It was gorgeous on the first Sunday of April so we made it out again to the Alameda Antique Fair for the outdoor museum experience.  We got a bit of a late start and ended up in a warm car in a long line listening to the oldies station and finishing the last few bites of glistening glazed doughnuts.  I love going over there, though we always seem to get lost in Chinatown on the way back – trying to find that cheshire-cat get-on to 580.  Here’s another fair montage for some afternoon eye-candy.  Above: plastic ponies

Above (left to right): bakelite bracelets, aqua Chinese bowls, globe, hand-painted plate, baseball glove, tablecloth, birdie plate, and watch faces.

This year marked Julianna and my 4th annual sisters’ Spring Break.  Admittedly, I’ve never lived in very cozy places for her to visit in March during any of those years, but that hasn’t stopped us.  This year, for our art day, we spent one afternoon on the Vandercook letterpress at Kala in Berkeley.  Here’s Jules wiping the ink from some of our set type, and some up-close glamour shots of those gorgeous lead letters.

Jules was working on a series of prints showing side by side words that are easy for a dyslexic person to confuse.  Above, you can see the beginning of LUNCH, which was paired with UNCLE.  And below, borrowing on this theme, is my “crooks and nannies” which was something Andrius once said instead of “nooks and crannies”; the former being so much more fun to say than the latter.

We miss you, Jules!

Here’s a far-horizoned view from wine country to celebrate an end-of-fall weekend.  We hope you are all enjoying the beginnings of the holiday season!

Here is a little eye-candy montage from October’s Alameda Antique Market.  It’s amazingly close to our home, nestled on the edge of what I overheard a gentleman kindly refer to as the “Oakland Riviera” – right under the noses of the huge cargo ship cranes that look like a fleet of Trojan horses when you fly out of OAK.

We almost bought a turquoise 1950s Samsonite suitcase that I was going to reupholster with Cathy Heck Studio fabrics, but when I could not clearly state when that was going to happen, we put it off to that indefinite date when one has – if not extra time – at least a storage closet.  I kept my eyes peeled for this rainbow rack of vintage that Dena Designs spotted back in March, but I’m guessing it has dispersed since then.

Several of our favorite blogs have recently posted odes to summer 2010, making me nostalgic for lingering afternoons, lemonade slushies, and cherry-vanilla L’Oréal Kids shampoo.  Here are two of my photo-crushes on other people’s summers: a hotel pool scene from Hyena in Petticoats, and a child with balloons walking into the sunset from Valori Wells.  (I guess you can’t really go wrong with a child, balloons, and sunset!)

The balloons actually reminded me of some cute illustrations that will be part of our newest collections coming out in January (another huge part of this summer), so I can’t wait until we are allowed to reveal more of what’s to come in the new product department.

Inspired by this theme, here are seven snapshots that capture the best of this summer at Cathy Heck Studio West.  From top to bottom, left to right they are: the Oregon coastline, my sweet husband after his 27th time around the sun, a colleague drying her prints in the light of a west-facing window, etching inks and transparent base in the process of being mixed, more ink, a very proud papa seal, and the festive Santa Cruz shoreline.  Hmm, I’m noticing now that the overall coloring here is not giving off a very sunny-summer vibe with all the sea and fog…  Welcome to the Bay Area!

We recently discovered a paint-your-own-pottery studio here in Berkeley’s “Potter’s Ghetto.”  Brushstrokes is a great place to go on a rainy day – or in our case, a Monday evening, when it’s pretty quiet and they waive the studio fee if you bring contributions to the Alameda County Food Bank.  The delayed gratification of painting a piece in dusty un-revealed colors, waiting a week, and then meeting your new now-shiny creation makes the whole experience very satisfying.

If you have any hand-painted creations you’re proud of, we’d love to see some other favorite cereal bowls and coffee mugs out there!  Just send us pictures here – we’re looking forward to it!

Over Spring Break, my sister, Jules, and I were trying to recreate one particularly fabulous day last year when the two of us roamed the city at 6am, drank hot chocolate by the bay, and sat watching the dynamics of sea lion society for over an hour at Pier 39.  This time, we took the waterfront walk from the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf and back, and then wandered up Market St. just in time to catch several gallery receptions at 49 Geary.  The sun was out and everything was in focus.  We ate paper-wrapped In-N-Out burgers that we just managed to order before a tour group of fifty French-speaking fifth-graders took over the restaurant, contemplated several knock-off purses and bags, and generally enjoyed the hours of sisterly QT that the 2.5 mile walk laid out for us.

Below, you can see Jules outside of the Thursday farmer’s market, and behind her, the line for those pork sandwiches, the deliciousness of which my mom has already described.

49 Geary is always a great place to stop if you are in the mood for a lot of art, fast.  I enjoyed going with Jules, who has been writing a lot of art criticism lately.  Our favorite show was in the smaller exhibition room of Stephen Wirtz Gallery, in which some of Castaneda and Reiman’s collaborative works on sheetrock were displayed.

It was a great day.  I hope we’ll get to try to recreate it again next year.

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?