lunch we had show & tell. Each of us brought our latest work to be admired and critiqued. It's so great getting feedback from other illustrators. Janet is illustrating a children's book and showed us her rough sketches. I can't wait to see the final art. Linda is writing a trio of children's books, which she will illustrate. We got to see her latest draft. They are going to be fun. I showed my Surtex images.

I'm already looking forward to our next get-together.

Sports bra saves US hiker in German Alps

2008-06-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

I really liked this news story and some of the comments that people put up. They had it posted under "Weird News"

Monday, June 23, 2008

(06-23) 12:44 PDT BERLIN, Germany (AP) --

An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado state to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

"She's a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully," said Rasp. "She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

An Alpine rescue team, including five helicopters and 80 emergency workers, had been searching for Bruinsma since she went missing June 16 after losing her way in bad weather while hiking with a friend near the Austrian border.

She fell 16.4 feet (five meters) to a rocky overhang, where she spent the next 70 hours on the narrow ledge, sustained by water that she found by breaking into a supply box on the ledge.

She badly bruised a leg and dislocated a shoulder in the fall, and the cliff was too isolated for her to climb free, Rasp said.

Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service. When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma's bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.

Rasp said his team followed the cable line up the cliffside in a helicopter and found Bruinsma standing on the ledge, waving with her good arm. After circling once, they lowered a winch to Bruinsma and lifted her aboard.

"She did so well because she is in very good shape," Rasp said. "She has been training for a marathon — her goal is to finish in 3 hours and 10 minutes."

Bruinsma told Rasp that she has scrapped plans to stay in Berchtesgaden to learn German and plans to return home to Colorado Springs with her parents. He said she still plans to run the marathon, if she recovers in time to keep training.

Advertising Claims

2008-06-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm a sucker for advertising claims. The latest product I've fallen for is Cranergy. It has green tea extract and vitamins and claims to give you more energy. I like the raspberry flavor, which has only 50 calories and is sweetened with Splenda. It probably contains caffeine, but I'm not sure. I feel like I have more energy after I drink it. I wonder how much of it is placebo effect? If you click on the name, it will take you to their website, where you can download a coupon for a dollar off so you can try it for yourself and let me know if it gives you more energy.

I remember back when I was about 6, I got a pair of PF Flyers sneakers. They claimed to "make you run faster and jump higher." This appealed to me very much, since I was short and slow. (When I was around 10 the neighbor kids gave me the sarcastic nickname of "Thunderbolt" because I was so slow at running the bases in kickball. I knew they were making fun of me, but I sort of liked the nickname because it sounded a lot cooler than some of the other nicknames kids could give you.) I was really convinced that the sneakers made me run faster and jump higher. Check out this YouTube video of one of their commercials from the 50s. It is pretty hilarious. I sort of miss the good old days of wild unsubstantiated advertising claims, don't you?

I think our parents were right about the warnings that tv would rot our brains. Although I often forget my own cell phone number, I can still remember advertising jingles from the 50s. This one still rattles around my brain, "Look both ways when you cross the street so you'll be around to live and eat Waleeco, Waleeco, coconut bars are the best I know!"

They still make PF Flyers. I did not know that. I wonder if they can still make me run faster and jump higher?

Please Don't Eat the Sunflowers

2008-06-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

I went out to water my sunflowers this afternoon and found that 4 of them were merely stumps. The other day, one of them was broken off. I assumed it must have been the wind. But now 4 in a row were mowed down at about the same level and they were the ones closest to our neighbor's yard with the low fence. And someone ate most of the plants. I suspect varmints!

A quick trip to the hardware store later, and I put up shields for the remaining 6 sunflower plants. The plan was to grow these sunflowers to flowering stage and let the birds harvest the seeds. I grew these suckers from seeds, so I am not pleased at seeing them chomped less than a week after getting them planted in the ground. The possible culprits are:

a. squirrels
b. raccoons
c. rats (ewwwwww...)
d. possums
e. gophers (but there are no mounds, and don't they eat the roots?)
f. Wilhemina bunny who disappeared from next door months ago.
I know we don't have deer in the city...

Which do you think it is?

If it's rats, the aluminum screening may not deter them. They can just climb inside and chomp away. Stay tuned for the answer to this mystery.

These are my seaside daisies that I got from the Strybing Arboretum plant sale.

My red elderberry, which I bought at the same plant sale, has some red berries on it.

The toyon also has berries starting to grow. These are a few of my native plants. Maybe the sunflowers are getting chomped because they are not native?

The cotoneaster, which has been there since before we owned the house, has tons of flowers on it. I've never seen it flowering like this before. The flowers have a slight fragrance, which is sort of pleasant. It's loving having the Monterey pines gone. It will be covered with red berries in the winter.

Here's a shot of our panoramic view from the top of the yard. It's a little hazy today, so you can't see the Pacific Ocean in the right hand corner. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Kurt Elling

2008-06-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Luckily I finally had time to read the paper this past weekend, and I saw that my fave, Kurt Elling was playing at Yoshi's this week. I got tickets for the 8:00 show on Tuesday night.

Steve met me in Japantown for dinner. He got there before me and scoped it out. He decided he wanted to try this new place, O Izakaya, in the Hotel Kabuki. Steve's bud, Michael Bauer, had given it a good review. It is a pretty fun atmosphere. The place is decorated with these huge blowups of old Japanese baseball cards. Sort of gives it a retro Lichtenstein feel. They have a Happy Hour menu with a few selections discounted. Some of the small plates are pretty small. Just about everything on the menu is pretty spicy. Even the dessert had black pepper in it, kumquat beignets with black pepper creme fraiche. We tried the braised pork belly with housemade kimchi. Hint: this is not a Weight Watchers dish. The menu has a lot of different cocktails made with very unique ingredients. This would be a good place to meet a group of friends.

After dinner, we walked over to Yoshi's and got our seats for the show. Kurt played with his usual musicians: the brilliant piano player and arranger, Lawrence Hobgood (shown in the photo above with Kurt,) bassist Rob Amster and a new drummer, Kobie Watkins. Lawrence was featured on Marian McPartland's piano jazz show, but I missed it, being back east at the time. But we can listen to it now online at that link.

Kurt's a very hip guy. He likes to read poetry. He read Carl Sandburg's Prairie and a poem by Kenneth Rexroth that I didn't catch the title of.

The new drummer is good. He really has the "making faces" part of playing jazz down pat. I enjoyed watching him during his solos. I wished I had brought something to draw with. Kurt thanked us for coming out on "a school night". The show was only about half sold...lots of empty seats. So once the 8:00 show was over, they announced that everyone was invited to stay for the 10:00 show. Steve surprised me by saying he wanted to stay. We were so glad we did, as the second set was better than the first, and they didn't play any of the same songs. Kurt said, "Now we're warmed up." when they came out for the second set.

Kurt and Lawrence are working on a new CD, which will be a tribute to the Johnny Hartman/John Coltrane legacy. They played a couple of selections from this new project. I have to say, they weren't my favorites. I preferred the songs from his last CD, Night Moves, like Body and Soul and Tight. The guys seemed to be having a good time, and so were we. They did an interesting version of Stardust with a very long intro.

We had such a good time that we got tickets to go back and see Karrin Allyson in a couple of weeks.

Duded-Up Barn Swallows

2008-06-10T16:15:00.001-07:00

Link to nice Barn Swallow illustration
I saw this article in last Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle about a study some biologist did with barn swallows.

They caught some male barn swallows in mist nets and used a marker to darken the breast feathers of lighter colored birds to match the naturally darker colored birds. Female barn swallows find the darker ones more attractive, trust me on this one...

They measured the birds' hormone levels and weight before releasing them in their new more colorful duds, er...feathers.

After one week sporting their colorful plumage, the biologists trapped these guys again and re-measured. The birds' testosterone was up 36 percent after only one week! They also gained weight (which is a good thing in birds.) The birds that didn't get the marker makeover experienced a drop of 50% in their testosterone levels.

The theory is that the makeover birds felt better about themselves because they were getting more attention from the female barn swallows, which caused their hormone levels to go up.

Interesting. What will these scientists dream up next?

Memorial Service/Reunion

2008-06-06T12:15:00.001-07:00

I attended the memorial service for Barbara Bradley last night. It was a fitting tribute to her life and work. So many alums and friends were there, it was like an Illustration Department reunion. They gave away these framed sets of cookies featuring some of Barbara's famous kid illustrations.

Here's a closeup of one of the cookies. Gordon told me that that Society of Illustrators had them made up last year when she received the 2007 Distinguished Educator of the Arts award. They contacted the bakery and ordered more of them to give away to people who attended the reception after the memorial service.

I wish I had brought my camera so I could post some photos of my art school buddies here. It didn't occur to me to bring a camera to a memorial service.

They started off and ended with bagpipes playing in St. Brigid's. First they showed a slide show with photos of Barbara from baby years up through school, marriage, her own family, to grandkids. Barbara's oldest daughter, Lauchlin, delivered a touching eulogy. Elisa Stevens spoke briefly, followed by Chuck Pyle, who now heads the illustration department. Next up was Craig Nelson from the Fine Arts department and finally Bob Walker. A film tribute by David Oliver Pfeil ended the service. They showed footage of Barbara teaching clothed figure in Bradley Hall, which was moving for those of us who were her students.

Then the bagpipe player lead all the people in a procession out the door and downstairs to the reception, where they had a show of some of Barbara's illustrations and drawings on display.

I recognized many faces there. Sometimes it took me a few minutes to figure out "who the heck???" but for the most part, I was able to determine who they were pretty quickly. We all talked up a storm. There were people there who were my instructors, classmates, friends and colleagues from SFSI.

Here's a partial list of people who were there, including links to their work if I could find one:

Robert Steele

Kazu Sano

Rae Ecklund and her daughter, Julie Ecklund

David Grove

Keith Criss

Shannon Abbey

Pete McDonnell

Jim Pearson

Gordon Silveria and Merle Devault

Randy Berrett and Lisa Berrett

Tim Sunderman and family

Diana Thewlis

Vivian Wu and Eric

Sharon and Dan Morris

Joel Yau

Sara Mordecai

Sherrie Sinclair

Craig, Melissa and Gabriel Marshall

Melinda May and Alan Mazzetti

Paul Kratter

Andrea and Dan Tachiera and sons

Spence Snyder

Robert Hunt

Barron Storey

Robert Evans

Lourdes Livingston

and lots of other people I did not have a chance to see or speak with and maybe some I forgot I did see or speak with. It was a great night. I'm only sorry Barbara wasn't there to see the fruits of her labors.

Lynda Barry Rocks!

2008-06-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

I've been a big fan of Lynda Barry for a number of years. We used to read her comic, Ernie Pook's Comeek every week in the Village Voice. I love Marlys.

So when I heard on the radio this morning that she was going to be on Talk of the Nation, my little ears perked right up. It was a short interview, but classic Lynda.

I have to say that this woman stole my heart when we went over to a book reading/signing she was doing in Oakland a few years back. The first thing she did was start to throw candy out into the audience. She bonked Steve on the head with a little box of Nerds. That did it for me. Nerds are Steve's favorite.

She's promoting her new book, What it is. It's about creativity and the creative process. We stopped at our local bookstore this evening, and they had a copy...and it was 20% off, so I just had to get it.

We also went to see the Sex and the City movie tonight. Highly entertaining and fun.

Tiny Surprise Packages

2008-05-29T17:20:00.001-07:00

Hey, I'm back! And not only did my plants not die while I was gone...I actually have some tiny tomatoes starting to grow...woo hoo! Thanks so much to the efforts of my substitute gardening tag team: Steve, Chris, Jane, Greg and Lonnie.

I planted 6 different varieties of tomatoes in my raised bed this year: Stupice, Early Girl, Sungold (cherry tomatoes), Sweet 100s (cherry tomatoes), Black Krim and another one called Muskovic or something. The three that have tomatoes already are: Stupice, Early Girl and Sungold.

My dad used to grow about 40 tomato plants every year for our family. He never did anything halfway. At the end of the season, we were always trying to foist bags of tomatoes upon our hapless guests.

I have fond memories of taking a bite out of a tomato warm from the sun after a turn of weeding the bed. I have dreamed of growing tomatoes like that, but sucess has eluded me these past years that I have lived in the fog belt.

Here's a photo my mom took of a tiny fraction of my Dad's harvest one year. I love this photo, because she did something with the flash, so it looks like the tomatoes are levitating.

I'm growing these Alpine Strawberries in my garden too. They are very tiny, but very delicious. I first tasted them in Venice at Trattoria Alla Madonna. I've searched for them every since. They are also called "fraises des bois."

My foxgloves are looking pretty foxy too. It's nice to come back home to a beautiful garden.

Surtex Photos

2008-05-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of photos from Sharon of me and Sharon and Deb in our booth at Surtex '08. I have more photos on my camera, but I didn't bring the connector to download them to the computer. I'm going to have to post about how the show went later, as I am busy having FUN for a few days and unwinding.

I'm in Marblehead at the moment. It's Memorial Day and we're going over to see my niece Lily march in the parade as a Daisy. Daisy is what you are before you become a Brownie, which is before Girl Scouts. Lily is 6.

It's a gorgeous summery day here. Later we are heading up to Farnham's: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/416974 (can't figure out how to link on mom's computer) You must pronounce it FAHHHHH-nums for the correct effect. It's a huge battle here over which is better, Farnham's or Woodman's. Everyone has an opinion.

Hottest Day of the Year

2008-05-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

How hot IS it? SF Gate says that it's 94 degrees, but it feels even hotter. Poor Ms. E. is so miserable, she let me put an ice pack on her. All we have is one box fan to cool off our little oven of a house. Where is the fog when you need it?

What happened here? Did a cyclone hit the studio? No, it's the countdown to Surtex. We leave tomorrow for NYC, and it's crazy trying to get ready, especially in this heat. I had to shut down my Mac. It started overheating while I was trying to print out my pages and displays today.

Here are a few of my displays. I still have to figure out how they are going to fit in my suitcase without getting destroyed en route. I think I'm going to have to cut a lot of them in half and reassemble them at the Javits Saturday.

We designed bird buttons for our giveaways this year. Cafe Press did a fab job on them this year. I am really pleased with how they turned out. Last year we did flower buttons and had them displayed in a giant flower pot.

This year Sharon designed a cute little birdhouse for our buttons. People liked picking out their favorite.

Last year we went to M&Ms World in Times Square and got M&Ms in our logo colors. The store was overwhelming...merchandising to the Nth degree on 3 levels.

Having the M&Ms was pretty cool, except that we kept eating them when we'd get bored in the booth. The smell of chocolate was irresistible, especially on the last day of the show. This year we ordered custom M&Ms printed with the company name, and we are packaging them in cello bags in advance so we won't scarf them ourselves.

Well, wish me luck. I'll report back later. My Mac's overheating again. We're melting...

Barbara Bradley, 1927-2008

2008-05-06T12:18:00.001-07:00

Very sad news...Barbara Bradley, who founded and ran the Illustration Department at Academy of Art, where I got my degree, died on May 2 from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her husband Neil was driving and he also died in the hospital.

Barbara was an amazing teacher. I had the privilege of taking several classes from her. She was very tough and perceptive. You couldn't sneak anything past her. I have tremendous respect for her and for her legacy.

There is a website, Thank You Barbara Bradley, which was set up last year when she was selected as 2007 Distinguished Educator of the Arts by the Society of Illustrators. Ironically, Barbara had just retired from teaching this past winter. She's really going to be missed by many. I will never forget her. I can still hear her voice in my head whenever I'm painting. She was a huge influence on me and many others.

(I swiped this photo off the TYBB website, I hope they don't mind.)

Happy (B)earthday!

2008-04-22T17:13:00.001-07:00

I made this design for Earth Day. I put it on t-shirts and totes and stuff at my Cafe Press store.

"Where the heck have I been?" you may be asking. I know, haven't had time to blog lately. Well, I took a trip to Denver to attend an art licensing workshop presented by Jeanette Smith. I found it to be very informative.

While in Denver, I got to stay with my good buds, Max and Blackie (and their friend Jean.)

Denver is a pretty interesting place. It's an eclectic collection of cowboys, Christians, New Agers and artists. Since Jean's an artist, I got to meet quite a few of the latter category. It was snowing and 30 degrees the day I arrived, and then 78 degrees and blazing sun a few days later when I flew out. Spring is arriving there and we took a trip to the Denver Botanic Garden. They have a great collection of alpine plants, as well as a bunch of other interesting specimens. Here is one we liked for it's weird hairy foliage: European Pasque Flower or Pulsatilla vulgaris.

I also liked this little cactus flower, although the succulent building was way too hot for us to stay in for long.

Jean took me shopping to this great little store called 5 green boxes. They have a cool selection of home decor and other items. I got this beautiful pillow from Peking Handicraft there.

Since returning home, I've been busy getting caught up. Sunday I built a raised vegetable bed in my garden for my tomato plants, which seemed to have doubled in size in the 4 days I was gone.

This bed is really cool. It's made from a kit I found online from a company called Frame It All. You can buy the components at Home Depot too. The "boards" are composite plastic lumber. They are hollow core, which is lightweight for hauling up the stairs and they trap air so it warms up the soil. I want to get 2 more. The only bad thing is the labels are hard to remove.

Yesterday we celebrated my birthday by going to lunch at Bistro Jeanty in ...

...Paris, France? No, Yountville, Napa Valley, CA. Bistro Jeanty is really like a little slice of France here in California. I had the most decadent slice of ham and leek quiche I've ever tasted.

Today I bought myself a large bouquet of flowers.

It's nice to be back home again.

Happy Earth Day everybody!