This one belongs to Carol:

And this one belongs to Debbie.

The class inspired me to get back to work on my new animal chain quilt. Wait and see.

As soon as I got the mitts off my size 1 needles, I cast on some socks for Rick. The yarn is by Mountain Colors and is hand dyed. The yarn is great to work with and I’m loving how the color is striping up.

I was going to power through and finish them quickly but I got distracted by my upcoming trip to Paris with my friend Kristy. If you’re going to Paris, you want to look stylish, right? So I’ve started these wristlets for myself. I loved the pair I made for Liza for Christmas and have been gathering the yarns for another pair.  The variegated yarn is leftover from another project, so I just had to buy the one skein of plum cashmerino for the base. The plum color matches my new boots. I’d love to finish a matching scarf but I don’t know if I can knit that fast!

I’ve also finished one of the mitts I cast on for the Olympics. I still need to finish the thumb but it’s mostly done. I should be able to finish the other one by the end of the week.

And I’ve been working on a quilt project. I can’t show the whole thing because it’s a surprise for someone and I know they read this blog. But here is a sneak peak.

I’ve hung them from the drapery rod in the den. They just make me smile.

I found a tutorial for them on Heather Bailey’s blog here. She made them as topiaries for a summer party. Just substitute Christmas cards and voila. Now you’ll have a great project for those old Christmas cards you’ve saved but don’t know what to do with.

I did some hunting on line and this particular pattern was made after World War II and was part of their “Studio Line” collections. After the war, they brought in some well know artists to produce a more contemporary, stream lined look to their dishes. This is one of those patterns.

I think they have a very retro modern feel to them.  I love the shape of some of the pieces.

Of course, when you have fabulous new dishes, you need the proper table linens to show them off. Thus I had to make new placemats and napkins. I had a great time picking out fabrics. From left to right, an old Kaffe print for the napkins, a funky bug print for the binding on the place mats (thank you Marie at Cool Cottons), a brown for the body of the place mats, and on the right is the fabric from my drapes.

Here is everything all together.

Jewel lent me a beautiful turquoisey blue tablecloth to put underneath everything. It really set off the linens and the dishes.  The table looked beautiful for Thanksgiving.

On Saturday we went into San Francisco to see the exhibit of Amish quilts from the collection of Faith and Stephen Brown at the De Young Museum. It was an amazing exhibit and reminds me in some ways of the Gees Bend quilts because of the simple geometric shapes and the use of solid fabrics. So graphic and bold.

We had lunch at the De Young and their cafe boasts local and sustainable food. Kristy and I had a wonderful roasted fennel soup with bacon and tarragon that was divine. Kathy had this beautiful salad. The bright yellow pieces of fruit you see are curried apples. Yum.

After lunch we headed across the way to the California Academy of Sciences. This building underwent a major renovation that took about ten years. They received a platinum LEED certificate for sustainability with the new building. It’s pretty incredible. We mainly went to see the living roof. The whole roof curves and turns and these port holes open and close to regulate temperature inside the building.

While we were at the Academy of Sciences, we did go over to see the very handsome albino alligator. Isn’t he gorgeous? We also saw the leafy sea dragons but you are not allowed to take pictures of them. They don’t like flash.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Golden Gate Park. I just wanted to soak up every little drop of sunshine.

After a bit of a walk, we headed back to Walnut Creek to stop in at our favorite resale shop, Main Street Rags. I have found some wonderful pieces there over the years and this visit was no exception. I got this great sweater that I am wearing as I type. We stopped in to see Kristy’s new couch that is on order and then finished the day with some homemade baclava.

When we got home,  Kristy cooked curried meat pies for dinner and we watched the Notre Dame game. It really was a perfect day. Thanks girlfriend!

After checking into the hotel, we walked up to the Frye Museum. If you’ve never been there before, it’s a wonderful, small museum. Mr. and Mrs Frye donated their expansive art collection to the city of Seattle with the stipulation that the museum remain free to the public. One of the exhibits there now is called The Old, Weird America. It explores the “widespread resurgence of folk imagery and mythic history” in the current art scene in America. I love weird, naive art and this was so great. Some of it was very political and hard to relate to. Some was great. Some was just stupid, but all of it shows a creative mind at work. You can watch a video about the show here.

We walked back to our hotel but first took a quick walk around the library. The building is all concrete and glass and is oddly shaped. The spaces inside were interesting but overall I thought the building had a somewhat antiseptic feel to it. Rick took this shot of the escalator.

There is a great Italian restaurant in the hotel called Tulio Ristorante and we had a delicious dinner there Friday night. The food was exquisite. I would highly recommend it.

Saturday started out dry and we walked up to a coffee shop we love. It’s called Victrola coffee and they roast their own beans. Very good. Then the weather turned very blustery, cold and rainy. We tried to go to Gas Works Park but the weather was blowing our umbrellas inside out. So we headed over to the Fremont area and had some cupcakes at Cupcake Royale. Aren’t they beautiful? Salted Caramel, Red Velvet Cake, Pumpkin Maple and Coconut. All natural, no preservatives, baked fresh everyday.

We drove around Ballard as well and just happened to drive by a quilt store. It’s called the Quilting Loft and is definitely worth a visit. They had tons of really cool fabrics and great patterns. All the hip, new collections. I made myself buy a couple of pieces because we have to support our independent shops!

In the afternoon we took in an exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery on the University of Washington Campus. The show featured a collection of polaroids by Robert Mapplethorpe and a collection called Sawdust Mountain by Eirik Johnson. Both were delightful.

We had dinner that night in West Seattle. We’ve never been to that part of Seattle before but we had read about a really cool restaurant there called West 5. The space used to be a small, probably 2 lane, bowling alley at one time and was done up in old fifties vinyl. The drinks and the food was great. Here is my Black Currant Cosmopolitan.

Sunday the weather was a tiny bit nicer so we headed over to Kerry Park on Queen Anne’s Hill. This has to be one of the best views in the city without going up the Space Needle. The neighborhood around the park is lovely. Beautiful old homes a lot like some of our neighborhoods here in Portland.  We had a lovely walk along the wall that follows the ridge. Rick took this picture through the sculpture that’s in the park.

After a very late breakfast at The Queen Anne Cafe, we headed on home. It was a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

Today was our first day. We started by drawing each other.  We could not look at our paper or pick up the pencil from the paper. We were to think about what we were seeing, to think about what were the most important lines to  capture. This is called contour drawing.

Next we did contour drawings of vegetables. I did several; several tomatoes, a chili pepper, and a pair of scissors. They were pretty simplistic and my lines were very regular. Susan really uses her pencil to get wider, darker and softer marks. and one of our exercises was to work on that very thing. She asked us to just play with making marks on paper, to work to get different results and to get the feel of using different pencils. This was much more fun for me, no pressure for it to “look like something.”

We also talked about Notan or the concept of negative space. We isolated a portion of one of our vegetable drawings using a frame and then colored part of it in so it was divided into dark and light.

Then we traced the same little section and colored it in opposite from the first one. I like this version much better. And when I took the picture, I placed the tracing on top of some writing on Susan’s table and I love how that looks.

Like any other skill, drawing is something that needs to be practiced. I’m going to try and draw every morning after breakfast, even if it’s only one small thing. Susan says to go slow, quiet your mind and SEE.

We left from the Burnt Lake trailhead just past Lost Lake Campground.

From there we entered the most beautiful woods. This forest burned in 1910 and so has a lot of younger pines. You can still see these huge old burnt out carcasses of the earlier trees.  There is a nice wide path covered with pine needles to cushion the forest floor. Most of the way up to the lake there is a babbling brook along our right side.

Sometimes we had to cross over streams. I just love it when this is your trail:

We crossed water many times on this hike. We also came to a pretty sketchy spot where the trail was just a big boulder you had to scramble over with a a sheer drop-off right below. It was a bit hairy but that’s kind of fun too. Finally we reached the lake and it was beautiful.

We stopped and had a bite to eat and then decided to continue on to ZigZag Mountain. The guide book said it was only a mile up with 800 feet elevation gain. Well that book had to be wrong. Here we are about half way up.

But we still had this to go:

That dirt looking area on the mountain is where we’re going; across a ridge and then straight up. The path was very steep with mostly dirt and loose rocks so you had to be careful where you put your feet. That goodness for hiking poles!  But then you got to the top and it was like being on top of the world. I love that feeling. It always makes the whole hike worth it.