Preparing to leave for the Long Beach festival 2012

By now, many of you know that Jamie and I get very silly when we are together.  Don't get me wrong:  we work hard, too, but we REALLY get goofy.  If someone told me 10 years ago I would be stopping off at a Target to get a new Barbie with pink highlights I would have snorted in my tea.  Well......

Prior to leaving Jamie's house for the festival we worked on placement of 

the quilts to be hung in "Rituals".  Judy Coates Perez looks on and gives 

some excellent suggestions

Now, inside the convention center, the "girls" oversee the installation of the show!

An impressive packing job (by Judy) in the back of Jamie's car.

(the tag on the handle of my beloved green Eagle Creek bag says,

"We All Have Our Baggage".

This was lovingly referred to as "the coffee corner" of the exhibit

Posing outside my Warehouse 104, part of our 

Artist Village in Tactile Architecture.

Hoffman Fabrics

Jamie and I were invited to visit the fabulous location of Hoffman Fabrics once again.  It is always such a pleasure to see what the talented designers and staff of this great place are up to!

I love looking at the stacks of "archived" fabrics!

The Hoffman family are quite famous in the surfing world!

Here are a few of their vintage surfboards...

We were able to take a peek at some of the new batik designs/colorways.  We really enjoyed seeing all the new swatch collections.  Thanks, Michelle Flores, for your generosity!  It is always a treat to visit.

California Road Trip: Los Angeles and a Baby Shower!

For the past several days my focus has been on helping my friend Karen, her daughter, and son-in-law prepare the nursery as well as get ready for the baby shower.
Many trips to IKEA for furniture and curtains, Babies R Us for  changing pad, sheets, and a few other supplies, and things were shaping up!

Karen sits on the nursery floor feeling her granddaughter kicking

Yesterday was spent printing fun "lemony" images onto tea towels, which were wrapped around Carley's homemade Meyer Lemon Marmalade for take-home gifts.

Today was the long-awaited baby shower, and it was so much fun!

Carley made wonderful cupcakes, pie pops, and cookies

Shower guests wrote a note to the baby, and signed die-cut flowers with fabric pens.

I am taking the flowers home and using them to embellish a quilt!

Alissa gets ready to open her gifts

This is one of my baby gifts:  an infant cap (found on Etsy) that resembles a boob.

I love this so much!

The first of two beautiful quilts!

Here is the redwork quilt that Carley made for Alissa.

(Carley poses with Alissa)

Her wonderful friends, many of whom are members of the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild, made the most wonderful things.  The baby received lovely handmade sweaters, hats, and adorable clothing.  

I had to throw Harvey Karp's wonderful dvd into the mix.  

Carley's mother generously offered her beautiful home as the setting for the shower.  In the process of preparing for the event, I made another friend.  

Jamie came up from Orange on the train, so after I reluctantly said farewell to Carley & Roz, Karen, Alissa, & Micah, I drove south to Jamie's house for phase three of the California adventure:  preparing for the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach.  In just a few days our newest exhibition, "Rituals", will debut at the show.  I can hardly wait to see these quilts "in person"!  Stay tuned!

  

California Road Trip: Los Angeles

Karen and I are enthusiastic converts of staying at the Los Angeles Athletic Club! We had such comfortable beds and a very nice complimentary breakfast.
We were picked up by a friend and co-host of the upcoming baby shower to run errands.

The club logo as seen on the elevators

TOday was spent running errands, which was lovely since I didn't have to drive at all!  I've done every bit of the driving on this road trip, which is my preference, but a day off was welcomed.

A trip to IKEA, ordering the food for the baby shower, etc., and then we ended the day at an incredible

French restaurant, Comme Ca.  

California Road Trip: Cambria to Los Angeles

Greetings!  This was mostly a day of driving and no sight-seeing.  We were on a mission:  get into LA and meet Karen's daughter for an appointment.  Another beautiful drive as we transitioned from Highway One to the 101 into LA.

Karen took this (are you relieved?)

Have I mentioned the car-singing?  We do a lot of singing on our road trips.  We delude ourselves into thinking we are pretty good (insert laugh track).  We have been searching for songs that relate to where we are, as well as anything else we can come up with.  This is a full service road trip.

In the waiting room.  We are excited to hear the baby's heartbeat and meet the doctor!

Karen's daughter is in the LA Mod Quilt Guild.

I'm looking forward to meeting some of her friends and fellow guild members at the baby shower on Sunday.

To IKEA to choose some things for the nursery...

And then, much later, Karen and I checked into our room at the LA Athletic Club.

This place is just great, and very near the fashion district in downtown LA.

2012 California Road Trip: Pacific Grove to Cambria on Highway One

Today we begin a portion of the road trip that we have taken together before, at least partially.  We entered the 17-mile drive, a "pay per view" drive in the Pebble Beach golf community.  This is a section of the most spectacular, wild coastline.  The trees are moulded and bent by the wind, the rocky shoreline creates a very rough and dangerous surf.

The plant life are mostly low-mounding succulent varieties.

I suppose this is all that can survive in the tough wind/surf conditions.

Two ravens perch on a rock formation.

This woman amused me:  she happily ate her corn-on-the-cob while the birds hovered nearby,

waiting for a mistake.

Sorry this was taken through the windshield (you'll be comforted to know I was driving)

I love this tree.  All the trees have this windswept appearance.

See all the seals?

The "Lone Cypress"

Ghost Tree

More remains of the ghost trees.  They look very skeletal, don't they?

Such beautiful shapes

Big Sur

We watched many of these Stellers Jays while having lunch at Nepenthe, a lovely 

place near Big Sur.

The beach at Cambria, where moonstones are found.

2012 California Road Trip: Mendocino to Pacific Grove on Hiway 1

Tuesday, July 17:
We stopped into Mendocino to have a look around and fuel the car before we hit the road.  The day was chilly and damp with a thick marine layer overhead.

the local bank

the thickest lavender blossoms I have ever seen, with several drunken bees 

wobbling around in the stems

I love groceries like this, with open, exposed loaves of bread stacked on the shelf

the road was damp, with a layer of fog rolling up the onto the shoreline

This is part of Highway One that we had not driven before.  It was even more "thrilling" than the area south of Pacific Grove, which we will see later.  The road was much narrower, carving into the steep edge of the mountain.  Few guard rails, with many hairpin curves.  I'm not afraid of heights, but at times the palms of my hands tingled like they did when I climbed a bit too high in a tree as a kid.  

We saw a landscape that went from an alpine-looking flora, with mostly low clumping plants.

to this:  pines, eucalyptus, and madrones. 

I don't think this photo does credit to the impressive landscape.

We stopped very near the San Andreas fault to grab these photos.

Note the road in the distance.

Here we are, squinting into the bright "sun"