this breeze is nice

fancyland

2011-04-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

The Communal Building

(amazing mural by Sam Lopes, our former house mate!)

The Parlor Cabin

The Outhouse

The Land

(wood burning hot tub)

("the jolly roger" sleeping platform)

kimchi, 2 batches

2011-04-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

jordan

2011-04-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Our friend, Jordan Reznick, recently had a photo show at the Spare Room Project (in our basement). Her work was a tribute to the community she was a part of at Breitenbush in Oregon. The photos were magical. I bought a small one and hung it with my collection of tools for cutting. The hanging ceramic piece next to it is by another one of my favorite local artists, Jo Boyer, who is also a singer of sad songs.

new postcards

2011-04-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

left is belated birthday magic for finn, right is belated fancyland thank you for sacha.

timeliness is not one of my stronger points.

recent observations about nothing in particular

2011-04-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

coincidence?

2011-04-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

sea ranch

2011-02-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

taking the time to eat a decent breakfast

2011-02-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

january vacation

2011-02-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

case came to visit in january. we spent some time at a cabin in the redwoods near big basin and santa cruz. it was quiet and lovely there.

we also did a little reconnecting with san francisco. we've been having unbelievable weather so it was the perfect time to go exploring.

striped plates by leah rosenberg!

2011-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

my friend leah, who may be one of the sweetest and most modest people in the whole world, is a painter and a cake maker (she made an unbelievable lemon curd layer cake for my 30th), and now a plate maker. i just saw this over on apartment therapy and wanted to repost it, because leah is the best. you can pick up her plates at the shadow shop on the 5th floor of SFMOMA. also here's a bonus photo of leah hanging cookies on our chandelier as part of her solo show last year at the spare room project.

homemade soup

2011-01-30T19:47:00.000-08:00

one of the things on my epic resolution list that i want to focus on is more actively cultivating my personal relationships, making the time to prioritize friends, staying better in touch with the folks i love that don't live around here, and considering and caring for the folks i love that are around here.

my friend chantal has been working really hard lately, like really hard, and I know that whenever I work that hard, it's only a matter of time before my body lets me know that it's time for a break. in the language of getting sick. usually the bedridden, exhausted, take-care-of-me sort of sick. apparently chantal's body responds in a similar way because she's been super sick for a couple days, and i would normally cook for her, but i've been dogsitting gino across town. so today i took the time to make some simple veggie soup, packed it up with some good herb bread and homemade kimchi (another cure-all!) and headed over to chantal's.

it was a simple, small gesture, but those are the things i want to keep on my mind. nothing big or fancy or extravagant, just the things that say, hey, i'm thinking of you.

some new drawings

2011-01-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

i've gotten so into gardening that i've kind-of lost my footing as an artist. i'm trying to get it back, starting with some small, low pressure, no pre-conceived idea, drawings. hoping to make another quilt again soon also.

shaking cream

2011-01-29T08:13:00.000-08:00

it's 2011. or rather it's almost february 2011. i am thinking about taxes, about how i never finished my resolution list, about simplifying. i may always be thinking about simplifying. doing it is another story.

i think a lot about demarcations of time, and i make a lot of lists, so new years resolutions are pretty much habitual for me. i was over at my friend grant's house for delicious xmas tamales and we got to talking about our resolutions. grant is a numbers man, and likes to set only a few resolutions, ones that are easy to quantify, where the success or failure is clear. i was out to dinner with my friend Finn, complaining about work and picking her brain about how to set better boundaries and we also got to talking about resolutions. she likes to set one resolution, one thing to be more conscious of, where the success is not a yes or no, but a more or less. i tend to make epic resolution lists. messy, difficult to remember, and lengthy. i accept pretty low success rates because the lists are so long and ambiguous.

i want to streamline. this is easier for me to say than to do. i am a packrat if not a borderline hoarder, a workaholic, a jack of all trades, and my attention span is brief at best. i start a lot of things i don't finish. A LOT. i am nervous, scattered, and i cannot sit still. i just left one of my three jobs at the end of 2010, with the sincere goal to devote more energy to one of the other two jobs, and to redevelop a personal life. to embrace down time, reconnect with friends, be a better pen pal, make things outside the garden and the computer.

i want to slow down. to move with intention, to complete tasks and walk away from them. i have gotten to a place where i work all the time because rather than doing something, finishing it, and leaving it behind, i will sit at the computer all day and do nothing half the time. not nothing, i will agonize over the fact that i am not getting anything done, but even knowing that will not motivate me to accomplish anything. i want to remember that i love my work, not just tell myself that i love my work.

this morning i made my second small batch of raw milk butter. i make this butter by pouring a quart of non-homogenized whole raw milk into a wide mouth mason jar, letting it settle in the fridge until the cream floats to the top, skimming the cream off with a spoon into a smaller mason jar, letting that sit on the counter for about 12 hours to ripen, then shaking the jar of cream for almost half an hour until a ball of butter forms inside a moat of buttermilk. This morning i shook cream while i drank coffee and looked at design blogs. i shook cream until my arms were sore, trading hands every few minutes to give my shoulders a rest. i shook cream because i believe in ritual and process, and i know that everything good takes time.

it's these little acts that remind me to slow down, to step away, to remember that lauryn hill was so right, everything IS everything. i want to keep this in mind this year and i want to delight in the wonder of this bizarre and serendipitous life that i am so fortunate to walk through. and maybe i'll write about it every now and again. or maybe not. i guess we'll see.

I spoke too soon...

2009-11-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

I was prematurely prepared to batten down the hatches when we had that one hard rain. It passed right on through and we've had indian summer, part deux all this week so far. No joke, I've worn shorts and a tank top the last three days. Take that, November!

As much as I was excited for the rain, its been quite lovely to get a little more sunshine, mid-day hikes up the hill, and a few more tomatoes!

winter nesting

2009-10-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

i know i'm predictable. every year around this time I check back in here and give my usual diatribe about how much I adore the rainy season.

oh, the rain. ah, yes. we had our first hard rain this past week and it has set me full force into nesting mode. i'm coming to realize that i may not be much for spring cleaning, that when the summer is about to break, my mind has already wandered outdoors and is climbing a plum tree or pitching a tent by the river. but the winter makes me want to purge all my stuff, to clean house, to make room to hunker down, flick on my desk lamp, and work and make and do and think.

And right this second, it makes me want to can all the last bits of summer deliciousness and squirrel them away so that when the winter chill sets in and my bones are damp and I'm putting on another wool sweater, I can crack open a jar of summer salsa or bartlett pears, and dig in to that sweet summer fruit, rejuvenated and ready to pull my fingerless gloves back on and set back to work.

Produce to the People

2009-10-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

This seems an appropriate time to breach the subject of what I've been up to in my gaping absence from this little account of my day to day. I started a very small, very rough around the edges, non-profit that harvests backyard produce, works on community gardening projects, and creates green summer jobs for high school students.

Produce to the People. That's it. It's been (and continues to be) a wholly amazing and wholly exhausting experience. It's pushed my boundaries in all sorts of directions, and made me really check in with myself about what's important and what to let go. I have met, worked with, and shared food with some of the most beautiful folks, hung out with some of the most brilliant and caring teenagers, and eaten some of the most delicious produce, grown within a 3 or 4 mile radius of my home. I feel really lucky to be in this place right now, right here, and see where the road leads.

So right now, I can hardly believe it, but the road is taking me full circle to Produce to the People being featured on Studio Choo's "We like it Wild" section of Design Sponge. It is surreal because I've been reading DS for years, since I was a materials librarian and much more deeply involved in the art and design world, and since my library cohort was the lovely Lia Thomas, who now works with Jill and Alethea of Studio Choo. So serendipitous!

A million thanks to Lia and Studio Choo and Design Sponge, and to all the readers who had such nice and generous comments. I'll be here, picking fruit, sewing seeds, making things, and thinking about stuff, so stay in touch!

TODAY

2009-09-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

its been a million years. i wouldn't even know where to start to do the catch-up since I wrote last in, hmm, yes, JANUARY. let's just start at today. today seems manageable and full of promise. here's the morning garden harvest and supplies for the tin can succulent garden demo the Spare Room Project is doing at the Commonwealth Club tonight in conjunction with their "What's "the economy" for anyway?" panel.

let's leave it at that, i'm out of practice and don't want to pull a muscle or anything. i wish you a lovely monday, and bid you adieu.

scrappy recycled shirt quilt

2009-01-11T21:47:00.000-08:00

this past summer (as in may (as in about 9 months ago)), i started my first quilt that i intended to see all the way through all by myself. or mostly by myself at least, it's true that my mom (who is a top notch quilter that has been known for such feats as piecing (PIECING!) several species of multi colored birds, wings and all, and has been known to do such outrageous quilting endeavors as quilting the four seasons into a baby quilt which was pieced in the ever creative "squares" pattern by yours truly. yes, i have a lot to live up to) helped me start the cutting while we hung out with the fam at the jersey shore, but everything else i managed to scrape together, slowly but surely, on my own.

the whole thing is made up of 12 of my dad's and my men's dress shirts, buttons and all!, 3 thrift store pillow cases, 1 thrift store sheet, and some unbleached cotton batting. aside from the batting, which I bought new, but on sale at the discount fabric store because it was a closeout special, I think I spent about $5 on fabric. It might have taken a while, but it was dang cheap, and turned out not too shabby, if i do say so myself!

oh vacation, i miss you already.

2009-01-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

i've been back from vacation for over a week now, but considering i spent the majority of that week with the blankets pulled up over my snotty, fevery, flu riddled head, i'm just now getting back into the swing of things. and while i'm quite happy to welcome a whole new year, i wouldn't be giving due diligence to the end of this past lovely year without a quick nod to my good friend, vacation. i know i checked in from South Carolina (you remember, the week before xmas that i spent in a t-shirt and shorts at the beach?), and on from there I hopped the train up to Virginia to visit my bro, sis-in-law, and most lovely little potato niece. We hung out a few days, cooked, ate, slept in, watched bad movies, blew bubbles, and danced with the robot frosty-the-snowman. Then we piled in the car and headed up to my folks place in Delaware, for some more rest, cookies, wine, crazy dog, naps on the couch, knitting, more bad movies, good china, and time with friends and family. oh, and what trip wouldn't be complete with a little local seed saving and plant dividing? all the last minute 2008 catch up follows... i got good feelings for this new year and am so happy to share 2009 with you all! yipee!

train sunset

mini tree hug!

suburban homesteading

don't sweat my stellar friendship bracelets (thanks kristy!)

such patience

yay!

more from the beach

2008-12-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

homemade vinegar

2008-12-18T08:25:00.001-08:00

yes, yes. as you may know, i have deep and boundless love and respect for microorganisms (you know, the non-pathogenic kind), especially my two very good friends, the decomposers and the fermenters. really though, they're always working on something, making stuff, helping out, and in the end they come up with some of my favorite things... compost, and in turn nutrients and humus, and in turn delicious veggies. pickles and miso and yogurt and, you know, booze. yep, they're good guys to have in your corner, and once you get to know them, they might even be willing to help out with your xmas gifts.

i admittedly make vinegar (and a good handful of other ferments) all year long, but there's something that just feels right about reaching in the back of the cabinet around "holiday time" and pulling out a bunch of jars of stuff you've been making all year, packing it up and giving it to your loved ones. my fam this year opted for secret santa, but since i don't get to see everyone but twice a year, i bring homemade vinegar and jam, and local (to me) olive oil, butter (have i mentioned that i love butter?), and honey from the farmers market. i love food, and i love making food and sharing food, so why not share the love, right?

anyways, making vinegar is super simple, one of the easiest ferments because it's just not that particular. this year i'm giving out red wine and apple cider(ish) vinegar. to make the red wine vinegar, you just put your leftover slugs of red wine in a jar and put a cloth over it so it can breathe but no bugs or dust get in it. then you let it sit. and smell or taste it every now and again. til it's vinegar. yep. that's it. then you pour some out and bottle it, and save a little to add to, which becomes your vinegar "mother". the cider vinegar happens pretty much the same way. this current batch of mine came from apples that my lovely roomie gregory brought home from the lady he works for. i juiced them (rather than pressed them the way cider happens), left the juice in a cloth covered jar, and let it sit. i like to leave the sediment in the cider vinegar, but you can strain it out if it doesn't suit you. and that's it!

save and reuse some pretty jars, make cute labels, and voila! delicious and homemade gifts!

i could get used to this

2008-12-16T23:39:00.000-08:00

hello from vacation, friends.

i am currently writing you from my wonderful and brilliant friend kinsley's couch in a delightful little house across the street from the beach in South Carolina. It was 74 degrees here today while i slept in til noon, and while i ate breakfast on the porch, and while i threw the ball into the ocean for the dog and collected shells, and while we decorated the xmas tree. It had probably cooled down to about 65 when kinsley took me on a tour of the island, the crabbin' spot, pink and george's farm stand, the piggly wiggly, and might have even gotten down to 60 while we made gingerbread and mashed potatoes with gravy AND sour cream. yes, vacation, i have missed you.

i'm about to head off to bed now, so i can sleep until i naturally wake up (sans my hateful, psychic clock radio), or until kinsley heads off to work and buddy the dog hops into my bed, gives me three thousand kisses and then rolls over on his back and falls asleep with his legs straight up in the air.

forlorn ghosts

2008-11-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

i was cruising around with a new-ish friend the other day and flipped a u-turn mid-street and mid-sentence and explained that i needed to pick up chairs off the side of the road. that it was just a thing i needed to do and that these particular chairs looked like philipe starck 'louis ghost' knock-offs and that i loved designer knock-offs in this way that's definitely wrong for someone who is so dedicated to the handmade object to love designer knock-offs, but i just do. so i grabbed the filthy road side chairs, tossed them in the back of the wagon, and he didn't bat an eyelash, bless his little heart, and off we went.

later i got home, dragged said dirty chairs in the house and started to wipe the pond scum off of them, and much to my surprise, there was the 'kartell' stamp. they are the real deal!

my garbage picking luck even amazes me sometimes!

change is in the air

2008-11-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

it's true. thick and swampy change, just dangling there off tail ends of the oxygen molecules (although in san francisco, it might very well be tangled up somewhere between the hydrogen and oxygen).

it feels good. nervous and a little frantic, but GOOD.

anyone who spends any time with me at all knows how enthusiastic i am about the coming of the rain. it's time for new growth, winter crops, big steps, hunkering down, brainstorming, making, appreciating what you have, shedding and amending. embracing change. i love this time of year when the rains come. love love love it.

i've already started my new years resolutions, and i am feeling dedicated. i've also started a list of things accomplish by new years and these lists are equally lofty my friends, but i am feeling perseverant and motivated, and well, willing to accept a 50% success rate on both, which i suppose means i'm feeling realistic in my idealism.

ah. well, not to get you all pumped up and then split, but it's my day off and i'm on my second cup of british breakfast, so i've got to be on the move. maybe more later, maybe not. no unsure promises... maybe i should add that to my resolution list?

antics of my soothsaying clock radio

2008-11-04T07:27:00.001-08:00

i have this warped idea that the song that i wake up to when my clock radio goes off in the morning has something to say about my life or my day. it's really too much power to give to a clock radio, i admit, but it has been eerily accurate on more than one occasion, so i give it a little credit when it's due.

this morning i woke up to "i still haven't found what I'm looking for" a la U2. i hit the snooze. i woke again to fleetwood mac's 'landslide', and if that wasn't bad enough in general it was the "i'm getting older too" line that fuzzed in as the radio clicked on. It could have only been better if "can i handle the seasons of my life?" was creeping through the static.

geez louise.

the choke cometh

2008-09-14T09:34:00.001-07:00

we planted two artichoke plants this summer, but only one made it to flowering (they're slow poke perennials that die back and then gather speed in the second and third year). It did get two flowers, one of which we tried to eat even thought the ants had been aphid farming on it the whole time it was growing. It was totally inedible, so we let the second go all the way to flower, and it's just been opening up this week. bizarre and magnificent!

hi again.

2008-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

alright. i know the last time i said i'd be here with more regularity, i up and disappeared entirely, but i'm back now. no promises this time for how much or how long, but here i am. thanks in big heaping handfuls to my inspiring friend, chantal, who recently dug up and brushed off her own blog, writerly ways, and my lovely greggie b., who's been holding it down and keeping it real at mr. bartlett this whole time. who knows where i'd be without such brilliant and creative folks swiftly kicking me in the butt at every turn. thanks guys. love love love.

like woah.

2008-06-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

i know it's been a million years. and i have no good excuses. or too many good excuses to narrow it down. i'll get back to you. maybe. probably not.

le sigh.

i'll spare you all the lengthy and gritty details and just give you a photo montage update. without further ado:

made mushroom miso dill gravy. ate it all. with toast.

drove down the coast to swanton berry farm (organic and union!) to pick strawberries. made honey sweetened, agar thickened jam. still need to send jam to mom and dad.

made a little cat bed out of a thrift store suitcase which i painted the inside, and popped in a thrift store pillow. i think the whole thing cost $3.69. Usually the cats are resistant to anything that's intended for them, but this was a success. I ended up making a second one out of a wicker picnic basket because pickle is bad at sharing (we're working on it).

made purple potates. nothing special but they sure are pretty.

garden update #1. brussel sprouts, trichogamma wasps, zucchini and artichoke.

flew out to brooklyn to visit an old friend. ate lots of cheese. slept on the roof.

visited another friend who is working at bobolink dairy farm in north jersey. got very dirty. pigs, schleping boots, pistachios and beer on the porch.

more from the farm. some burned up bread from a sourdough starter that my friend made, the picnic table and the milking barn, cheese in the making.

drove down to havre de grace, md to see my good friend jason kalogiros's totally amazing show at harford community college.

headed down to the jersey shore to spend some time with the cutest little muffin baby in the entire world (who just happens to be my niece, but that's purely coincidental) and the most wonderful sleepy head dog. oh right, and the fam was there too (just kidding guys, you know i love you).

had an extra long flight, so some time to regroup and re-evauate. came home to my cat cuddle puddle.

garden update #2. more brussel sprouts, new tomatoes, plums.

started horticulture class at city college. they have an amazing garden that we work in and harvest from, so there are a lot of bonus treats that we get to take home from class. yum.

drove down the coast again to the other swanton berry farm location for olallieberries. put more in my belly then in the box. will probably go back soon because the season is short and the berries are so so so good.

think that's it for now. I'm finished traveling and back on track and will be posting with more regularity, i swear it.

art show catch-up

2008-05-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

I've been to a handful of art shows recently and am majorly slacking on posting about it, so I'm going to do a quick and dirty run through of a couple of highlights (although I think most if not all of these shows are over now! Sorry!)

I caught the tail end of the Monica Canilao and Swoon show entitled Feral at The Luggage Store which was totally amazing and quite inspirational. I'll just post the pics and shut my yap because it was SO full of SUCH amazing stuff, I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk about it.

That same day we rode our little bicycles over to get another quick peek at the Ruth Laskey show entitled 7 weavings at Ratio 3. I know, I know, I've already talked about this show but I love Ruth's work and now I have a couple pictures (albeit out of focus) of the actual show and some close-ups of her amazing weavings. Plus, you know I love the floor at Ratio 3.

Then just last week was the CCA graduate exhibition, which I forgot to take pictures at, but I did help my friend Jason Kalogiros hang his photos the night before, so I have a couple (fuzzy) shots of his work being installed, and his sweetheart Maggie Preston's work. The whole show was pretty good although I have my gripes about cramming everyone into that awkward space along with the baccalaureate exhibition. I think they could come up with a better plan and that gives a little bit more respect and breathing room to everyone's hard work. But don't get me started with my griping...

Jason Kalogiros

Jason Kalogiros

Jason Kalogiros

Maggie Preston

Maggie Preston

Geez.

2008-05-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

i meant to do all my catch up today about art shows that have, at this point, long passed and fun things that have happened. Maybe I'd throw in a picture of lemons or old furniture or something lovely and uplifting. Yes, I had such good and positive intentions.

Alas. The happy posts will come, I know they will, but not yet, not today. Today I went to move my truck, my ugly, beat-up disaster of a truck (which I love despite it's flaws and overly apparent bad karma) and when I started it up it roared like thunder rolling down from the mountains. I drove it the two blocks back to my house, looked under, and realized someone had sawed through the pipe to steal my catalytic converter. wonderful. I'm not sure how I manage to always be driving the hottest cars to steal parts off of (someone broke my honda radiator trying to steal it on my birthday in boston a few years back), but apparently this is a common occurrence around here. At least I found a place to take it to that will also do my brake and lamp adjustments for my salvage title (don't even ask), and I'm giving myself at least until noon to not deal with it.

On a lighter note, Bisbee's back. I didn't write about it, or write anything last week because I was devastated when Bisbee was missing for five days and I was convinced that the coyote from bernal hill had eaten him. But no, he was apparently just on a vision quest and is now back and snuggled up getting his eighteen hours a day of beauty rest.

I'm also in the middle of rearranging my room and studio, which makes me want to get rid of everything I own and live in a one person backpacking tent in the desert. I'm not actually sure if I've made anything in the last few years but I sure have gotten a lot of stuff out and then eventually put it away. Yep.

I won't be back today but I'll be more positive tomorrow. Maybe even later today I'll be more positive, but I still won't be back. I'll be drinking my weight in yerba mate to try to keep from pulling the covers over my head, or staring at the wall in my studio, or walking back from the mechanic. You should have a lovely day though, and if you've got a sec, leave me a comment about something really good that's happened to you recently. I would love that.

kitchen love

2008-05-04T12:55:00.001-07:00

there's been a surplus of lemons in the house lately between our tiny meyer tree and my friend jason's two trees (one of his is a meyer also and much more abundant than our little scraggly fella).

I've been swiping rosemary and lavender from people's gardens and making simple syrup with the herbs, then straining it and making lemonade with all the lemons. quite yummy and perfect for the lovely weather lately.

and a beautiful salad from our garden!

sf victory gardens is accepting applications

2008-05-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last year bay area artist Amy Franceschini teamed up with Garden for the Environment to start this amazing Victory Gardens project where they deliver kits (via modified tricycle) around San Francisco to start your own food producing garden plot. Here's the blurb from the GFE newsletter:

The Victory Gardens 2008+ Program is now accepting applications to particpate in the Victory Gardening Program. Victory Gardens 2008+ is a pilot project funded by the City of San Francisco to support the transition of backyard, front yard, window boxes, rooftops, and unused land into organic food production areas. As a participant, you will work with the Victory Gardens team to install a garden in your outdoor space. Although you will be the primary caretaker of the garden, the Victory Garden team will provide ongoing support. For more information, please visit www.sfvictorygardens.org.

(image via design 21)

free bird

2008-05-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

it's day two of my new unemployed life and so far, so good. i've got some catch up to do on here about good stuff i've seen recently, but that will come, today i'm going to start from today, or rather from yesterday, because, you know, today has yet to happen. yesterday was really productive, I crossed two things off my major things to get done in the next few months list. two things- in one day- off that list. for me, that's major. that list has been haunting me for months and threatens to haunt me for several more months and several big blows to my bank book.

but at least now the cats have been to the vet and are in perfect health (although, in true pickle form, pickle has at some point managed to knock all but one of his front teeth out, and the one that remains is hanging on by a thread, and bisbee couldn't help but pee a river into the cat carrier about a block and a half from the house on the way TO the vet. I adore my little dirtballs).

And I finally got lenses put in the most beautiful vintage 50s frames that I got in Amsterdam last summer, and I am totally thrilled with them and so happy to not be wearing my ill fitting old glasses from about 6 years ago. If you find yourself in Amsterdam, and you've got a thing for vintage and antique eyeglass frames, you seriously can't miss the Brilmuseum. It is this tiny little shop full of glasses frames, sectioned by decade and style, and I think a lot of them haven't been worn (mine hadn't). If you don't have any intentions to buy, I'm not sure if I'd ask to try things on just for a lark. When I was there it was manned by a somewhat surly (I guess this is relative, and maybe curt is a better word than surly), but super knowledgeable woman who refused me even to try on a few pair of frames either because they wouldn't fit my head, or they would look bad on me, and then when we got to the pair I ended up buying, said "these are the ones", set them on the counter and sat down. What can I say though, she was spot on.

I also finally made it to the Oakland art murmur, which I've been meaning to do forever. My favorite stop was at Johansson Projects where they had the Propagations show in the front gallery and I'm not sure what the show was called in the little back gallery. I especially liked these drawings by Evan B. Harris in the back gallery, and the paintings by Alexis Amann, and Kiersten Essenpreis in the front gallery. It was really great just walking around there, the art vibe in oakland feels really visceral and celebratory, and I like that. It reminds me of how we get to this place where we're toiling away in isolation, but the when all pop our heads up for a second and look around, it's really amazing just to see that there's so much going on.

Evan B. Harris

Evan B. Harris

Alexis Amann

Kiersten Essenpreis

that's it for yesterday. off to today.

Yellow Yesterday

2008-04-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

My name is Lauren and I'm a dirty old chair addict.

I had to stop home on my lunch break yesterday and spotted some really amazing fiberglass school chairs on the side of the road a block over and up from my house. I couldn't tell if they were out for free or waiting to go in someone's truck, so I cruised by, went about what I had to take care of at home, but, being the discarded treasure junky that I am, left myself the above sick and obsessive note to swing back around and see if they had been abandoned. So I did, and when I got there they lookd alone and lonely so I scooped them up, didn't even close my tailgate, looped around and dropped them off. Aren't they sooo cute?!

Then on my way home I stopped by this lovely tree that's blooming with the most vibrant yellow flowers. I always pass it and it lights up my belly and makes my cheeks warm, it's just that kind-of thing that makes me feel happy and fortunate to be here and getting by and passing the most wonderful yellow flowers tree on my way home from work everyday. It makes the things that seem not so good, seem not so bad, at least for a little while.

Southern Exposure Annual Art Auction!

2008-04-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

This Saturday is the super fabulous SOEX auction, which I hear is thing to behold. I have a piece being auctioned off and am in good company of 170ish artists, several of which I actually know and might even be friends with. It's, by my soon-to-be-unemployed terms, a high rollers event, but if you've got $30 laying around and are good at planning ahead, you can get an advance ticket here, or $40 will get you in at the door. I hear there's lots of free food, booze and schmoozing, and if I partake enough in the first two, I just might make it to the third. Oh, and the art looks good too. You can get a sneak peek here. And you can get a not so sneak peek of my floppy folding chair being auctioned below.

(soft sculpture forever!)

mr. bartlett

2008-04-20T23:18:00.001-07:00

oh my gosh! my delightful friend gregory has started a blog. He is a brilliant artist, a garden whiz, a dancing machine, a soon-to-be san francisco transplant by way of being a massachusetts ex-pat, and he looks better in my red loafers than I do. Check him out!

[heart] garden [heart]

2008-04-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

I feel like every time I drop by here, it starts with something to the tune of how busy and exhausted I am. While that may be all too true, and while I may not be finding much time for kicking back or engaging in social activity, perhaps with a chilled adult beverage in my hand, I have been making some time for my lovely, albeit humble, garden.

Oh, garden. What would I do without you? How would I spend that awkward 45 minutes every morning before work because I wake up too early? What would I get excited about if it wasn't the recent availability of brussel sprout seedlings, or tomato babies, or soaker hoses, or the sci-fi and amazing tricks I learned at fruit tree pruning class?

Without further ado, and my ramblings muddling up the purity of my garden love sentiment, here are some photos of green stuff from my little urban-sylvan nook.

(since we're (begrudgingly) renters we didn't want to go through the trouble of installing a drip system, but we still wanted all the benefits of ease and water conservation. we're doing our best with a system of soaker hoses and little channels to direct the water. i'll surely report back about how it goes. oh, and that's pickle, my baby boy.)

(i know it's late for peas but that's the beauty of living in the bay area. don't be jealous, ok?)

(i learned this trick at an organic fruit tree pruning class at Garden for the Environment. if you cut a small half moon shaped notch over top of a bud you want to sprout, but isn't sprouting, it will force all the nutrients into the bud and get it to produce a shoot. my technical terms are willy-nilly but look, it works!)

(this fern is an east coast transplant just like me. it came from my mom's garden. how amazing! granted there were four and only one survived, but i still think it's pretty incredible.)

(babies! marigolds, tomatoes, zuchinis, borage, basil, mint! yum!)

Sam Lopes "House of No"

2008-04-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Erin and I went to (or rather tried to go to) the Oakland Art Murmur this past friday. We were foiled by not being able to park Moji's van and not being dressed warmly enough or motivated enough to walk a great distance to make it to most of the gallery's on the art walk. We did make our first and most important stop at Blank Space Gallery to see our friend and former roomie, Sam Lopes's solo show entitled "House of No".

I ran into Sam the other day at a little undergrad panel discussion that we were both presenting on, so I got a sneak peek of his new work. He's screenprinting interiors of houses over abstract colored pencil, which makes for some really electric combinations. He mentioned something about feeling like the house was alive, and I think he's really capturing that in this work, the intensity of the colored pencil and the layering really make it feel like you're seeing the innards of the space. there's something simultaneously really tense and quiet about them. And of course, there's still bears. and cats. So really, you can't lose.

The show is up til April 28 and it's jam packed with work. Sam has a million ideas and is quite prolific, so you should see it now, because his next show is bound to be a totally new set of work. I forgot to take my camera with me to the show so below is some of Sam's slightly older, but still really recent work from a different series entitled "Monument". And there's a ton more amazing stuff on his website to check out. Prolific, really, I wasn't exaggerating.

panchakarma

2008-04-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Whew. I know it's been a little while. Maybe a few days more than a little while. But I have plenty of excuses, believe me. I have been sick as a dog and job hunting and spring cleaning and sleeping way more than usual for no apparent reason. I'm beat. B.E.A.T. But I'm hanging in there and Erin and I are both eating solid food again so we're finally going grocery shopping today, and we're going to start a cleanse so that we'll both be good as new in no time.

We'll be doing an ayurvedic cleanse which is part of panchakarma which roughly translates to "five actions", although I admittedly will not be doing all the steps that you're supposed to, I'm going to stick to the eating and the oil massage and the steam room (not so bad, eh?). So my version of the cleanse consists of eating basmati rice with ghee (clarified butter) and herbs and mung dal soup, and drinking lots of water with lemon, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. I'm also going to be mixing some oils to externally pull the toxins out, probably with things like juniper, jasmine, lavender, sandalwood and tea tree oil. Then I'm going to sneak into the steam room at Erin's gym and hopefully sweat out whatever's left.

I'll be back with some photos and recipes, and of course a new sense of clarity, peace, and focus, which I will acheive only after I have ridded myself of the desire to eat half a dozen english tea cakes from sconehenge.

for real.

repurposed kitchen bits

2008-04-02T12:26:00.001-07:00

Another cute idea I picked up from Apartment Therapy:SF via Better Homes and Gardens. They give a couple different kitchen items you can re-use to organize your little goodies, but I'm especially smitten with the fork idea.

disguise your rainwater barrel

2008-04-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

i had mentioned a little bit ago that my mom was taking a sustainable gardening class, and when i was visiting a few weeks ago we got to talking about rainwater conservation. she was mentioning the standard plastic barrel under the downspout technique and how she thought it was a great idea, but that the barrels were kind-of an eyesore. i agreed, despite my generally prevailing, treehugging disposition, i am also heavily oriented towards good aesthetics, and i like my garden to look pretty just as much as anyone else. so i was delighted this morning when i ran across this idea at re-nest this morning: to grow climbing plants over top of your barrel! what a great idea, so simple and easy to do. read the rest here...

Ecolect Podcast!

2008-03-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been on vacation for a minute, which I'll chit chat about later, but I just wanted to drop a link to the Ecolect Podcast where they interview none other than yours truly! I am absolutely petrified by any form of public speaking (even pre-recorded), so please ignore the "ums" and "likes" and lets never speak of the fact that I said the word "walkman" after talking about people being outdated. Thanks.

Here it is! Ecolect Podcast #2

ruth laskey: 7 weavings

2008-03-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

i ran into a ruth laskey yesterday when we were both scoping out the free sandwiches at the easter egg hunt at work (please, i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried). she's one of those folks that i'm acquainted with on various levels, i've been admiring her art work since she was my senior in grad school, i managed to convince her to do our first show at the spare room project (she was very gracious, there was little convincing), and we've been library co-workers for several years, although despite sharing the same position for a while, we almost never actually see one another.

(detail of Twill Series (Avocado) via ruthlaskey.com)

anyways, i think she's great. i think her work is great. she a weaver via being a painter that began weaving to, for all intents and purposes, make her own canvases. she considers the structure that holds the paint in the same care and regard as the paint itself, and then the paint evolved into embroidery and then the image, the pattern evolved into self contained weavings. her current work is a series entitled "twill" in which she hand dyes the threads used to create the geometric patterns in the weavings. the results are quite subtle and unassuming, there is a slow and delicate tenuousness between the weightlessness of the weaving as a whole and the weight of the image, the color, the angles, woven through.
ruth has a solo show opening up this friday at ratio 3, and if you're around san francisco, you should most definitely be there. i know i will. the show is up until April 26, so you've got no excuse to miss it. and if you're not in sf, check out her website: www.ruthlaskey.com.

(detail of Twill Series (Cloud Grey) via ruthlaskey.com)

stop junk mail!

2008-03-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

what a waste! save some trees by signing the do not mail petition at donotmail.org brought to you by forestethics (via planet green).

casual labor

2008-03-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

alex clausen (image via kala.org)

a week or two ago i stopped by the 'casual labor' show at the kala art institute in berkeley after getting a lovely woodgrain show card in the mail from my friend alex (who we've been courting for our little art space). i'd never been to kala, although i'd been meaning to check it out because there is always interesting stuff coming out of their artist in residence program. the space was amazing, full of beautiful well-used and well-loved printing equiptment, and rampant with creative energy. you walk through the studio space to get to the gallery (which is what you'll be doing in our new set-up, on a much much tinier scale), which i liked very much, and thought really suited the work in the show.

zachary royer scholz (image via kala.org)

the show seemed to me to be much about doing and less about being and therefore, my cup of tea entirely. it featured Alex Clausen, Zachary Royer Scholz, and Kirk Stoller, all somewhat rough and tumble investigations about the curiousness of space and objects. i was inspired by the motion in the work, there was nothing static in the show, it made for a sort of tension in the air between the pieces.
'casual labor' is up til march 29, and if you're in the bay area, you should stop by. more info is on the kala website.

kirk stoller (image via kala.org)

green. grey. brown.

2008-03-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

compost and greywater have been popping up a lot in projects and conversation lately. my lovely mom is taking a green gardening class with some of her friends and is setting up her very first compost bin and i'm especially proud of my folks in this endeavor. i make a lot of jokes about how my parents are the hippies of delaware because they're the only people who will spend the extra $3 a month for curbside recycling and before that they would actually take their recycling to the recycling center once a week. her last weeks class was on water conservation and we had a quick chat about low-flow showerheads (of which she apparently has some to give away after having one of the plumbers at the contractor she works for order the heads she wanted, and you had to buy at least 8 at a time). I recently picked up a niagara showerhead myself, to replace our previous low flow head, but this new one is even lower flow and has a "pause" button so you can take a military shower and not lose your water temp setting. i love it.

anyway, we talked about rain barrels and such, but the conversation took a turn before we made it to greywater, which is too bad, because i think i could have given her some tips that would've really taken their DE hippie status to the next level. we've got a bucket in our shower and under our bathroom sink, both of which are used to flush the toilet (which we generally abide by the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" standard. tmi? a little? nah.) since we've gotten the washing machine, i've been quite literally obsessing over the idea of creating a greywater wetland to filter the water so we can use it in our garden. they're actually not very complicated to make and since our washer is relatively close to hot tub room, which is where the wetland would live, it would really only require a fairly small hole to be cut through the wall of the house to put the pipe through. i know, i know, this is an over the top absurd idea for a house that we RENT, but if you could see all the, well, we'll just call them renovations, we've already done, this would seem like peas and carrots. i also had the awesome pleasure of seeing the wall to wall skateboard ramp that my friend emily's roommate is building in his bedroom, and just witnessing that someone else is out there fulfilling their bizarro, extravagant, and likely illegal projects was highly motivational. still, my wetland is only in the thinking and planning stage. i've so far resisted any urges to attain supplies so we'll talk about this further as it goes.

we have already set up our worm bin and i finished our new compost bin which doubles as a table made from a large wooden shipping crate, some metal mesh, and an old weathered fence gate door. jill ordered some red wrigglers (which they refer to as red wiggly worms at the hardware store) and got the worm bin going. the worms are now munching away on some delicious broccoli stems, sunchoke peels, and wilty greens. we're still feeling out how much they can eat and how fast, i think we might have overfed them last week, but apparently you can smell ammonia if the food isn't being processed fast enough, so I'll just keep sniffing them out to see how it goes. i'm trying to convince my mom to start a worm bin also, but after my selling point of "you can keep it under the sink" was met with a swift "ew, worms under the sink!" i think i'll have to come up with a new sales tactic.

kattenkabinet

2008-02-26T14:10:00.001-08:00

i love this this cute project on natural home mag. if only i could get my cats to sleep in a cat bed and not in my sock drawer or on a stack of paper, or my personal favorite, on my laptop. how did i raise such vagabonds?

busy weekend eats

2008-02-25T13:07:00.000-08:00

this weekend was one of those full force ADD weekends, running around spastically jumping from one project to the next, to the next to the next. a little crazed, but mostly productive, i had some interesting and some strange ideas, and actually saw several things through to completion. usually days like this mean that i eat cereal and frozen veggie burgers supplemented with emergen-c and coffee, but somehow i managed to find time to wash my filthy hands and cook a few times this weekend.

i think i've mentioned that our garden is in a, ahem, transitional state right now, so there is little to eat, some tiny lemons, a little chard and kale, a few herbs... and a ton of flourishing arugula and nasturtiums. i had seen a recipe in the millennium cookbook for arugula pesto, and thought i'd give it a try and put a little spicy nasturtium spin on it. i used the millennium recipe as a jumping-off point and then changed mostly everything. it came out way too bitter for my taste so i added basil to counteract it and that worked pretty well, although i still wasn't wholly convinced i had come up with a winner. the next day i made soup, which began as orangette's celery root soup, but quickly became celery root/sunchoke/potato/leek soup. the soup turned out great, rich, but subtle, but i kept thinking that it needed something a little fresh, you know, a little green to bring it all together. eureka! i put a spoonful of the pesto into a bowl of soup and voila... yum yum yum.

here's the recipe (although i should probably start calling these 'guess-ipes' because, i won't lie to you, i make up the measurements. unless it's baking, i've made some too flat muffins and too puffy pancakes, so i'm fairly true to the measurements of baked goods). Also, I think of a 'bunch' as what you could hold if you put your two hands together and made a cup. highly scientific, of course.

arugula.nasturtium.basil pesto

2 bunches of arugula
1 bunch nasturtium (if you don't have nasturtium you could add spinach or parsley or more arugula/basil depending on whether you like more bitter/more sweet)
1 1/2 bunches basil (a little less than the arugula)
1/2-3/4 c. toasted nuts (pine nuts are standard, i used a mix of pine nuts, walnuts and almonds dry toasted in a frying pan on med-low heat)
3 tbs olive oil
1/2 c. water
salt and pepper to taste

put all the leaves and nuts (cooled) into a blender or food processor and chop it up. keep it chopping and stream in the olive oil through the top like they do on the cooking shows. stream in the water through the top until it gets about the consistency you like (i like mine wet-ish so i used it all). add the salt and pepper.

rooty good soup
2 tbs. olive oil
2 celery roots (peeled and chopped)
5-8 sunchokes (peeled and chopped)
2-3 small or one large potato (chopped)
2 small leeks (mostly the white part, chopped then washed)
1 sm/med onion (chopped)
2-3 cloves garlic (sliced)
1 stalk celery (chopped)
3 c. veggie stock
salt and pepper to taste

Heat up the olive oil in a good sized pot, wash, peel and chop all your veggies. you're going to want to wash the leek after you chop it to get all the grit out from between the layers. throw it all in the pot, i'm sure there's some order that would be appropriate but i don't know it, so toss it all in at once, or toss it in as you chop it. cook it in the oil until it starts to smell delicious or the onions become translucent. add the veggie stock, bring it to boil and then turn it down low to simmer. put a lid on it and simmer until all the root veggies get soft enough that you can easily smash them with a fork, about 40 minutes. blend in batches (carefully, with an open top) til pureed smooth. add the salt and pepper. serve alone or with a dollop of pesto in the middle to be stirred in by the lucky recipient.

(organic generic brand cheez-its, for real.)

blowing in the wind

2008-02-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

my household recently invested in used washer and dryer, a well worth it splurge despite the fact that the laundromat is quite literally half a block from our house. i hooked up the washer pretty immediately, but the dryer is still free wheeling, partially because i'm scared of making gas connections and partially because i hung a new and super fantastic clothesline in the garden. i mean, when you got a breeze, who needs a dryer?

i thought i'd give a how to but really it was so simple, i almost feel silly doing it. i made mine out of two 2x4's, 8 screw eyes and 30 or 40 some odd feet of rope. fortunately we have a fence and a hot tub shack that i screwed the 2x4's into after i had attached the screw eyes (about a foot apart) and then threaded the rope through and pulled it tight as i could. our fence is inclined to do the lean back after some lovely and charming police officers lumbered over it one time to get to our neighbors house, so this made the clothesline pull itself pretty tight. you can also use clothesline pulleys if you intend to stand in the same place to put your clothes on the line (like out the window or something), but i put ours over a concrete slab so it wasn't really necessary.

being as i google everything, i stumbled on this great clothesline activist group called project laundry list that puts together an annual event called national hanging out day. their website has a lot of good info and statistics about dryer energy and clothesline politics. it hadn't occurred to me that a lot of communities ban clotheslines because they think they're ugly. sure, call me a hippie, but i actually find ours quite beautiful.

can't sit still

2008-02-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

despite my slacking on the "weekly maker" entries i've been unsuccessfully trying to keep up with, i'm working on starting a new "weekly" happening, a project section. it's been brought to my attention recently that despite my complaints that i haven't made anything in almost two years, that i actually make things all the time, constantly, incessantly even, i've become notorious for being knee deep in 72 different projects and scheduling social engagements around said projects. yes, lunacy, i know. i just haven't been making much "artwork", whatever that means, or the artwork i've been making doesn't see much of the light of day or attain any sort of resolve or finish, so i equate that as a lack of productivity, when maybe it's an excess of productivity and a lack of interest that's keeping me from the work that i would more formally consider my artwork.

so in the vein of art imitating life, i'm going to try to document some of these projects. anything that happens by my hands, i'm going to try to take a photo and jot a note about. little things, mundane triumphs, everyday explorations. hopefully a little diy information sharing. i've got high hopes these days, it feels good to feel productive and capable, it feels good to be holding tight and sailing along, it feels good just to be doing things and talking. i'm happy just to try these days and i guess we'll see how things turn out.

homemade yogurt

2008-02-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

About a year and a half ago my life was in the midst of a long, drawn-out move. months and months of everything in a box in a pile in the corner. no circular saw, no sewing machine, just some clothes and a mattress and my frantic, anxiety-ridden fingers tapping the table, desperate to get into something.

it's these most desperate times, the times when you can do nothing but take a few deep breaths and let your eyes sink back in your head, that i nuzzle up to my consistent companion, the warmest place in the house, the place the knows my deepest desires, the kitchen. i had been wanting for a while to learn how to ferment my own wine, and what better time to learn the more stable side of patient anticipation, then a time when i felt so wholly ungrounded.

i started with Sandor Ellix Katz's book, Wild Fermentation, which i would highly reccommend to anyone, whether you're just getting started or you're already a fermetnation enthusiast. i started with red wine vinegar (which, to this day, i still have going with the same 'mother'), and since have made plum honey mead, maple honey mead, white wine vinegar, sourdough starter, dairy yogurt, soy yogurt, saurkraut, ginger ale, sweet potato soda, hard apple cider, kombucha, and probably a few others that i'm forgetting. i still have my eye on some spicy kimchi, miso, pickles and beer.

i most consistently make yogurt (aside from the few things like kombucha and vinegar that are always quietly chugging along in various jars in various corners of the kitchen), and i've made it in a good handful of different ways. sometimes i sweeten it with honey or maple syrup or homemade jam, and sometimes i don't sweeten it at all and i eat it with lentils and cucumbers. sometimes i strain it for a thick greek style yogurt and sometimes it turns out runny and i stir it into smoothies or drink it out of the jar like kefir. i've tried soy, rice, cow and coconut milk. it's an experiment each time, a micro/macro collaboration, a guessing game, with varied but consistently yummy results. this week i made soy coconut with maple and honey yogurt to go with a new granola recipe i got from orangette.

here's my recipe adapted from the yogurt making instructions in Wild Fermentation. My measurements are guesses and you could substitute almost any kind of milk or sweetener. the result might be thinner/thicker, sweeter/sour, but if you continue to experiment, you'll most definitely find your favorites. this is my favorite sweet non-dairy concoction.

INGREDIENTS:
1 carton soy milk (the standard tetra-pak kind, whatever brand you like)

1 can coconut milk (you know i like the fatty kind, but you could use the "lite" if you want, however more fat seems to result
in thicker yogurt)

1 heaping tbs honey

1 heaping tbs maple syrup (it's best to start slow with the sweeteners, then stir and taste your mixture while it's heating up. it will be about the same sweetness when it's finished, unlike other ferments that eat up all the sweetness during the fermentation)

1 tbs pre-existing yogurt with live and active cultures, set out for a bit to get it to around room temp (can be homemade, store-bought etc. you can also use different milks and the cultures will still work, although you might not want to contaminate your soy yogurt with milk cultures if you're sharing it with your vegan friends)

PROCESS:
mix the milks and the sweeteners in a saucepan on med-med/hi heat stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't burn. if you have a candy or deep fry thermometer, pop it in, you're trying to get it to around 180 degrees, or until small bubbles start to form. you don't really want it to boil, but if you space out and it does, just keep trucking, it'll still work. at around 180, take it off the heat, put a lid on it and let it sit until it cools to about 110 degrees, or as katz describes, til you can comfortably dunk a (clean) finger in. i find this takes about an hour. at 110, you mix in your spoonful of live yogurt and stir it well because you want to be sure the cultures distribute and all your milk gets yog-y. then you pour it into jars and put the jars into a cooler. if there's room i like to put some towels in there around the jars and sometimes i put other jars that just have hot water in there as well because you want it to stay warm for about 12 hours. then you leave the cooler be and let the microorganisms work their magic (yogurt doesn't like to be jostled or moved around while it's fermenting). after 12 hours, pull it out of the cooler and eat it, strain it, mix in some fruit or veggies, and stick it in the fridge. when you're about out, you can use the last spoonful to make your next batch!

free the net!

2008-02-12T10:21:00.000-08:00

erin tuned me in to meraki a while back and we've been waiting with excited anticipation for it to reach us so we can expunge greedy old comcast from our lives. 'free the net' is meraki's project to create a community based network (similar to a co-op) in which they provide free signal repeaters to people willing to install them in their home. with each repeater the signal creeps a little farther and slowly the network blankets the whole city. i believe sf is the first city they're trying it with, but judging that it works (which it is, so far) they plan on expanding exponentially. pretty cool, especially after the san francisco free internet let down of the last few years.

felix gonzalez torres

2008-02-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

since last week was someone i get to see everyday, this week i'll take it far away to someone i'll never have the good fortune of meeting in this life, felix gonzalez-torres. in my own humble process there is a small handful of makers that over the years have really dug up under my ribs and stuck there. there's something visceral about their work, that it reaches me on a cellular level, like i was born with it in my bones. it makes my own work better because i aspire to be able to quietly and universally communicate my story in a way that speaks to other people's experience. i feel this way about felix gonzalez-torres work. it's so subtle and sincere in the way it connects both the viewer and the maker and the viewers with each other. you can't just look at it, you have to experience it, you have to become a part of it. the following two pieces are my personal favorites.

These two identical, adjacent, battery-operated clocks were initially set to the same time, but, with time, they will inevitably fall out of sync. Gonzalez-Torres created this work shortly after his partner, Ross Laycock, was diagnosed with AIDS. By assigning these redundant objects the title "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), the artist transformed these public, neutral devices used for the measurement of time into personal and poetic meditations on human relationships, mortality, and time's inevitable flow. Of the light-blue background, Gonzalez-Torres said, "For me if a beautiful memory could have a color that color would be light blue." (from The Museum of Modern Art)

"Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" consists of a pile of 175 lbs (ideal weight) of fruit flashers candy, which viewers are invited to take and do with as they please. It was made for Gonzalez-Torres lover, Ross, after he passed away. The candies are replenished as they are removed, creating an endless pile, an eternal portrait, giving his lover and their love the ability to live forever.

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making something out of nothing

2008-02-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

you know it might be my all time most fulfilling feeling to make something useful and/or beautiful out of garbage. i have a frightening (truly frightening, anyone who's helped me move can attest) collection of scrap fabric, a scavenged wood pile that threatens to crush me on a daily basis, stacks of junky roadside furniture that i just know are hiding a gem underneath a thin layer of ugly, a closet/dresser/under-the-bed container full of clothes from only the finest dumpsters/hand-me-downs/dollar-a-pound piles.

it's true i'm a hoarder, but a hoarder that believes hugely in the power of reuse, in the second, third, fifteenth life of objects, in the beauty of age and history and process and reclaimation. yes, i might be a hippie. yes, i might have ocd, big time. yes, i might be willing to talk on a public forum about how i get my mattresses from complete strangers on craigslist and i don't feel funny about it at all. but how else could i be when i've got to, need to, would simply shrivel up and die if i didn't make stuff, and this world is already near bursting with stuff.

san francisco is working towards being a zero waste city by 2020. i might stick around for no other reason then to see this happen. maybe then i'll move to austin, which has recently hired a california firm to creat a zero waste plan with a goal of 2040. we'll see. this idea of zero waste is so monumental even i can barely wrap my head around it. i am so inspired by ideas that are so massive, but so community based these days. people that are re-thinking everything, not just the way we dispose of stuff, but what products are available and the way they're made, and how each person doing a small act can amount to something huge.

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my past week was a whopper of goodness and inspiration. on tuesday i had the pleasure of meeting up with joe gebbia, one of the founders of ecolect, an online sustainable materials community, which was only recently launched but is already taking the design community by storm. we talked shop (for those of you who don't know, i'm a materials librarian. i know, a what?) about our libraries, about what we're working on, what we're having problems with, etc. joe is one of those people that is so honestly thrilled and amazed by what they're working on that it makes you want to do better.

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then friday the rains parted and i got my new-to-me bed for $50 and it's awesome and my back is already feeling better. saturday the grey skies returned but i hauled my old bed out to the damp, drippy east bay anyway and we set it up in esti's new minimalist bed room. like i said folks, win win.

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before the bed delivery on saturday i went to compost workshop at Garden for the Environment, which was also really inspirational. we have a slow poke compost bin so my housemate jill and i went to get some pointers, and learn more about worm bins which neither of us have ever had. we learned some great tips (to turn their compost they just take it all out and put it all back in, which totally solves my problem of not being able to get my shovel into the bin far enough to flip it all over) and got a red wiggler tutorial, and i've already lined up a free worm bin from a delightful woman on freecycle.

(i forgot my camera on saturday so these photos are stolen from the SF Gro website)

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ah. this upcoming week has it's work cut out to live up to last week. fortunately i'm still riding the positive energy train, so maybe it'll just self-perpetuate. i got my fingers crossed.

erin mcelroy

2008-01-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

if you're incredibly lucky, like i clearly am, then the smallest circle in the concentric ripples of inspiration that surround you, is your home. maybe if you've done something good in a past life it's right down the hall or maybe you even share a garage studio and a bathroom darkroom and run a humble gallery project together. oh yes folks, i start my search for stimulus and amazement in the breast pocket of my t-shirt, close to my heart, and there's erin. and she's not just my first feature because she's near and dear, she's brilliant and she works hard for the money.

erin mcelroy is a photographer and a painter and a photographer/painter although she's up to her elbows in a handful of other things as well. Her work is a something of a merger between personal relationships and cosmic occurences, the geometry of the manmade and the soft folds of the organic, the history of wood and found object canvas and the new breath of image and paint, and a dense, structural black with a soft dreamlike color palette. The following is her own statement which I stole off of her website: www.erinmcelroy.net. She also has an opening tomorrow night at City Art Gallery on Valencia in the Mission if you're in SF.

“Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition.” – Jeanette Winterson, Weight

What triggers the release of my camera’s shutter is barely based upon the isolated moment that my subject exists in; it based upon something much older, something that has already occurred,something already vaguely recognized through my own eyes. They say that we only dream about things that we have already allowed into our brains, and in this way my photographs are snapshots of flickering collective memoir. As I go about my daily life, chance-sightings whispering bells of familiarity occur. Sometimes it’s the desperate look in a stranger’s eyes; sometimes it’s the angle between a blade of grass and a friend’s shoe, but either way, it’s familiar. Whether I print the photograph directly or I go on to work through it as a photo-transfer painting, my own processing of the subject’s familiarity surfaces first and foremost. -Erin McElroy

mid-week inspiration

2008-01-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

i've been thinking a lot about information sharing lately, and in an attempt to do a little less of the "me me me" and "this is where i went shopping this weekend" diatribes i think i'm going to start a weekly inspiration jaunt, a blurb about a maker each wednesday. i'm sure i could use more structure and although i just bound up a new planner last night (i know, i know, a little late to the 2008 game, but i haven't finished my inspirational mix for the new year either so i guess "late" really equates "on time" for me this year) it seems as though i could stand to consistently think about all the amazing people doing amazing things out there. Maybe the vaccuum of my garage studio is more like a black hole of all the unassuming spaces out there that are harboring, if not bursting at the seams with ideas and supplies and fervent hands and complete and utter magic.

i know nothing about copyright so if anyone knows if i'm going to get sued for posting pics off of other people's websites, drop me a line, that would be helpful.

movin' on up cupcakes

2008-01-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

last friday was the well wishing party for my co-worker friend lia (of small stump), as she heads on to bigger and brighter libraries. despite the fact that i work in no man's land and not in the actual library, lia was the only work friend i had that would visit me just to chat, let me complain endlessly about the bureaucracy of working for a private college (clearly i have a lot to say), call me when the boss was stopping by and i was most likely goofing off, sit in the anti-social corner of the sweaty outdoor all-staff meetings, etc. etc. the list goes on. she was simply one of those work friends that makes work bearable if not humorous, and work friends like that deserve cupcakes at their going away parties.

i went for carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, it's as wintery as san fran tends to get lately, so i've been on a roots and nuts kick as it is. i thought they came out pretty tasty, so much so that i made a vegan version later that weekend for erin and the house, although I probably ate half the batch or more myself. what can i say, my willpower is a little wobbly when it comes to sweets.

here's the recipes, slightly adapted from recipes i pulled off of epicurious, the cupcakes from gourmet mag and the icing from bon appetit mag. to make the vegan version i just substituted Ener-G egg replacer, Tofutti cream cheese, and Earth Balance and although the icing wasn't quite as thick, it didn't make a bit of difference in the taste.

cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups finely shredded carrots (about 4)
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped fine, toasted lightly, and cooled

preheat oven to 350. stir or whisk together the dry (first 5) ingredients, set aside. mix together the wet ingredients (next 4). add the dry to the wet and mix. stir in the carrots and walnuts. set cupcake liners into a muffin pan and spoon batter in about 2/3 full. bake 18 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. cool before frosting. makes about a dozen cupcakes.

frosting:
1 8oz pkg cream cheese (room temp)
2 tbs. unsalted butter (room temp)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup powdered sugar

mix cream cheese, butter and vanilla until creamy. add powdered sugar and mix until smooth. refrigerate at least 15 min before frosting cooled cupcakes.

new week. rainy day off. cold fingers. sleepy cats.

2008-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

trying to warm up and head down to my studio in the garage to look at stuff and maybe take apart a few chairs that have been lurking. days like this it's tough not to wrap up in a blanket burrito, listen to the rain, and nap the day away. mmmmm.....

la la la. nappity nap nap. so i've been thinking about getting a new mattress, since clearly i spend so much time lounging around with my lazy, good-for-nothing cats, and my current cheap-o free craigslist mattress is slowly becoming a taco. esti and i went this weekend to try out some mattresses as she's looking to upgrade as well.

we only made two stops, sears and ikea, but that was enough to convince me that my small budget and bad back would be better served by a second hand mattress like the posturpedic-y ones at sears then the ones for a few hundred bucks at ikea. say what you will about a second hand mattress, but i've been sleeping on one for years and it's never grossed me out in the least. plus, mattresses take up tons of space in landfills. like, tons. fortunately, san francisco has programs like bed busters, where they pick up your mattress and recycle it for a relatively small fee, but most places are not so green, so why not recycle it by giving it to someone else. in the end i decided to buy a mattress off of craigslist and give my old mattress to esti, so there you go. win win.

wednesday gratitude

2008-01-16T12:59:00.000-08:00

oh, wednesday. i'm glad you're here, because i am tired this week. this whole "back to the grind" thing is taxing you know. oh, wednesday, i bet you're good friends with "long lunch" and "three day weekend". i bet you know how to kick back and have a good time.

yes yes yes. so here i am at work, daydreaming about taking naps, about working from home, daydreaming about daydreaming. i might be, just maybe, becoming a broken record. what do you do when you're stuck in a reasonable job, a job where you sit alone in a room for most of the day and space out, where you can work on your blog, on your hand sewing, on your crochet technique, where you can catch up on your reading, where the actual work at said job doesn't occupy nearly the whole work day, but you still feel stuck, like legs in the mud up to your knees, stuck at this reasonable job.

le sigh. i've been reading Craft, Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco, probably like most of the other people reading this book, probably holed up, probably tied to their desks, probably dreaming of something more fulfilling and trying not to doubt themselves. why is it hard to have faith, to take a leap, to put yourself out there? i read so many other blogs of crafty people that are just doing stuff, that are flying by the seat of their pants, and seem... fearless. this fear is so totally boring, i have no idea how i've let it get the best of me.

blah. i'll be less sourpuss and snoozeworthy next time i write, i promise. we'll talk you about how i went to the giant camera to see the sunset on the first sunny day after all that rain. we'll dote on amazing people's amazing artwork. we'll swap recipes and ideas, and we'll see how loud we can whistle and how far we can spit.

it'll be great. i'll bust through this slump in no time. no time at all. thanks wednesday for cheering me on. i knew i could count on you.

new year diatribe (me me me)

2008-01-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

alright, seriously folks. new year. no more b.s. no more abbreviations of swear words. i'm letting it all hang out.

i was just gazing, no, glaring, into the harsh lighting of the medicine cabinet mirror, you know that unforgiving light that is only good for things like picking your teeth and removing that pesky ingrown hair from your chin, looking for grey hairs. looking for grey hairs people, that's what i was doing. granted i've been fever-ravished and bed-ridden with the flu for the last 4 days and sicker then i have been since i was about 6 years old, but i'm not sure my sweating and coughing hallucinations could even account for this sort of behavior. i mean, vanity is not especially high on my list of crutches, it's on there, sure, but it is majorly squelched by a few heavy hitters like pride and paranoia and such.

anyways... the point is, as it seems to always be, time. i am looking to denote time on my body because another year has passed and i know it's taking it's toll on me. i didn't find it in my hair, but it's there, in my semi-arthritic fingers, in my incessent under-eye circles, in the fact that i threw my back out doing a dance in th bathroom line at a bar a few days before xmas. it's in my cells and manifesting in my minds eye, it's taunting me with intention and expectation.

i need change.

it's very clear to me that complacency has all but opened the window itself to jump out, and i need to /make/force/dive on top of and wrestle into submission/ some things happen this year that i've been waiting to happen on their own. i think intention is my key word for the year, i'd like to operate with more intention, focus and perspective and less passivity, compliance and brooding. so i've made my resolution list, my intention list, and this year i intend to follow through. i intend to learn and progress and create. and i intend to make bold strokes as i go.

there you have it. wish me luck.

building resources

2007-11-26T14:04:00.001-08:00

i forgot to mention earlier, but one of the true delights of the weekend was treating myself to a totally unnecessary trip to building resources, a scrap/re-use yard in bayview that always has something that i don't need, but have to have. this time it was more wood cabinet knobs (of which i have quite a collection going and no plan in sight of what to use them for). i tried for the double whammy of treating myself to SCRAP also, but my splurging plan was foiled when they were not open for an reason which was undisclosed on their cardboard "we're closed today" sign. what i love most about these places, other then my wholly consuming addiction to junk, cast-offs and re-use, is that they're in these industrial parts of town that i otherwise never really go to, and there is something about these locations that feels like the end of the earth, solitary and expansive, like nothing and everything could happen there. i mean SCRAP is usually surrounded by garbage and building resources is built on some of the more toxic land in san francisco, but i guess when you are a person that tries to make useful and beautiful things out of waste and junk, then you try to see desolation as possibility. which makes me hopeful because it must be something of how these amazing places came to be.

monday morning recap

2007-11-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

another jampacked weekend of making and eating, my two favorite things to fill my days with. thanksgiving was perfect, sorta slow, sorta quiet. the last few years we've been doing big potluck dinners, but this year i had rice and beans with esti and her mom and i couldn't have been happier to just relax and eat. i made a few simple things to share, oven roasted potatoes, maple brussel sprouts with tempeh bacon, and a cream cheese pumpkin pie (which i just finished the last slice of my half yesterday. yes, i ate half a pie by myself in 3 days, you wanna make something of it?) i also received a lovely box of quinces, persimmons and pomegranates from my friend jason and his sweetheart maggie, which came from maggie's family's farm up north. i'm still looking for a good recipe for the quinces, but you know i already dove right in to the pomegranates.

i've been holed up in the house the last few days, making books and stationary packs, sewing away at curtains and flannel maxi pads and some other random goodies. i'm trying to set the end of the month as my deadline to get some little stuff up on my etsy shop, so we'll see how that goes because it is a busy week with the new roommate and we have another little art thingee friday night also. whew.

i also whipped up a ramshackled set of benches and table for our garden out of an old window, a shipping crate, some cabinet doors, some scrap plywood, some chair frames, and some 2 x 4s (that's no joke, sometimes i like to think of myself as the macgyver or junky old furniture). they're not quite finished, i'm going to make some cushions and maybe add a cute fabric so you can't see the bags of potting soil and compost inside.

aaannnnd... i finished the walls at femina potens! nothing too exciting, but there you have it, wally wall walls. i haven't said enough to sing the praises of what an amazing organization femina potens is, i mean how many feminist art spaces exist nowadays, let alone one that evens out the playing field by only exhibiting the work/films/writing of women and transfolk. pretty revolutionary if you ask me. they have an opening for beth stephens and annie sprinkle's love art lab this saturday, and if you are in the area, you should not miss it. they are in the 3rd year of a 7 year project exploring love as art, and are some of the more radiant people i've had the pleasure and good fortune of getting to meet. and there will be a seance to summon the spirit of marcel duchamp. seriously, you won't be disappointed.

the cool down, the warm up

2007-11-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

i have cold feet today, literally and figuratively. i haven't managed to give up the faux espadrille summery flats i've been wearing for months now, even though it is consistently chillier and drearier as the weeks go (flying) by. somedays i put big slouchy leg warmers over top of them and that tends to do the trick, but you know when you're considering tube socks, it's probably time to retire them til next summer. we're also looking for a new roommate, and after having met 10 strangers for about half hour each this past weekend, i'm feeling indecisive and exhausted. it's so difficult to patch together the overlap between a person's spiel with your needs. and then when you factor in their zodiac sign, i mean, geez.

but enough about that. let's talk about things. projects. cordless drills. sewing needles. let's not talk about my (still non-existant) etsy shop that everyone's bored to tears by, but let's talk about things that are actually happening in three dimensional, real life space and time. big things, important things, and stuff too. things AND stuff.

yes. so i'm building these walls at femina potens gallery. mysterious floating (although painfully heavy) walls. hmmm. yes. i'm also going to sew some curtains for their acres of windows. they will be off white muslin and curtain-y. well then, i guess not too much to report about all that for now.

i've also started a new project in spite of the four thousand open ended projects i can't seem to find the time for these days. it's a stealing project. a succulent stealing project. i mostly work on it on my lunch breaks, when i walk around potrero hill and take cuttings off of succulents and put them in a paper bag. then i sort them out at home and have plans to start rooting them in jars or paper cups. something about regeneration and resource, about perpetuating life in your environment, something about sharing, something about taking. we'll see how it develops.

and we had another art opening last friday, which went off without a hitch and drew quite a crowd for it only being our second show in our humble little spare room. i'm so glad to be working on this project. even in the tiny bit of time we've been working on it, i already feel more in touch and more inspired. and meeting people who are making amazing work and having such brilliant beautiful ideas, that they're willing to share in my home, well, what could be better?

yay!

2007-11-05T15:40:00.001-08:00

monday space out

2007-11-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

ahhh, monday.

here we are again, monday. just you and me. mano y mano.

ahhh, yeah. i don't actually dislike mondays. sure i sit around sunday night bellyaching about having to go back to work the next morning, but i tend to think of the work week as more cyclic then stop and go, so that's not really what gets me. it's more the demarcation of time lately that's giving me the old one-two punch. like there is not even close to enough time for anything and i find myself amazed by anyone who's actually getting things done. finishing stuff has become the holy grail of making for me, and let me tell you folks, i am seldom acheiving it. my to-do lists and my idea books just get longer and more full, but there never seems to be more to show for any of it. i wonder where i found the time before and where, oh where, has it gone?

alas. well, i guess a nice counterpoint to this dreary diatribe would be a little photo montage of something i actually did finish. here's a little ditty about a soft sculpture fence that lives at Southern Exposure:

the humble beginnings.

piecing it together.

hanging it up.

that'd be me on the rickety ladder fastening it together (the backstage ain't always pretty, you know)

almost finished.

a close up.

the whole shebang.

so there you have it. i guess i do things every once in a while. now if i could only get that etsy shop up and running darnit!

praises for beneficial insects

2007-11-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

so last january erin schelpped out here from the coldy moldy northeast and for three months we looked at every god-awful apartment in san francisco, trying to find something that was better than the place in the mission i had been living for the past 2 1/2 years. it was a rude and ugly awakening to realize i had commited to leave what turned out to be a diamond in the rough, and that i could no longer afford to live in even the tiniest, dirtiest, sketchiest places in the mission. so in the 11th hour, i think 2 days to be exact, before we had to be out, we found a horribly decorated, stained wall to wall carpet, scrambled egg tiled, most perfect ever single family home in bernal heights, with everything, seriously everything, that we had been longing for. we moved our stuff into the garage before we even signed the lease or the painter had finished painting, made a deal with the landlord to do rent/work exchange to refinish the hardwood floors, and slept on a mattress on the kitchen floor for the first month while we sanded ourselves into carpal tunnel oblivion.

the point of this story is that one day, if you're lucky, i'll post some pictures of our darkroom in the bathroom, our shabby chic hot tub retreat guest room, our in-house art gallery, our garage studios and everything else wonderful and amazing in our house... no, no. that wasn't the point. the point was that we have a garden! a garden that has changed me and now i can't imagine living without one ever again.

our garden was mostly weeds and oddly placed bricks and dirt mounds when we moved in. we had a few largely overgrown jasmine plants and a science fiction-like monster aloe plant, some scraggly trees and a ton of horsetails. so we trimmed and pulled and dug and composted, and eventually our roommate set up a waterfall of succulents and we planted a ton of new seeds and seedlings, mostly vegetables, but a good handful of flowers because i buy a lot of those half dead 25cent plants at the hardware store because, well, i can't just leave them there so sad and lonely. so we were set, and things started to grow. a few things grew really well like tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers and arugula. but all the leafies, especially the dark leafies were getting eaten up more and more, no matter how much soapy hot pepper yadda yadda we would put on them (of course we're organic, you know we're hippies). we couldn't figure out what the problem was until one day i realized that the cute little caterpillers that were always hanging out were getting fatter and fatter and the cute little moths that the cats would chase were getting more and more prolific. turns out those cute little caterpillers were cutworms and cabbage loopers. drats.

we weighed our options and after feeling severly emotionally scarred by putting a caterpiller in a bucket of soapy water after a book told me to, we started looking into benefical insects. we bought trichogramma wasps, which are teeny tiny little wasps that feed on the larvae of the caterpillers. they come on postage stamp sized papers that look like sandpaper, and we hung them from thread in the trees and in a few days all the little rough bits were gone from the papers and our wasps were off fighting the good fight, the collard greens and swiss chard fight. and wouldn't you know it, about a month later and our greens are growing with minimal chewed bits and we're getting ready to dig a bunch of sad stuff up, move it around and re-plant. i can't wait.

i'll be unleashing some more beneficial insects on the garden this weekend- predatory nematodes. they are supposedly the end all, be all of beneficial insects because they'll eat anything that lives in the soil and is smaller than an earthworm. they come in a sponge which you rinse in a gallon of water and then water them into the soil (i know, it's all so sci-fi). i'll let you know how that goes and keep you updated on all the rainy season gardening fun that ensues in the next few months.

inhale. exhale. repeat.

2007-10-31T11:30:00.001-07:00

whoa. well, yeah, whoa.

it's been a busy couple weeks. i am just starting to recover and even that is temporary. i am definitely thankful for the work and the excitement, but man, when it rains, it POURS.

we just finished up the soft sculpture fence for Southern Exposure at 9am last friday. like, we were there all night. around 6am i thought lacey and i would either strangle each other or collapse in a pile and cry. it was taxing. but on hindsight i don't even care; it's funny how quick i am to forget how bad something might have felt once it's over. i get a little sleep, a little home cooked food in my belly, and then -next!- you know, let's keep it going. i can't stand still these days for the life of me, and i'm starting to wonder if i ever could.

so blah blah, after we left SoEx on friday morning i slept for 2 1/2 hours and then started installing Ruth and Jason's work for the show opening that night for the spare room project. despite the moderate delirium, the show looked beautiful, the work went swimmingly together, the artists were happy and people came to the opening! our first opening! it's was exactly what i was hoping for and i'm really proud of how it turned out. the show comes down nov.9 and then the next show, curated by my good old friend, jason kalogiros, goes up the following week. everything's just rolling along and it's so exciting to be doing something outside of myself after i feel like i've been all folded up and hiding out for the last year or so. I guess finishing grad school and having no idea what to do with your life will do that to a person.

so i'm moving right along, finally finishing up some furniture refurbishing that i started for someone months ago and doing a little carpentry and sewing for Femina Potens, another great (and feminist!)SF art organization/gallery. i'll get my act together and post pics of the SoEx fence and the art show asap. i promise, and i mean it. no more disappearing acts this time. breathe breathe breathe.

fresh start

2007-10-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

i'm daydreaming about fall today. about giving up old habits and starting fresh, about waking up and getting going.
it seems like there's a lot to do right now, right this second and i just need to hunker down and do it, and i like that feeling. the house is ready for living, the studio is ready for making, the spare room is ready for creative inhabitants. there is progress and electricity in the air, and it has started to rain, and i am ready for all of it.

we're getting ready for our first show in -the spare room project- and i'm glad to have something that seemed like it would never happen verging on actually happening. i will have more to update soon when all the artists are confirmed, as of now we're just patching holes and painting and such. you can check out our website in progress at www.thespareroomproject.net.

i'm also working on a collaborative commissioned piece for Southern Exposure, which is a new and nerve-racking experience. we're building what is essentially a security fence to seperate their office from the galleries, although we're building it out of recycled sheets that have wire cable embedded in them. it's a very tight deadline for someone who likes to leave ample time for failure in all their projects, so there's been a lot of finger crossing on my end.

and last but not least i'm finally working on getting my etsy store up and running. for whatever reason it has taken me months to get even close to actually putting stuff up on there, but i think i'm finally.. almost.. there. it could be another week or two, but i at least have a few things that are made and ready, albeit a definite mish-mash. you gotta start somewhere though, right?

yes. so there you go. it is supposed to rain all day friday, and i am happy because i've been very lazy about watering the garden and i still want to eat my last few tomatoes. and i have a date with erin tonight to drink hot toddies on top of bernal hill and if that isn't fall in san francisco, i don't know what is.