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…”

I’ve been wanting to take the Jelly Belly factory tour ever since we passed it the first time on I80 between Berkeley and Davis.  This past weekend, we finally made it.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos on the tour, which disappointed me, as I had been looking forward to capturing vast vats of shining cinnamon beans, but I can definitely say that we learned a few things we hadn’t known before.  For example, when you walk in, it is hard to determine if the mascot of the candy company is a big red bean, or President Ronald Reagan.  Eventually, one finds out that the former president is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the popularity of Jelly Belly jellybeans in the United States, having made them the candy of choice in both the California governor’s mansion, and later, in the White House.  They must have had at least five different jellybean mosaic portraits of him displayed prominently next to Washington, Lincoln, Franklin, and Monroe (Marilyn, not James in this case).

Here are two of them, and one I was particularly drawn to of young Queen Elizabeth:

Throughout the tour, at different stopping points, they give each member of the group a single bean. This is a particularly effective way to make everyone salivate for a bag by the end, and as I nursed my second bean, a bubblegum-flavored uncured morsel of sugar and cornstarch, I remembered learning about fasting at church in Connecticut.  Our Sunday-school teacher told us that while amateurs will rush for a hamburger after a several-day fast, her brother, who had apparently become quite good at it, would spend his first post-fast hours cherishing a single raisin.

I must admit that I was far more in tune to the subtleties of the three beans they gave us on the tour than the many we ate (way too fast) after we were released and able to purchase a two pound bag of Belly Flops, which are the beans that are rejected from the conveyor belt for being either too big, too small, deformed, or discolored.  (I have compiled a little collection of the more extreme examples from our bag above.)

And that, my friends, is a sweet way to spend a rainy weekend in California.

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.

We recently had a fun brush with greatness.  That’s what we call it when we spy a movie star on the streets of New York.  But this time, we brushed with greatness right here in Austin, Texas. And we actually know her!  Anna Margaret Hollyman was in town with her very talented and smart movie makers, Lilianna Greenfield-Sanders (director/writer) and Rowan Riley (producer) to be a part of the Austin Film Festival’s screening of their film short, Adelaide.  Anna Margaret is Adelaide!
Their funny film is about a girl who creates medical emergencies to find love.  Not only is it cleverly written, but it is wonderfully portrayed, and that’s not just my prejudice speaking.  I am particularly fascinated with Anna Margaret’s lips.  There are several extreme close-ups of her, in which she is able to express a feeling or create a mood change very quickly with just the tiniest movement of her lips.  And the artist in me has to give two thumbs up to the beautiful art direction.  I love the way the film is bathed in vivid saturated colors.  The rich, creamy pepto-bismol pink, which accessorizes many of the scenes is bubblicious.  Even Adelaide’s fresh complexion glows with pinkness.  I might have to use this film as inspiration for a new collection … hmm, I think I’ll call it Adelaide Adorability.

So, if you have a chance to see this entertaining short film, do.  It has won Best Short Film at the 2009 Woodstock Film Festival, Best Narrative Short at the 2009 New Orleans Film Festival and the Best Short Film and Audience Award at the 2009 Gen Art Film Festival, just to name a few … the list goes on and on.
If you would like a little taste of our brush with greatness, click below to see the trailer.  If your spirits are low, it will definitely put you in the pink.

Konichiwa.  (Hello) This is probably the market from which many of the unrecognizable foods were procured for the neighborhood Asian grocery about which Ellen wrote in her last post!  I was reminded of our first visit to the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, and I found this page from my journal.  It was 5 a.m. on a Monday morning during one of four fascinating summers in Japan.  Each summer, our family worked at a camp teaching Japanese children to speak English, and on our days off, we immersed ourselves in all things Japanese, one of which was the world-famous fish market.  In the wee hours of the morning, it was THE place to be … busy, loud, and colorful.
The bouquet of fresh fish and seaweed so early in the morning was not the scent to which we were accustomed, but it was so exciting, we didn’t care.  We took it all in and topped it off with a seafood breakfast.  I’m not sure if I could do that again, but at the time, it was perfect.  Go chiso sama deshita!  (Thank you very much for the delicious food.)  We arrived home as others were just waking up, and fell onto our futons for a much needed nap.

And here is a photo, which we embellished, of Margaret near a fish market stall, to send to the family back home in Texas.

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!