End of Spring Break

I've said many times that my mornings starts with coffee and spinning, a substitute for all the years of morning runs. It's been a good substitution. It lets the cobwebs clear out and the day to dawn. Alexia started asking when we'd make bread when I was still on my first cup. I told her when the microwave clock said 10:00, we would start. We started making bread right after breakfast! When it came time to knead, she squatted like a monkey on the counter and did a credible job. She doesn't lack for focus.

I had anticipated spending time in the studio while the yeast worked. Alexia wanted to help. I was a nervous wreck, since I've skinned myself too many times on the drum carder. She pulled up my sewing chair and carefully cranked the handle. We carded enough for me to spin another bobbin in the morning.
She got to pick which loaf she wanted to take home to her family and this was her choice. It takes just short of five hours to make bread and that's rough when you're seven years old. She kept turning on the oven light to check, in between asking me if it was ready.
The bread turned out great. I've made this recipe from Joy of Cooking many times over the years since my father-in-law gave me that cookbook as a Christmas present so his son wouldn't starve. Ian and I had it with soup tonight after I returned Alexia to her parental units. It's very quiet tonight - the dogs and cat are exhausted, as are we. Back to normal, until the next time, and we humbly always hope there will be a next time.
As for rabbit brush, this is what I might expect. I've gotten a more bright yellow than this, but I'd be happy with this. It all depends on the color of the wool. I think this would be from an oatmeal fleece, gray wool would give green and paper white would give National Geographic yellow. I'd also like to try sagebrush for green, but I'm highly allergic to it so if I can get green from rabbit brush over gray, I might just stick to that. It's just that I'm running out of gray wool. I'm sticking my fingers in my ears when I think what I'd get by making an indigo bath for yellow over blue. I can't hear you, la, la, la.

We have to turn around tomorrow and get this house cleaned up. We're hosting a meet-and-greet for a candidate in the democratic primary on Sunday. She is a Latina and we support many of her positions, and also her thoughts on women and minorities. We decided to stop complaining and do something - this is our something.

Thursday

I had about a dozen apples in the refriger-
ator that had passed their expiration date so asked my neighbor Sandy if she thought her horse Oberon would like them. She said, you would have a friend for life! Alexia and I delivered them today.
Every five minutes this morning I swear Alexia asked me when we were going. She had her heart set on making bread, but we were short on flour, which Ian had on his shopping list for town today - along with library books. So she shifted her focus to taking the apples to Oberon. Sandy cut up one of the apples into eights and Lexi was thrilled and nervous at the same time to hold out the pieces on the palm on her hand. If you're familiar with Shakespeare, Oberon used to have a companion horse named Puck (Midsummer Night's Dream).
We had the truck since Ian took the car to town, so I told Lex that we would check the artisan spring in the next valley, see if any birds had migrated in yet. This spring is one of the inspirations for my towels but the greens are absent, along with the sun.
This picture brings in more of the greens but it's not quite the palette I had in my mind. I was torn between this memory and the tidal pools at Strawberry Point on the Oregon Coast. Maybe more tidal pool?

I have my warp ready to weave and will get to it in the morning, in between bread risings. Alexia finished one of her library books tonight, Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Parks and started another one - Papa brought her three from the library, so we'll both have things to do in between the stages of bread. She is very excited. I guess I am too, since my mother's bread baking is a fragrant memory for me.

I couldn't do anything on my towels until Ian got home since I'd tasked him with buying a metal dowel for my apron rod. It will make for a better tie-on and I should have done this years ago. So while I waited I decided to drag in a bin of washed Border Leicester wool that I bought about a dozen years ago from Ralph Groefsma in Mountain Home, Idaho. It was before Internet all all done by postal mail and phone calls.

Diane Soucy turned me onto him. She showed me a yellow legal pad with taped-on samples of the fleeces he had available. I remember that day so clearly, at the newly opened In 'n Out Burger in Auburn. I called him and ended up with my own sheet of samples. It was my introduction to raw fleece. I have a couple partial fleeces left from then and I'm determined to weave lap blankets from "my wall of shame" - the bins in the garage that store fleece. I got to thinking that I could dye the gray that I've spun from a sheep out of my brother's flock and also a white from one of the many fleeces in the garage and get two different colors from one dye bath. So the gray is spun and the warp is chained. Now I'm back to the drum carder, not my favorite thing, and on my way to white yarn! I'm planning on a rabbit brush dye bath and anticipating green and yellow. We'll see.

Last Week of Spring Break

This is my NCAA sweater cum trip-
knitting project. It measures right on gauge and so even though I tried it on a couple of times, I kept thinking that it's right because the gauge is right. Finally I had to acknowledge that it has all the shape of a knitted sweatshirt. I chose the wrong size.

I had been wondering what I would knit next. I'll knit the sweater in a smaller size! All that knitting took about 15 minutes to return it to yarn. It wasn't as painful as I expected and I know I'll be much happier by doing it right.

Alexia talked me into going to my library book group on Tuesday, so while I worked on a warp that morning, she was anxious to lend me a hand. I put her to work winding handspun skeins into balls. She loves to help - also helped me set up for the meeting, moving tables and chairs. We set up a table for her in front of a window and she kept herself entertained for the entire meeting. She is not her mother's daughter! Her son Kiernan would be that child. She texted me one night after a confrontational week and asked me how was it that I didn't beat her every day. It made me laugh, the irony. Parenting is not for sissies.
These are the colors I've chosen for my next warp. I'm looking for a sea glass effect, maybe tide pool or pond reflections? I'm so new at mixing color but the only way to get better is to do it.

I got the bouts wound in between other things. Because I sley the reed from my hand, it's a little nerve wracking to have Alexia call out to say she's done with her bath and wants to get out - today was hair wash day. It all worked out and the reed is sleyed.
Alexia was content to play and so I promised her we'd make cookies at 2:30. She got really antsy the closer it got to that time, and since I was threading, I suggested she read her book while she waited. She loves Junie B. Jones so plunked down on my weaving bench to finish her book - I suspect she wasn't taking any chances.
My new Schacht end-feed shuttle and accom-
panying pirns came today. It feels so strange in my hand, the weight and shape. I realize that will change with a charged pirn. Now I have to learn now to properly wind a pirn and that requires adapting my bobbin winder. I stumbled across how to get a good selvedge, probably the day after I placed my order. Had that been the day before, I probably wouldn't have done it. I'm like a deer in the headlights - what?!! They say the aging brain benefits from new challenges and weaving certainly provides a lot of opportunities. Why doesn't that make me happy tonight??

By the way, our book group read The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, and we loved it.

Tea Towels

My second towel in the turned taquete pattern got a blue weft. I am enamored with how the colors work together. Granted, I have limited experience with color in weaving, but I hope the magic never wears off.
These are the eight colors in the warp. So far I've used the two on the bottom right for weft and have decided to use the top left two for my last two towels.
The butter yellow was too light a value for the hues in my warp and I think it really washed out this towel to the level of pastel. That surprised me.

I am much happier with the pumpkin weft, as the value is equal to those in the warp. I've heard this over and over but now I understand why value is so important. The pale yellow isn't wrong but it wasn't the best choice of my eight options. I'm chalking it up to a lesson learned.
They're off the loom and seeing the picture I realize I didn't do a good job of wet finishing - need to get on that. I'm already planning the next warp. Warping goes quick since you can hold two threads together at time - half the work, half the time.
Changing the subject, my son Josh found these two arrowheads in our dry creek bed a couple of years ago. I posted them on my blog last year and an archaeologist friend emailed me to say he saw the post and thought they were old, certainly older than our local tribes. Kay Fowler, archeology professor emeritus is a member of our weaving guild so I showed them to her last week at our meeting. The whole leaf shape one is from chert and is unfinished. The broken one is from basalt which places it in the Sierra Nevada range area. She said it could have broken while it was being worked because there was an inclusion in the stone, or it could have broken inside an animal during a hunt. She asked me where they came from and I said Red Rock (our valley). She laughed and said, well then that's the Sierra Nevadas alright. She thought they are between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. How's that for American history?! It gives me goosebumps.

I'm picking up DD Chris and Alexia in the morning and we're going to haunt thrift stores for the day. Afterwards, Alexia comes home with me for her last week of school break. This is the first time she's asked to spend two weeks of a month break with us. I don't have a loom for her but I'm sure we can find things to do.

Maritime Museum

When I say that our kids live in the Mission District, I took this picture from the 22 Filmore bus stop that we use from Cow Hollow. That's the California mission. Well, the actual original mission is the white structure tucked in between the trees to the left of the church. Those overhead lines are the electric lines that power the buses.
We thought Noah would enjoy the Maritime Museum and met the kids at the visitors center Sunday afternoon - last outing. The ferry Eureka was our favorite of the boats we toured.

The seating capacity in the interior was aston-
ishing to me. It looked bigger on the inside than the outside. I'm standing in another section of seating.
Ian and SIL Michael couldn't get over the basic tools the captain had to pilot with.
This is half of top of the ferry, which looks like the roof of an apartment complex. In the distance you can see Alcatraz Island.
It was the right place to take Noah - he loved it! And the fantastic thing is that it's part of the National Park Service so the only charge is $5 to tour all the ships, but that was waived through Ian's senior park service pass. Little Sharon picked up the junior ranger worksheet which they worked on throughout the tour, so when we left, Noah had a Junior Ranger badge proudly pinned to his shirt.
Noah's favorite boat? Hercules, the handsome tug boat!
After the previous day of torrential rain, we were gifted with this fantastic, bright brisk day - perfect for touring the ships. I only knew about it because Carl Nolte had done his Sunday Chronicle column on the museum about three weeks ago.

I did this little video to show rather than tell.

This basin is shared with a swim and row club and there plenty of both out on Palm Sunday.

The swimmers - give the woman an iPhone and she'll take a video :)

A deYoung Kind of Day

The one museum I wanted to see on our visit was the deYoung. I had looked at all the exhibition schedules and this most closely fit my interests. There are so many to chose from, it was hard to pick, but the Jean Paul Gaultier retrospective was the final straw. Everything about it was over-the-top. Why would it be otherwise?!! There were 140 mannequins and the display took the entire basement floor, room after room, after video display, after simulated runway show, to movie bits. It was fantastic. This is the first room. These mannequins are nearly life like by having blank faces but the animated expressions are broadcast onto them from mushrooms suspended nearby from the ceiling. Several of the mannequins throughout the display sing arias, which this one is doing - ethereal.
The mannequin on the right is Gaultier, talking in heavily accented English.

It was pouring rain when we woke up that morning and we felt smug in our plans to spend the day inside, knowing we could catch the bus under the bus shelter and walk there with our umbrellas. Both our umbrellas were toast, and since we don't use them in Nevada, we didn't know. We swam to Walgreens and bought two more. We then waited for the bus, soaking wet, with new umbrellas. We had raincoats, but when your hair is dripping, you're wet.

The museum would have been a ghost town, except it was a special day for people with disabilities.
Downstairs it was a bustling business - I'd hate to see it crowded. Each room was a mood and theme, with the echo of singing mannequins. There were enough people but not too many.

The museum created a specta-
cular simulated runway, and the energy from the public was palpable. His work is theatrical, overtly sexual, Madonna-ish, and entertaining. The Sunday Chronicle gave it a great review and it was ironic that I read the review after I had seen the exhibit. You know that won't happen again.
I almost didn't include this because I know this post is getting long, but I do enjoy art as a personal statement. This is called The Burning of Los Angeles, and in four panels of raw canvas, this artist painted a very energetic display of that desperate time. Growing up in San Diego, I remember the Watts Riots very well.

If you look closely, you can see what the components of this cathedral are - spent munitions and weapons. How's that for personal statement in art?!
The second special exhibit that attracted me was the Kilim rugs from Anatolia, circa 1600-1900. Because there's no pile, they don't wear well and therefore there are few from this time period.
I marveled at how the colors have survived all these years. I know there has to be a connection between Anatolian rug weaving and Native American rug weaving, I just wish I knew what it is.

This was my favorite.

Look at this detail!

Off the atria, the museum had set up a room with activities for people with disabilities and one of the activities was weaving.
Participation was invited and the weaver now at the middle loom is a special needs young lady, doing a bang-up job, I might at. These pinwheels are also a weaving activity.
Activity tables were set up through-
out the room, but in the corner was this wonderful little combo. Their music was elastic as they read the moods of their audience, doing Raffi and Jack Johnson numbers, with dancing audience showing their appreciation. Ian and I were both moved at the gleeful abandon of the dancers, some just jumping up and down.

The drenching rain had stopped by the time we left and the public had responded in kind. We were astonished by how many people were in line for admission and equally glad that we were in the line to leave. I have visited the deYoung many many times, even in its old incarnation, and it never disappoints. We left happy.

San Francisco

We drove to San Francisco last Thursday morning for grand-
parents day at Noah's Waldorf school on Friday morning. After checking into our motel, and before I go any further, let me recommend where we stayed. It's the Cow Hollow Motor Inn on Lombard Street, very close to the Embarcadero, Fort Mason, the Exploratorium and many other attractions. We paid less than $100 a night and that included parking. If you've ever stayed in the city, you know that parking is an uphill battle. First you have to find it and then you have to pay for it. We bought a bus pass and enjoyed the Muni transit instead. We caught the 22 Fillmore which is its own form of entertainment, and visited with Noah and Little Sharon for a while that afternoon. In spite of the forecast for rain, we were able to take Noah to Dolores Park so he could ride his bike. Michael was still at work so we caught an early dinner with Noah at Kaza on 18th Street and had our first kati rolls. We stopped at the Bi-Rite Creamery for an ice cream chaser and called it a day.
We spent the entire next morning at the Waldorf School, which started with grandparents being celebrated in a small cafe environment with food and coffee, followed by an hour of student and teacher presentations after which we visited the classrooms - followed by more student presentations. We left exhilarated and exhausted at noon.
Sharon picked us up afterwards and took us back to their flat, where we once again walked over to Dolores Park. Why waste a pretty day? We bought tacos from a food truck and sat on the grass to eat them. We are just returning from a visit to Imigiknit where I bought nothing. Jimmy Beans, my LYS, sets the bar pretty high. We were going to try for dinner but Michael has to catch the train from Palo Alto and so we decided that we'd go on Saturday instead.
I wanted to go to City Lights Bookstore and buy Paul Madona's latest collection from All over Coffee - plus it's a must-stop shop for a bookist. We decided to have dim sun in Chinatown, since it's right next to North Beach. Can you believe how many different rice cookers this shop has?!


How about, can you believe how many varieties of tea this shop has??! The most astonishing thing about Chinatown is that it's nearly completely Chinese, especially on Stockton Street. That's where we got killer dim sum - 930 Stockton Street. I couldn't tell you the name and we ordered by pointing because the storekeeper spoke almost no English. Our dim sum dinner cost $7.00 - in San Francisco!
There is so much in San Francisco that it's easy to lose sight of how little real estate there actually is. Chinatown is in the shadow of the financial district and they really don't cross over.
The tourist street is Grant and that's where the China Gate is, but if you want to see the Chinese Chinatown, walk down Stockton. Look at how little English is on these grocery store signs, and they're selling fresh food, very little is packaged. We eat an early dinner which is why we were able to still get dim sum, and these markets were cleaning up and closing down, hosing the fish scales across the sidewalk into the gutter. It was interesting and a little eerie to be in such a foreign place so close to home.



This is why we didn't stop at the Disneyland of ice cream after lunch.