Dogged Delight (Field Trip to Stacks for Breakfast)

This Doggie Founder Sign,
on display at the San Carlos Stacks,
gives a hint as to why this restaurant
is my kind of place

My daughter and I are partial to the local breakfast/lunch chain Stacks. We head over there for brunch when she's home for college and reminisce over  long-ago out-to-lunch memories from her younger days. The staff never seems to mind how long we hang out in the big comfy booths. They also know how to decorate for the winter holidays.

Oh yes, their food is pretty durn good too - especially their blueberry wheat germ pancakes and the yogurt sundae (it's a regular meal not a desert).

The main  link (http://www.stacksrestaurant.com )  doesn't currently show the Stacks in San Carlos and Redwood City.

Fantastical Miner's Lettuce

When I Dream of Miner's Lettuce

Miner's Lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, is a common San Francisco plant that thrives and blooms in the open space areas where I hike as well as the shade of my own backyard.  It is munch'able, but I often wonder if the California gold miners of '49 were really into salad...

Plain Sewing for Disneyland

(co-published with MeEncantaCoser/EnchantedBySewing.blogspot.com)

Me in my my Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Shirt)
on a quick spring break at Disneyland

As regular followers of my Me Encanta Coser Enchanted By Sewing blog and podcast may have noticed, I spent a lot of time focusing on improving my sewing techniques over the last couple of months. The green and golden jungle print shirt (previously blogged about as my Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Shirt) in this photo, was the product of that work. 

After so much effort when it came to crisp edges, pattern fitting and alteration I had fun making a couple of simple tank tops with no pattern at all and the simple joy of scissoring wherever I wanted. The results were perfect as layers under a travel wardrobe for a recent quick-hop Disneyland trip with my grownup daughter. With my new green shirt as a top layer, I managed to pack light - using just a very small rolling suitcase for the trip. My simple shirt and tees wardrobe,  made a second floor motel room and return-by-Amtrak trip really easy - no problem hefting that bag up steps, onto the top shelf of the luggage area, or pulling it up the gap between train and track.

I loved this opportunity to use machine embroidery
I almost forget to use a top layer of stabalizer between
the needle and knit fabric! You know what happens if you
forget, right? The fabric is sucked down and gummed up
 under the throat plate and it's awful.

I enjoyed using machine embroidery to create this lovely zebra, the only motif on the green shirt for which I had a match on my (now) old-fashioned embroidery machine, which uses cards instead of the more modern downloadable designs. I also made use of an inexpensive white tee - which I totally cutup and simply used as fabric. The binding (and headband - which you see simply tossed over the hanger here) was the remains of a tee that didn't work out. I loved the 100% cotton knit fabric when I found it - at Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkley-, but it had an awful lot more stretch than I realized and the long sleeved tee I made  out of it is too broad and too short. It just didn't work out. But the remnants make great trim for this zebra shirt. Now that I've experimented with this tee, and another, I'm hoping to make a similar one out of better quality white cotton knit. I think I've still got enough of the black and white remainder for binding and enough black thread for another zebra too!

If you have machine embroidery capabilities and haven't done so on knits, make sure you use a top layer of stabalizer as well as a bottom layer. I use the kind that looks like saran wrap. You tear it away and any remainder washes away.

This is my kind of uniform
Something I can put on every day
and pretty too

As I've said before, I like making pretty clothes that I'll get a lot of wear from. Whether I'm in the land of Princesses and castles or back home on my bike, I'll get a lot of use out of this zebra tee. And I'll always enjoy pulling it out of my drawer.

Machine embroidered tees like this, keep me enchanted by sewing.

California on a Plate (What's for Supper?)

We're California Dreaming
When it Comes to Supper

Our favorite no-decision supper is salad with everything handy. Tonight that included typical local produce....
* Strawberries from Hollister
* Lettuce also likely from Gilroy/Hollister
* Avocados - Some of them show up in our local farmer's market, but I'd guess this Hass was from farther away Southern California
*Walnuts grown and harvested, within a hundred miles of here
* Turkey, which thrives in Petaluma as well as our Central Valley. According to California Fast Facts and Trivia, "More turkeys are produced in California than in any of the other states in the U.S."
*Even the Ak-Mak crackers I crumbled on my salad just after I snapped this photo with my cell phone, have been produced in California for four generations

There were a few exotics...It's a bit early for tomatoes around here, and I'm pretty sure that the dried cranberries don't grow in any of our bogs.

Stop by, and bring your fork.

The Wake-Robin: Three is Magic (Hiking Windy Hill)

Trillium or Wake-Robin

Spring is, indeed, bustin' out all over at Windy Hill Preserve in the Mid-Penninsula Regional Open Space.

An encounter with the three perfect white petals and trinity of glossy leaves in this small white trillium, or Wake-Robin, is a great way to exit the day-to-day and head for another realm.

When it comes to trilliums, it's easy to accept that three really is a magic number.

Going for the Green - Free Bricks!

Free Bricks bring out the artistic side
in  this Californian

Does anybody else get butterflies in their innards when they see the Free sign out in front of a neighbors house? It's not just the fact that their free, it's the idea that something somebody else doesn't want, has long-term value for me that makes them so good. You can call that being green or thrifty - but don't you think it's more artistic to repurpose materials than to make something beautiful from old rather than new stuff?

We waited a few days until we came up with a definite plan for 'em. The plan is for a brick path along the damp and boggy side of our house. We're just going to build the kind where you excavate a little, lay them down and pour sand in the cracks.

There's always that little quiver of fear that somebody else will nab 'em all, but we sure didn't want to have a pile of building resources going to waste in our yard - and looking less than attractive as they do so.

I transported about 190 of these little gems to our side yard in the back of the mini-van (two trips). Yes, I sure do miss having a bright red truck for trips like that. That truck made me feel like a real woman, but you know the back of a mini-van works. And I like being a one-car family who knows how to use their bikes and feet to get around.

 BTW I actually left about a quarter of the pile of bricks for the next guy. Wonder what they're going to make.... 

Psychedellic Lilies (Hiking Edgwood)

We don't actually know
how the innocent lily
sees herself...