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i have two! pie contests i could go to tomorrow. what madness. i've never been to a pie contest in my life, and now all of the sudden two fall on the same day. shucks. i am making a lemon cream pie that my friend laurel made this weekend. she made the crust with graham crackers and pecans, but i'm making mine with grahams and walnuts. and i'm making the graham crackers from scratch, like a crazy person! needless to say, this is a slow pie-making process. i don't normally like citrus-flavored desserts (aside from key lime pie), but laurel's pie converted me. it was one of the best pies i've ever tasted, citrus or no.
above are the graham crackers i made. they don't taste that much like graham crackers, and they were a pain in the butt to grind down because they didn't come out light and crispy like a normal graham, but kind of chewy instead. (that, and i'm in the stone age over here using a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor to do the grinding.) they're not bad, but i can tell they won't make as tasty of a crust as the traditional graham (despite the traditional one's corn syrup and preservatives).
anyhow, i have chosen which of the two pie contests to attend. i'm going to the one where i can win money. ha! just kidding. (one can win money though at the one i'm going to.) can't tell you any more about it until september 17, when i'm writing about it and more over on sew green.
so check back on september 17th if you are curious...
my friend oona's childhood house is one of the first that was built in bolinas, and the building itself is full of character. her mom also has beautiful art/furniture throughout the house. it's a storybook house. and the garden is amazing!
after passing through a wooden gate and beneath pale pink rose bushes, you come to parallel hedges that make a square shape around the front porch. you can walk through the narrow path the hedges create, to the sides/back of the house where you are released into the outstanding garden that bursts forth in all colors and directions. oona's mom, a., is a masterful gardener and horticulturist. (she studies and teaches about native grasses, and she remembers all those latin names for plants.) she plans her garden carefully, but it does not have contained, prim sections; it's the kind of garden that you feel might envelope you. it encourages dreaming. i think a. plans her garden to look like a painting. dabs of vermilion are actually bobbing poppies, and strokes of blue are delphinium (?) bending toward you. it's no wonder oona is a painter. (paintings above are by oona, from years ago.)
so excited to be bolinas bound and celebration bound.
some flickr lovlies
034 (oh, sverige)
leaves
from abby
not sure why i haven't been to the new store gravel & gold yet. it's right in my neighborhood, and i've walked by it about 15 times since it opened. and it's clearly awesome! next time. (clever that they are also a site for a csa pickup.)
so pretty. see how the blueberry lady's dress matches her berries? bigger over here.(so hot over here. the clothes i washed this morning are drying {or have already dried} hanging inside the house, not even in the light. foof!)here's one of the blueberry pages from a story i wrote/painted many years ago.
since bluebells are also on that page, i thought i'd quote a passage about bluebells that i just read in wendell berry's the art of the commonplace: the agrarian essays. the first essay, "a native hill," is, among other things, a poetic tribute to berry's home. here just part of the blueberry passage.
One early morning last spring, I came and found the woods floor strewn with bluebells. In the cool sunlight and the lacy shadows of the spring woods the blueness of those flowers, their elegant shape, their delicate fresh scent kept me standing and looking. I found a delight in them that I cannot describe and that I will never forget. Though I had been familiar for years with most of the spring woods flowers, I had never seen these and had not known they were here. Looking at them, I felt a strange loss and sorrow that I had never seen them before. But I was also exultant that I saw them now—that they were here.
For me, in the thought of them will always be the sense of the joyful surprise with which I found them—the sense that came suddenly to me then that the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know.
his essays make me reread and think. they are written beautifully and are often somehow both complex and simple. (this particular quote doesn't really reflect the complexity, but i liked the description of his bluebell delight.)
i really like the clouds today. i like any clouds, but the cottony-blanket clouds are some of my favorites.
yesterday at dusk. this red house in my neighborhood reminds me of swedish falu röd houses. flickrs
marigolds
from fine tuning (i love her photos)
july 30 (sweet kitty)
speaking of sweet kitties, handmade romance pointed me to we say meow. been a fan of anke's illustrations for a while, but i didn't realize she had this collaborative blog.
oh yoko
i need to go see more dance performances. last week liz and i went to a hip hop dance fest benefit. i wanted to jump up and shout at the end, it was so good. all different numbers, mostly groups, including new style motherlode, but also this awesome guy, the human toy. he was so intense to see close up.
i just met this dog at the corner store on my way home, and i love him/her. so red and sweet.
i'm almost done with lisa hamilton's deeply rooted. it's a good one. here is a slideshow of the unconventional, purposeful farmers she profiles in her book.
here is the pillowcase i mentioned in my last post. you can see some more of the delicious fabric here.
being somewhat afraid of heights, i almost feel weak-kneed looking at these photos. our house looks so tall and rickety from the yard! it's not that tall, but the back steps are that rickety, if not more so.
books i have requested at the sfpl
the girl who played with fire by stieg larsson (5 of 317 holds!)
our life in gardens by joe eck and wayne winterrowd
deeply rooted: unconventional farmers in the age of agribusiness by lisa hamilton
olive kitteridge by elizabeth strout (227 of 227 holds! sigh)
i see you everywhere by julia glass i love having a long list of books i'm excited to read. i hope these don't all become available at once. (at least i know one of them will take a long time to become available.)i just finished reading molly's book, a homemade life, and i so enjoyed it. man it made me hungry.
i was feeling pretty off today until i went into the backyard to take photos of this pillowcase i had gotten my mom to buy me while she was in sweden this summer. (i sent desperate emails to her with maps of the locations of a particular chain store over there where she might find the coveted fabric. more on that in another post.)
while the pillowcase dancing a little on the line brightened my mood, even more transformative was my visit to the backyard. the yard always surprises me, both in its ability to make me happy, and in what i find there. francisco, our downstairs neighbor, has been adding little treasures to the yard (cacti, rose bushes, statues), watering, trimming and weeding. but i like how he also seems to surrender to our yard's wildness. he leaves the hose anywhere, leaves stacks of empty pots on their sides and lets the stray footballs and whiffle balls rest where they land. and then of course all the yards in the area are growing into each other at this time of the season. plants are climbing up over fences like crazy, taking over the yards next door.
it's such a little peaceful spot under our tree. the slight breeze, the dappled ground. the leaf canopy. all the colors. the neighbors make noises in their yards, hold gossip conferences on back steps, but it seems quiet under the tree. it reminds me of summers as a kid where you hear all these sounds in the background, but you and your friends are in your own world of play.
the tree is dripping with its sadly inedible fruit right now (though francisco says he's going to try to make jam out of it). there is something about fruit trees in the summer, so bursting and filled with the activity of bees, butterflies, birds and critters. thick with life. abundant for sure. i think i might need to live on an orchard soon.
as i walked around the yard i saw a honey bee rolling around in the coraly rose above and a monarch fluttering around. a piece of fallen cactus was catching water like a bowl. i'm excited that soon our backyard community garden project will take hold for real as jen and bob will be back from their summer travels, and mati and heather and i are ready!
this weekend i stopped by mati's for an exchange of keys and ears of corn. (we are neighbors, so we exchange random things like that.) every time i go over there, mati has rearranged her furniture and/or wall space. it's inspiring. she's got flair. it had been so crazy long since i had rearranged anything. so i finally got myself together and framed maditi's beautiful photograph (will share later this week after i've finished hanging some other stuff) and hung up camilla's katta. (camilla, you are right, katta is a little bossy, despite the demure paws. you can tell she's faking it by that flapping tail behind her—always a sign of trouble.)
i really used to be a dog person. i'm not sure what happened. i guess pinky leon happened. the next thing you know, i've got four softie cats lined up below katta.
i do love summer.
i wish i could have been to the summer social at abby's this weekend. looks like such an enchanting gathering with backyard music, gorgeous pies and beautiful arts/crafts. wow!speaking of summer, i saw 500 days of summer this weekend. it is entertaining and zooey is lovely of course, but overall it was not as good as i expected it to be.
look at this beautiful summer salad!
summer dog tongues
summer window (the secret garden)
(anyone know why my photos have deeper colors and more contrast in photoshop than they have when i post them here or on flickr? the color settings are set to rgb and web...)
i rode the train to grass valley this weekend, and annoyingly, forgot to bring my camera, so no photos to share. the train is the best way to travel. but i won't go on about it, as i have done so here probably more than once before. ;-)
i posted a book review of farm city over on sew green.
looking up
looking down
for my birthday, i bought myself some shoes, but they didn't fit right, so i returned them. instead i bought thread at 40% off at the fabric store on mission street. such a deal. i may go get more tomorrow, as i hadn't checked beforehand to see what colors i need.
heather made a honey, orange water, pistachio mousse!! which i CAN NOT WAIT to eat. and this friday i'm making a key lime (with regular limes) pie with macademia nut crust. decadence!tuesday flickrsmore spoolsotto is excellent.i wouldn't mind a kitchen like this for my birthday.
grammy rolling out pasta dough
even though i'm writing all this stuff about clothes, and i do love patterns, i am actually not a big shopper at all (especially not for new clothes), nor am i fashion conscious. i often wish (i've mentioned this before here) that i had a smart uniform so i didn't have to think at all about what to wear.
in sweden, they have this weird thing. at the universities, all the people in the science fields have jumpsuits that i guess they wear when they're in lab? like all the people in physics will wear one color of jumpsuit. all the people in chemistry, another. am i making this up? it seems wacky when i write it, but i swear i think this is how it is, like team science! (swedes, can you verify?) it's those coverall jumpsuits with the elastic waist. i always wanted one. they look so comfy.
my dad has a uniform of sorts, as i've also mentioned before.
a closet of perfectly tailored clothing would be nice. they'd feel so easy on and would last a long time since they were so well made. you wouldn't need a lot of clothing, because everything would look just right, and you'd feel great wearing the same outfits regularly. the top above is another too small piece, never worn, thrifted in sweden. i just can't part with buttons that look like miniature landscape paintings! i should add floral motifs to my sucker list (from day 1).
the stockholm syndrome on the daily show.
buying clothes can be a little like bringing a photo of a haircut to your hairdresser. you expect to look as beautiful as the model once you have the haircut. same thing with clothing. you see a certain dress, and you imagine the kind of person who'd wear it. and you think maybe you'll feel like that kind of person when you wear the dress. and even if you don't look like a model after the haircut, or you don't suddenly become someone else when you step into the dress, sometimes the haircut or the dress does put an extra swing in your step. i probably had some ideas about how i'd feel in this thrifted number—a bit swaggering/sassy cowgirl at a square dance, with those lacey lines at the top. and of course it falls under two of the categories i mentioned yesterday: dots and transparent parts. sadly it also has always been too small. i think i can actually part with this one now.nidhi at unworn has been doing this for a while. she has beautiful photos in general and of her unworns.on a more serious note, my csa farmer, pablito, wrote some interesting stuff this week (scroll down) in his weekly newsletter. pablito was inspired by a lecture by economist jeff rubin. here's a short version of jeff rubin's talk, and here's a long version. he talks about oil, the failing economy and the potential revolution in how we consume/produce things/food and in how we live.
(jeff rubin looks a bit like sex in the city's mr. big, huh?) my mom left for a visit to sweden today. wish i could have gone with her.
a couple weeks ago when i was finding dots and diamonds in my closet and noticing how i've owned most of my clothes for years, i noticed another thing. i have some clothes that have been in my closet for years that i have never worn. not once! most of them i have never worn because they are too small. they were too small when i bought them, and they are still too small. (funny how that works.) but i can't get rid of them. here are some things i am a sucker for:
very large buttons
fabric covered buttons
transparent parts of clothing
unusual patterns/fabric
vintage patternsdots, diamonds, stripes
about ten years ago i was a sucker for:
clothing that looked like it might be made with upholstery fabric (skirts that looked like chairs)
clothing with texturethe above dress i believe i bought at a thrift store in sweden. it falls under the unusual fabric category. isn't it weird? i wonder if someone made this fabric themselves. i have sometimes fit into this dress, and i suppose i keep it thinking it might be good for some kind of costume party. what kind, i don't know.
(we'll see how many days i can fill with never worn clothing. do you have never worns too? join in!)
speaking of fabric, check out these awesome kids clothes by kristin. i LOVE her fabric choices. some remind me of marimekko.
new to me blogs:
lea bolvig
madchen blogt
otl aicher's beautiful tickets.
(unrelated to the above) one of my favorite things about wes anderson movies (in addition to the colors, the sets, the dialogue, the fact that i feel like i'm home watching them, the hilarity, the poignancy, the themes, the music...) is the planning. the main characters all have big plans.
max fischer, ultimate planner
royal tenenbaum, schemer
francis l. whitman, itinerary master
steve zissou, crazy expedition coordinator
of course their adventures never go according to plan, but there's so much life in the planning! the disruptions to the course usually precipitate a result similar to (or preferable to) the result these kooks set out to achieve. sometimes the main characters have a hard time letting go of their original plans (max and royal are especially stubborn), but eventually they accept what madness and beauty comes their way.
yesterday mati and i took an ice cream walk and we ended up back at her house brainstorming, making lists and setting plans down. plans are hope, and what is life without hope! i tell you. lately i have been very plan deficient. been feeling lost and wanting/needing a big goal, a next step, but i've felt overwhelmed and worried. uncertain and confused. it's been bringing me down. planning can put one's thoughts on a different track, especially if you plan with someone else.
it is like a wes anderson movie or like john lennon sings, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. still the planning is half the fun.
spinning over on sew green
perfect walking weather today.
i am caught up in this book, a trip to the stars.
flickrs
torkel (i love this photo, and it reminds me of that great, angry rage against the machine song {because of the flickr pool it is in})
g (a damn fine letter)
attacked by a monster (aside from being a great photo, reminds me of one of my favorite books as a child, the secret toy machine, which is about a dog named stilt who looks just like astor.)
