February 28, 2010

Neighborhood walk






Every time we drive past the neighborhood of Forest Hill on our way across town, we are tempted to stop the car and look around. Finally the other day we did stop, and spent some time climbing the grand staircase, admiring the beautiful craftsman style architecture and the pristine yards of the homes there. (If anyone's got a couple extra million clams to spare, this Maybeck beauty is for sale! One can dream...)

February 24, 2010

When it rains... we craft!

All this rain we've been having means lots of time indoors. And since I've been making a valiant effort NOT to spend every waking hour working on the shoppe or some other random work project, I've been doing lots and lots of crafting. First I made a new pillow for our sofa out of some gray wool I had. The scarf pillow we made over a year ago had started disintegrating (it was an old scarf!) so it needed to be replaced. We just finished a project for a friend's book that involves knot tying, so I was feeling inspired to stitch one in the center of the pillow.


I know I say this every year, but this year I'm determined to get better at sewing. I was working on some soft sculptures for another friend's book last week and I feel like it's a slow road but I am learning a lot... so first up are TIES. More wool from my fabric stash and lots of pattern altering to get it just skinny enough but not too skinny... and here we have the first of what will hopefully be a series of new ties for D.

Finally, I am trying to use up all my leftover yarn to make small little projects like hats and gloves. Here are 1 1/2 pairs of fingerless mittens (finished the last one yesterday) which are easy, fast, and are one size fits all, which I love. The pattern for the two-tone ones with the buttons can be found here.

And since the sun did make an appearance on Monday, we made sure to eat lunch outside on our favorite bench in Glen Canyon. In other crafting news, Derek only has one arm left to knit before he is done with his first sweater! At which point we will regale you with photographs and you will see that pretty much everything we've been making these days is grey and brown and woolly. Those are our winter colors, I suppose.

February 23, 2010

Mail bag


I know I'm not the only one out there who feels like they are tethered to their computer all day writing emails. The amount of time I spend on my laptop and on my phone checking and writing emails could be spent doing soooo many productive things! I do miss physical mail and have started trying to write and send letters again- though I know I'll never give up email. I just have a weird love/hate relationship to it is all. I went back into my "sent mail" folders earlier to see just how many messages I send per day, and it appears that I average around 20, which doesn't actually seem like that much to me. I'm sure if I only checked my inbox 2-3 times a day I could still manage to get that many replies sent out. How many emails do you send each day?

(Envelopes from Kiosk.)

February 20, 2010

Reminder: Plant Exchange tomorrow morning!

Aurora has organized another plant exchange that will take place in front of the shoppe tomorrow morning from 9-12. Come by with your plant starts or cuttings and trade them for something new for your garden! More information here.



February 17, 2010

Behold!!!

Aya Brackett "Kyoto"

We finally got the chance to do something we've been wanting to do for a long, long time. Thank you so much to Suzanne Shade for inviting us to be Guest Curators at the Beholder! It was so exciting and fun and inspirational to check out all the amazing work on the site. We had to keep our choices to 10 (which was HARD!), but we managed...So go check out our little curated collection and spend the rest of the afternoon exploring all the other great artists on the Beholder.

Fabian Geyrhalter "Precision"
Lisa Bartleson "the couch, the chair, the rug, the table"

My little sister's all grown up!

Last month, my younger sister Jessie and her boyfriend (now husband) Ian got married at City Hall. Our friend Jessamyn took some beautiful photos!

Jess, Ian, and little Lennon

Beautiful bouquet from Studio Choo

Me and Jess at Presidio Bowl, where we worked up an appetite for our delicious dinner at the Presidio Social Club.

Many, many more pics can be seen here and here.
Congratulations again Jessie and Ian!!

February 16, 2010

Survival Annex items online!


For the last two weeks of the show- all the items in the Survival Annex are available for purchase online!! Prepare to be amazed...

And for those of you in SF, there will be a plant exchange and all day closing party next Sunday, February 21st. C'mon by!

Calling All Soup Lovers!


We are majorly in love with SOUPLOVE, a new recipe book we are carrying at the shoppe. Especially now that it's mid-February when the contents of our CSA box pretty much consist of leafy greens, root vegetables and even more leafy greens. When this book arrived at the shoppe last week, we flipped to the "Winter" chapter and there was an amazing recipe for Potato Leek and Winter Vegetable soup that pretty much used up everything in our box and fed us for an entire week. For more, check out this awesome review at 101 Cookbooks!


(All the recipes are vegetarian, but that didn't stop us from adding bacon to our soup... it was even better the next day when we pureed all the leftovers. Yummmm!)

February 15, 2010

A good day.

We took a little field trip yesterday to the town I grew up in, where we visited with family, took a hike in the glorious sunshine, visited our town's historical museum, ate ice cream, visited a cheese factory, took a drive to Pt. Reyes, and ate more food. A lovely Valentine's Day!

Someone posted these signs up and down Valencia Street- a nice way to start the day as we got coffee and headed out of town.


Jessie gave Lennon and I matching pigtails.



Oak trees (and Derek) at Helen Putnam Park



Pt. Reyes

February 11, 2010

Two reasons to be excited!




We received our shipment of UPPERCASE Magazines this week, and are super excited to have issue #4 in the shoppe for so many reasons... Aside from the incredible cover illustration by our friend Leigh Wells and and great profile by Victoria Smith about the folks at Three Potato Four, as well as the story about our pal Lisa Solomon, there is an amazing piece about one of our favorite things, the Squam Art Workshops.

You'll probably remember that last summer we were lucky enough to go to New Hampshire and teach a couple workshops at Squam, and we couldn't resist the opportunity to go back later this year in September to teach a couple more!

Registration for the Fall session is now open, and you can click here to see our class descriptions. (We're offering a workshop on apron making and another on ukulele making, also known as "Band Camp".) An entire long weekend dedicated to art, creativity and relaxation in one of the most serene and beautiful places we've been to?? Sign us up!



Squam Lake

The cutest cabins, with fenced in porches and private docks!

PS- Extra special congratulations to UPPERCASE Magazine for their Society of Publication Designers' Magazine of the Year nomination!!

February 10, 2010

Gifts for Valentine's Day


Still looking for the perfect gift for your sweetie this year? If you're in the neighborhood this weekend, we've got you covered.

Megan Dempsey from Letter Paper Flower will be in the Shoppe from 12-3 this Saturday and Sunday selling beautiful (and affordable!) Valentine bouquets, so come by and pick one up!





We've also got some great merchandise in the shoppe for loved ones, including:


Sweetheart Patch Kits from Chikabird



Tactile Poetry from Leafcutter Designs



New Art


After watching Herb & Dorothy last night, I got to thinking about collecting art, and remembered that I haven't shared the most recent additions to our own modest collection- recently back from the framers and hanging in our dining room! On the left is a print by Wayne White, and on the right are 3 prints by Tom Bonauro. Don't they look great together?


Speaking of the dining room, we wallpapered one wall with our Lena Corwin wallpaper last Fall, and painted all the other walls in a lovely shade of blue/gray that matches the ground color. It feels sooo much better than the glossy white paint that was in there before!


February 09, 2010

Classes On the Waterfront!

Our good pal Mariah, aka The Landlubber, is helping the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association put on some fantastically fun and exciting classes down on the Hyde Street Pier. Seeing as though we San Franciscans are practically surrounded by the stuff, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to get more acquainted with the beautiful bodies of water we're lucky enough to have right down the street. There are a bunch of maritime-related classes and activities to choose from, we're looking forward to Oar and Paddle Making in particular. Space is limited so register now!

(That picture up there is from a LIFE magazine story about the Oakland Women's Rowing Club. You can see some more awesome images here.)