On 4th street, not far from some excellent and eclectic shopping, past a few pothole-ridden intersections and a warehouse or two, shines this little beauty of a storefront: Color and Loom.  A persistent ten-foot rainbow in the concrete jungle, this family-owned Berkeley find is fun to pass when driving through some dreary neighborhoods and has a lot to offer if you are interested in customizing your home textiles.

Inside, ladders line the walls with samples of hand woven and embroidered fabrics – designed by the couple who own the shop, Laura and Kiran Singh, and manufactured in India.  Both partners have backgrounds in textile design and weaving and the sample fabrics are pleasingly displayed.

Though there is not much to buy if you are not interested in getting new drapes or a duvet, it’s still fun to look around thinking, “If I had an amazingly cool house with which I could do anything, which of these…”

In her early years, my sister Jules had an incredible gift for finding those tiny little hidden objects in the pages of I Spy books. I was more of a Little House on the Prairie girl myself, but I remember spending many hours with Jules looking through those spreads of things – so many things – and wondering, where on earth did the people who made these books find all that stuff?

Well, they definitely could have found them at Creative Reuse a Goodwill-like donation and purchase shop on Telegraph in Oakland, where you can donate your old art materials and get a great deal on…well…stuff.

Yes, boxes and baskets and bins of shells, corks, bottles, crayons, caps, candles, stoppers, beakers, and anything else that might have been donated by someone who – for whatever reason – had a few extra boxes of, say, cards that say “this product is organic.”

I went down there hoping to pick up a stockpile of backing cardboard, but I think that Creative Reuse is a place you have to go without any hopes or expectations – like a garage sale, really.  Because you may not find your cardboard, but you will certainly stand there wondering, “What could I possibly do with ten pounds of corks and an old cassette box?”

Any ideas?

I promised I’d get back to it, so here’s my ode to Stonemountain & Daughter, the cozy little fabric store on Shattuck in Berkeley, CA.

Nowhere else can you find an entire shelf of cotton organized by the theme “mushrooms.”  Though it may not have the quantity of your local Jo-Ann store, Stonemountain and Daughter carries a tastefully selected assortment of high-quality fabrics with a sophisticated (and yet still fun) design sense. You can find all the Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, and Moda, as well as Japanese fabrics, batiks, and African fabric. This is definitely the place to be if you are in search of quilting materials. It is also the place to go if you are interested in taking a sewing or knitting class, as they have group classes scheduled frequently in their upstairs sewing/sale room.

Worth stopping by, even if you just want to be inspired by the color-coded bolts and yards of patterns.

In the Bay Area?  Need some Fresh Opo, Bitter Melon, or Sinqua? Never heard of Opo, Bitter Melon, or Sinqua?  It matters not! Pacific East Mall has everything the East Asian ex-pat might need to make a dinner of comfort food, and everything the corn-fed American might need to liven up the palate (or, in our case, to make enough sushi for ten people for the price of two.)

This enormous mall in the heart of the east bay has restaurants with menus written only in Chinese, a tea shop, a Japanese candy shop, a manga shop, and several herbal pharmacies. The grocery store inside, Ranch 99 Market, sells a lot of vegetables I have yet to try, preserved duck eggs, bean paste bread rolls, but no coffee (lots of tea though). Definitely worth the trip if you are in the mood to spice things up in the kitchen, or just want to stock up on moon cakes.

During our “vacation” to Austin, we finally had a chance to try out some of the great trailer food popping up in town … mostly south of the river.  Our first stop was Mighty Cone, on South Congress which was mighty good!  I had been hearing about it for awhile, because it is run by Hudson’s on the Bend, a great restaurant way out near Lake Travis.  Much closer, and much cheaper, this little trailer offers a short and sweet menu with the same interesting blend of flavors.  The cone of choice was the Hot ‘N Crunchy Chicken Avocado cone. The chicken and avocado are covered in a crunchy shell of almonds-sesame seeds-corn flakes-chili flakes-and-sugar, wrapped in a flour tortilla and then topped with mango-jalapeno slaw and ancho sauce.  That’s a lot of flavor in one cone!  It was lip-smacking good!

The picnic area provides shady umbrellas and the tables have special cone holders built in.  Very handy.  Above right: this little pistol-packin’ mama just happened to stroll by our table with her pretend six-shooter ready to take on thievin’ outlaws.  We were definitely in Texas.

I BARTed into the city a few days ago to meet with some artists who are participating in the San Francisco Open Studios with me this month, and I arrived just early enough to make a quick stop by Britex Frabrics – a four-story color-coded Mecca for San Francisco’s textilephiles. The place was packed at 5pm, and the people were nearly as colorful as the bolts; I saw two blue goatees. How often can I say that? and I live in Berkeley…

Here are a few saturated images for you: (from left clockwise) the shelved solids on the first floor of Britex, some silks on sale, a window display on Britex’s first floor (oh so Anthropologie), and of course, while it’s on the mind, the S.F. Anthropologie (I love the open, two-level plan).

Many thanks to Louisa Stegmann for making this a destination point! (We passed by together a few weeks ago when it was closed, and Louisa, with her costume-designer past, already knew of the wonders within.)

Britex, by the way, seems to be the place if you want to do something amazing with cloth: costumes, tailored suits, wedding dresses, etc… If you’re in the Bay Area and are leaning more towards the softy, quilty, homey experience I would recommend Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics…but that’s another post!

Sometimes it’s fun to take a vacation in your own hometown.  Lucky for us, two weekends this summer brought our cousins to Austin, so we just put on our tennies and gimme caps and went on a road trip … across town.

Our first Austin-y thing to do was walk around the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail. The trail  around the lake is surrounded by shady trees and the path has that wonderful crunchy sound as one walks on the crushed granite.  Plus, this trail offers the best people-watching and dog watching in town. In fact, we saw several dogs that looked like the possible grown-up versions of Neville, our new puppy, whose lineage is unknown.  We inquired of several dog-walking owners about the breeds of their dogs and we are now pretty sure that Neville might be a Collie-Lab-Rottweiler-Shepherd mix … maybe that would be a Colab-rotshep?

This is Barton Springs!  It is FREEZING … which feels really great on a hot summer day.  Here are the cousins s-l-o-w-l-y inching into the icy water.  Barton Springs is famous for the nude sunbathers that have relaxed there through the years, but we didn’t see any, and even if we had, I would have had to crop them out of my pictures since this blog is rated G.

This is the Zilker Zephyr!  We have happy memories of bringing the girls to ride this miniature train when they were little.  It’s a pleasant 3-mile circle, and I can even remember riding it with my grandparents when I was young!  This 50-year old line is truly the little engine that could!