further adventures on route 66.

today we left tucumcari far behind us. it may well be a nice place somehow, but we found a bad corner of it to curl up into and were happy to depart. not long after departing new mexico (a state that some bathroom graffiti proclaimed to be 'the most depressing state ever'), we rolled into big old texas...well a little bit of texas, anyway. i started to feel back on track when we found cadillac ranch, a place that nancy had told us to visit when we told her our itinerary from santa fe.



cadillac ranch (just west of amarillo) is a privately owned ranch with ten old caddies set into the ground...well, you can see for yourself. they are all covered in spray paint now; but nancy told us of her first encounter with the ranch before the cars were turned to canvases. aitor and i agreed we might have liked it better then. as impressive as the installation of the cars is (and it is) there was something disappointing in the fact that since the graffiti is encouraged it is therefore being added to by people who wouldn't normally take such risks. mostly it was nerds. and some babies. aitor demonstrates the stance of a nerd spray painting:



as we were leaving, a whole mini van full of little children were disembarking and getting to pick out their own cans of spray paint.



on the way to oklahoma city, we decided to do some route 66 tourism. this website is a great resource for such things, should you ever find yourself interested. to this end, we made a little stop in mclean, texas. actually, we went through a lot of small towns. some were really sad with their once glowing strips atrophied now that the buzz of the interstate is a mile or two away. mclean was full of route 66 stuff. we visited a weirdly "restored" old phillips 66 station (it is kind of restored to look like a playground). this was listed as one of mclean's big attractions and it kind of fizzled for us. but i did see a bunny.



the other attraction promoted on all kinds of lead-up signage was the devil's rope museum. we couldn't figure out what that could mean. until...



we were heart broken to find it closed! we smudged up the windows trying to peer inside. there was a whole map of texas with soil samples from every county! information about barbed wire clubs! a whole postcard wall! their website also offers insight into this magnificent icon of the american west and its historical significance. they also help with appraisals. appraisals! we couldn't believe we had just stumbled upon this amazing institution and were forced to leave it unexplored. oh, to find our way back to mclean. until then, we will just have to dream...

farewell, new mexico.

today the brakes on the car completely failed (thankfully at low speed).

$1300 later, we were on our impoverished way. we spent the night at a terrible, roachy motel in tucumcari, new mexico - so much for historic route 66 motel romance. never ever stay at the americana motel, regardless of the few dollars cheaper it is from nearby motels in the truck stop coupon book. never.

white horse, red roof, green gate.

...when these are signposts towards your intended location, it is a fairly sure bet that said destination will be of interest.

tonight we camped out at the home of my father's friend, nancy, who lives on the outskirts of santa fe. she made us a lovely dinner of non-road food and we drank wine and talked about friends and families. nancy is also full of stories that push all of our romantic notions to new heights - working for georgia o'keefe, meeting hunster s. thompson and spending time on a robert altman set. really, these are mythical possibilities to me. so...which of my current friends is growing towards being a legend? it better be one of you, because i want to be that impressive someday.



oh, her? that's ophelia. we got to camp out and hang out with a beautiful horse.

i should also mention that today began with a last splash in albuquerque. i had a meeting arranged with the supremely lovely ladies from self serve. at our new friend christie's suggestion, i went in there peddling my wares. being a sexual resource centre, i thought they would mostly be into emma's love porn buttons but to my surprise the store stocks a lot of things besides bedside apparatuses. apparently knitting is also kinky. so go in there if you need buttons in the 505. i will leave the goodies inside behind their frosted glass for now. you'll have to go poke around in person.

the mother road.

...a nick name for route 66. it is also called the main street of america. in albuquerque, the nice old parts of route 66 are on what is now (and maybe then) central street. although probably considered garish at the time, i am awfully fond of the old motel signs that dot it. they speak of american dreams - you know, big gaudy independent business advertising. this was also the america in which two brothers named mcdonald opened a burger shop in a fit of american independence. it's too bad that so many of the old business and motels along route 66 are boarded up, even though their big signs remain. i guess america hit a point where it wanted those with an independent spirit to grow up. also, the interstate system put a swift end to the boom of route 66. interstates are better, after all, for get lots of stuff from one big place to another. travelling through the main streets of small town america became less important.

i think about this sort of stuff in a microcosmic way when considering my own independent lifestyle and business. is it somehow a failure of purpose or a character flaw to want to stay small? is it wrong to aim for sustenance instead of infinite (even incremental) growth? i truly wonder.

mail call!

hey, do you miss us? want to send us mail/gifts? if these predicaments apply to you, then you are in luck! we will be in atlanta, georgia, from august 27 - 31, 2008 (where i will be performing) and our lovely hosts have allowed us to use their mailing address. here it is, internet:

Becky Johnson and/or Rev. Aitor
c/o Dad's Garage Theatre
280 Elizabeth St. C-101
Atlanta, GA. 30307

so mail away! we probably miss you, too.

otherwise, you are stuck doing what lauren did. and that is way too infinite.

red or green?

today we took it very easy. we looked around the grounds of the awesome complex where shenoah lives (note bone and cactus sculpture above), we ate yummy food at winning coffee co., ran into shenoah's cool friends everywhere and ended up watching a gypsy swing band at the end of the night. they are call le chat lunatique and are certainly worth checking out.



muni (far left with fiddle) also came by later to visit and we had some good late night chats. we were trying to stay out of shenoah's hair as he packed up his house in preparation to depart to edinburgh tomorrow. if you happen to be in edinburgh this coming month, i do suggest you go see him and the great chavez in their new show, versus vs. versus. i haven't seen it but i don't have to. i know them. they are great.

oh, yes. and we learned that new mexico has an official state question - "red or green?" without context i wouldn't have figured out why. can you?

wrangling and rustling.

on our way to albuquerque, we made a very brief pit stop in douglas, arizona - a border town that used to be the bustling centre of trade and smeltering for the copper industry down here. we stopped into the historic gadsden hotel (home to lots of hauntings and lovely architectural touches). actually, all the hotels here are haunted. the copper queen in bisbee even keeps a ghost log that we thumbed through last night. it had such entires as "wet washcloth fell off shower nozzle, couldn't recreate how" and "change moved one inch on bedside table". pretty spooky stuff.

then we drove. and drove and drove.



it's nice to be able to stop on a state route and just get out of one's car and stand in the middle of the road for a while. peaceful, scorching and nice. we skirted the mexican border and made a little stop in the barely-new mexican town of rodeo. there we went to the nicest post office ever to mail some packages home. they didn't even have one of those postage printers so we got to discover that there is such a thing as a $16.50 american stamp. the lady who worked there said she would try to find the nicest stamps she had to fill out our postage, so look out for that, leah.



after a brief pit stop in truth or consequences, new mexico (a town that named itself in response to a challenge put forth by a 1950's radio program of the same name), we made our weary way to the safe comfort of our friend shenoah's company. his home is also comfortable.

tales of a copper queen (or further explorations of bisbee)

i think aitor and i want to live here forever. so our last day was bittersweet. we decided to spend the day exploring and walking around old bisbee (and trying to see if i might find a store to sell to there).



we started the day with a quick trip to what we think is warren, arizona. it is hard to figure out what town is what around here. there seem to be tiny towns right on top of one another. but i also found this listing that calls warren a ghost town. so, were those ghosts who sold us all those frames and fabrics at the thrift shop? spooky. this place is totally haunted. i actually think bisbee has now sort of swallowed up these little surrounding company towns. i mean, they are just steps apart.



on our way to exploring old bisbee proper, we stopped at their biggest historical hole - the lavender pit mine (which, weirdly, produced copper ore and not lavender at all). it is pretty cool. when it rains, the water that pools up in the bottom is so stained by the copper in the soil that it looks like a big pool of blood. haunted blood pool!

we started our visit to bisbee with a stop at an awesome store called va voom. it's sort of a vintage, antique and curiosity shop with surprisingly reasonable prices for such a tourist destination as this. i was deeply tempted by a big vintage quilt top but settled for a beautiful old bakelite viewmaster (a burgeoning obsession of mine). the owner, kelly, is also really nice and loaded us up with information about things in the store and things around town.



bisbee, by the way, is a hilly place filled with city steps. we were first introduced to the concept and importance of city steps by oue friend will in pittsburgh (pittsburgh, another former mining town, boasts an impressive collection of city steps). these were the first form of public transportation in these working class settlements. there are even some places remaining in both towns that can only be reached by steps. it's a bitch to move in or out, but door to door salesmen must pose less of an annoyance.



we wandered about the little town built into a mountainside, looking at impressive graffiti and going into the many antique shops until antiques made no sense to us anymore. i was pretty taken by the pattern on this quilt:



but my dwindling budget had me priced out. i guess i'll just have to make one after i finish the epic quilt i am currently working on.

we also stumbled into the amazing optimo hat shop (at aitor's urgings) only to have some amazing conversations about the world of millinery work. we were also introduced to this wild turn-of-the-last-century contraption used to measure the irregularities of the skull.



all tuckered out (and with the nightly monsoon looming in the sky), we decided to go. but after following directions to the local food co-op, we found ourselves on the main street of what must have been another ghost town, lowell.





obviously a storm was rolling in so we hurried back to the trailer park. we basically see rainbows here on a daily basis. but today, even that was topped by seeing lighting strike through a double rainbow! well, that's what it looked like; i'm sure the physicists among you could explain why that is actually impossible.



we finally got to weather a storm in our tiny trailer home where we spent our last night here eating soup, laughing, listening to the radio and making things. oh, and blogging.



good night, shady dell and bisbee. we know how much we will miss you.

arizona adventure fun day.

can you believe that this is what we wake up to here?

the winding story of how we happened upon this magical little place called bisbee starts with aitor hitch hiking though arizona a couple of years ago. he was trying to get to tombstone and ended up here (a far better destination, we would soon discover). he was basically dropped off at the shady dell but ended up staying in a hostel in old bisbee. he called to tell me of the trailer park and we have been scheming coming here together since.

because of this connection to tombstone (twenty miles to the north) and because we are keen on historical relics, we started our adventure day there today.





what a weird place. the whole town is a strange tourist trap (although people do live there). the storefronts are mostly souvenir shops and aitor was like a walking target for the historical reenactors to toss historical jibes at. not to be a total dick, but shouldn't they just have been confused and alarmed by all of our clothes? even aitor's get-ups are from at least forty years in their future. if i were them, i would have gotten scared, gone home and not gotten shot at 2:00pm and then again at 4:00pm. but, as a wise woman once said, "twenty twenty vision is perfect."

on a hot tip from faythe and nathan, we had planned our next stop to be the international wildlife museum on the outskirts of tucson. this is a huge repository of taxidermy animals that is meant to, somehow, promote conservation. okay, i shouldn't be so glib about it - hunters are very active in conservation efforts. i know this. still, this museum did leave me with a "we've killed one of everything" kind of feeling.









again, more tourism based on shootings. in spite of my cynical sideway comments, the displays really did leave me with the (presumably) intended awe of the natural world. i especially liked the displays where the dead animals were fighting. and all my vegetarian gusto aside, there is meticulous craft involved in the sculptural innards of these figures. see:

after our brains were all filled up with images of stuffed elephants and giraffes (they were in corners too dark to photograph), we decided to take a little jaunt through tuscon mountain park. it was incredible. the park houses one of the biggest saguaro cactus forests in the world. the was a storm rolling in over the mountains (which seems to happen every evening) so we stood in a turnout and watched lightning strike the mountains while thunder growled all around.



on the way home, we were treated to a magnificent display of storm and sunset. it's hard to describe (and very hard to photograph) but we were driving towards a huge double rainbow underneath which all the clouds were smoldering pink in the sunset. really, quite spectacular.

hey, let's go live in some paintings (or how i learned to stop worrying and went to arizona).

what kind of monster wouldn't find this beautiful?

or this...



you'd have to be an actual monster. i really feel as though we are just passing through ideas of what beautiful is. this place really gives saskatchewan a run for its living-sky money. only, arizona manages to have both wide open spaces and mountains. aitor and i are both pretty awestruck.

we rolled up this evening to our digs for the next few nights, the shady dell trailer park in bisbee, arizona.



and look what greeted us:



this is the most extravagant we have yet let ourselves be on this trip - four days and three nights of living out of a restored 1950's trailer. really, it costs about as much a motel. our budget (and fate) led us to the little "homemade" trailer that we will be staying in for the next few days. we immediately fell in love with our little temporary home in the desert. it defies physics in its ability to house us and, we believe, is the actual form of romance.





wow.

so long, suckers.

today we escaped from los angeles with one final tourist stop before we left - we had to. we took beachwood up to where it ends, at which point we did a very brief hike to some hollywood sign photo spots. from this vantage, one can also turn around and see los angeles.



you have to believe me that the city is down there. in a brazen act of irony, the pollution in the air manages to erase most traces of development making this scene look gently bucolic. but don't be fooled; there is no misty ocean down there, just a sea of airborne crud. speaking of which, my asthma has been so bad here i could hardly hike the forty steps it took us to see the hollywood sign. it was time to hit the desert - the real desert, not the one that has been watered enough to develop lawns.

and what wonders the california desert held once we pushed into it!



the next stop on our inadvertent cult movie tour of america tuned out to be cabazon, california. the more awesome among you may remember those dinos from peewee's big adventure. as it turns out, the cabazon dinosaurs actually serve a greater purpose in sharing creationist resources to dino fans. you can also climb in the belly of one and buy geodes.



you can't tell from the photo, but this dino's face was full of screaming children. i was unable to save them because the admission into its tail was too hefty for my pocket book. i wanted postcards instead. besides, i think it was a clever grift.

tonight we sleep on the very edge of california. tomorrow, we enter out true love of arizona.

jurassica (and other points of interest)

at the adamant urging of our friend leah, aitor and i managed a visit to the museum of jurassic technology. this visit was today. los angeles can be so overwhelming to outerlanders like us that we were pleasantly surprised to find the museum to be walking distance from josh's place. nothing is walking distance from anything here. and if it is, you drive. but after being cooped up in the car for such long stretches, walks are very well received.

i can't quite describe the experience of visiting the museum. it is at once confounding and uplifting, occupying a space wherein ridiculous truths and ridiculous lies seem about the same. it's very hard to tell what's real there, but some of the information shared surely is. they also don't allow flash photography or tripods in the museum so my photographs are equally obfuscated. here is one depicting things to make string out of (from one of my favoirte exhibits - about string games):



on the way home, we found a curiosity of our own:



i guess if nobody is walking around one can do anything one wants to the sidewalk.

with minds fully boggled by the museum (and urine encounters), we powdered up and went out to an art auction. i felt very swanky, indeed, to have somewhere like an art auction to go while in los angeles. it was a fundraiser for faythe levine's indie craft documentary, handmade nation, and was hosted at the poketo studio space.











we also discovered that not only did the building have a roof with a stellar view of los angeles, but that said roof also had an outdoor pool and hot tub. an upshot of traveling is that one might have one's swim trunks in the car at any given time. i have no pictures of aitor in his trunks on this roof in los angeles; but for those who know, seeing aitor in his swim garb is a rare treat anywhere...and should probably be done in person.

good night, los angeles. we have to get going. i'm also afraid we might start to dislike you if we stayed too long. i mean, no offense. it's just a feeling.

house cleaning.

i am late on all fronts in announcing these things (i blame my current itinerant lifestyle), so i decided to do a small post from the comfort of my friend josh's los angeles living room to update you all and convey the exciting pieces of news i have collected while on the road.

#1 - upcoming programming from city of craft.
jen and leah are cramming the toronto summer full of crafty activity in my absence including a clothing swap (with tutorials on reworking old clothes), a children's-themed craft sale/day (with the workroom and good catch). check the website and facebook page for more details and updates.

#2 - goodegg industries.
i am actually appalled at how late i am in reporting this, but my good friend and city of craft co-conspirator, jen anisef, has teamed up with her pal laural to launch goodegg - a new shop to showcase the art and craft works coming out of canada. it's worth a good poke around. both of these ladies have exceptional taste and are deeply supportive of/thoughtful towards the canadian craft scene.

#3 - makesomething.ca
speaking of good taste and mad skills, karyn from the workroom has also taken the leap into the blogesphere with makesomething.ca. as with everything i have ever seen karyn take on, it is impeccable, useful and brilliant right from the start.

#4 - all citizens on etsy.
the all citizens shop has also taken a plunge - into online sales with a new etsy shop. the hope is that this online outlet will supplement the modest income that the shop is able to bring in at their rural saskatchewan location. i think i get to claim some part in this through encouragements. so i will do so. since i suggested that serena do this, you have to go buy things there so that i am not proven wrong. also, if you have never heard of all citizens and their story, you should go read their old blog.

post script of no importance: today we ate lunch in a mall food court (century city mall) that was unlike anything i have ever seen. it was also one of the most satisfying meals i have encountered yet on the road. los angeles is full of weird surprises and glamor...and the waiters look like movie stars.

reform school.

when i asked my friend faythe what shop to visit in los angeles she told me that reform school made the top of her list, so we made the trek across hollywood to get there. what a great place! there is a sort of independent art/craft shop that just makes me feel at home. and it has been sublimely comforting to find more and more of such shops popping up in the wake of this explosion of indie craft.

i met tootie there (one of two owners) and am happy to say that she took a few sweetie pie buttons. i hope this is the beginning of a long relationship. those ladies really have a nice sense of aesthetic, at once colluding with indie craft trends and clearly putting their own stamp on it through curation. they also have an art-o-mat!

further south.

i should mention that we ended up spending a night in santa cruz because and old friend (who i think i have not seen for at least twelve years) happened to attend the renegade craft fair in san francisco. rachel is now living in santa cruz studying something relating to organic farming. she made the dangerous mistake of offering us a place to stay. as it turns out, she was serious. this is why we got to spend a lovely evening and part of a day in that seaside town. also, that picture up there is really a peek into how aitor travels. if you were wondering how he looks so sharp while we travel, the answer is accessories.

rachel was into seeing how i made buttons so i brought out the machine and hammered out a few of emma segal's unpopular vegetables (naturally) so that rachel could wear some to the class she teaches.



we shoved off in the afternoon (after eating some tacos) and headed towards los angeles and our friend josh's place. one of the upshots of going to santa cruz is that we got to spend some time on smaller roads before getting to the i-5. we don't always have the time to take side roads, but i prefer it when we do.







we got into the endless sparkling of los angeles at a nearly reasonable hour. although we made the mistake of wanting a corner store late at night. this is the kind of place where you really have to know your way around. oh, and the smog in southern california (currently amplified by all the forest fires) makes for some haunting sunsets.

time to shuffle forth.

we have to leave the bay today. it's sad but forward motion is important to our survival - like sharks.

before leaving, however, we needed to do a few more things to ensure our hungers for san francsico were appeased.

we started the day with a trip to giant longs. it is a longs drug store in oakland (i think) that genevieve recommended we visit. she had not lead us astray yet so we heeded her advice. the place is amazing. i hope i am not ruining anyone's closely guarded secret here, but they have a ridiculously good fabric section. they stocked a huge collection of 1930's reporductions - and most of them were $3.67/ft. i kind of freaked out about that.

after making a huge fabric score (that now has to find a home in the car), we headed across the bay to visit some stores.



little otsu was sadly close for the day. but we did discover a new store called curiosty shoppe (also closed) a few doors down. they seemed to be stocking a bunch of stuff from favorite craft-makers of mine. we had also come to the area to check out paxton gate, an actual shop of curiosities and botanicals. aitor was saddened to confront the fact that our wandering ways could not guarantee the survival of an ostrich egg that he wanted to purchase. it's a pretty cool, store. they even had flowering pitcher plants in the back yard!



next store to that, we unwittingly wandered into 826 valencia - a tutoring and literacy centre fronted by san francisco's only pirate supply shop. the pirate shop pays the rent for the tutoring space and is also pretty exciting regardless of that. those mcsweeny's guys. they really do some good work.

on our way to the car, we also got swept up in this public portrait project. i felt too messy to be photographed, but aitor is always picture perfect so he posed for them. i think i even spy someone there with a mustache-on-a-stick by something's hiding in here.







to finish off the day, we had one more store to visit - rare device on market street. rare device is a lovely little indie art/design oriented shop with a nice sized gallery wall. the current show (and window display above) is called home and features the works of julia rothman and caitlin keegan. it is pretty lovely. you might want to go check it out.

after this last stop, it was time to roll out to our overnight destination of santa cruz. we ended our night on the boardwalk you might remember from the lost boys (if you are as old as me). just in case you don't remember:

east bay trash day.

pictured above is a little nosegay that aitor found growing in a parking lot near the post office. this sort of sums up the adventure day that our hostess, genevieve, treated us to today. almost every destination (save the eating ones) were about glorious wallowings in trash.





we started out with visits to both the east bay depot for creative reuse and urban ore - both variations on the theme of reuse. it was hard to remind myself that we live out of a car now and i can't just load up on weird stuff. i did, however, score a bunch of old wooden spools of thread, a nice old binder, some fabric bits and odd papers. at urban ore, we also got a collapsible easel that aitor hopes to run into his hot new craft fair display for our fall shows.

after this foray into junk shopping, we were in for our biggest treat yet. when we had asked genevieve what her san francisco must-do's were, she quickly replied that the albany bulb was her greatest bay area recommendation.



located in albany, california, the bulb is a former landfill used for dumping building waste from the 1960's to the 1980's. over the two decades of dumping it went from being a place where concrete and rebar were thrown into the bay to a bona fide, visible peninsula.





it's an odd place to visit. people are walking their dogs and playing with their kids but one can see tiles and wires sticking out of the walking paths.

"it gets better," genevieve kept saying.

deeper into the "bulb" (it is called this because the peninsula sort of takes on the shape of a bulb if viewed from above), more impromptu art and structures emerge. there are bike-part sculptures, a handmade hot tub, lots of graffiti, stencils. as genevieve put it "this is the kind of place you can just come out to and paint something."







the further we went on our tour, the more involved the art became until we were surrounded by massive found object sculptures and some of the first big paintings that appeared on the bulb.





apparently, this place also used to be home to awhole community of otherwise homeless people. between this community and artists who would visit, the bulb evolved into what it is today. and it seems to continue in this evolution. genevieve mentioned all kinds of things that had come and gone since her last visit. i took way more pictures than i could post here, too. it's a very photogenic space, with surprises around every corner...and all made of junk.

renegade san francisco, day two: full of disaster and sated.

i got a new, old manual numbering stamp a while back at st. lawrence market and finally used it today while putting together some packing for my first submission to souvenir shop. i also got these tiny pigment 'ink dots' which are pretty perfect for wayfaring craft making. nobody is as excited about any of this stuff as i am. actually, most people seem bored. so, i am sorry.

let's move on to today's discoveries...



today the fair featured an invasion by chicago-based marching band, mucca pazza. that was a pretty grand surprise. although for some reason aitor had to run away from the performance and throw up. thankfully this sudden illness was just headache realted and short-lived. lasting illness on the road can be a real scourge.







i also got to have a little visit with cathy of california, a lady i just met the day before. most of her renegade display consisted of 60's raffia flower-based crafts. but i got the notion that this was simply her current vintage crafting obsession, as her blog seems to chronicle and discuss a wide array of handicrafts from the 50's and 60's. it's pretty enthralling stuff. i also liked her impressive collection of vintage how-to booklets for raffia crafts. that's the kind of thing i am wont to hoard, if only for their vintage appeal. this booklets also boasted to added charm of profiling their authors - usually middle aged women who were proliferating these crafts as home businesses. our crafty foremothers, one could say.



as we packed up and bid a farewell to our weekend home of fort mason, we took a few pictures of alcatraz and the surrounding waters. it was so windy that my dress kept blowing up around my head. some strangers got a good show. but it was worth it. just look at this:







i appreciate the milky maxfield perrish colours that the san francisco sky is apt to display.

we ended our evening in the haight at this taqueria (which i am posting pretty much exclusively for my friends mike and terrance):

renegade san francisco, day one: appetite for disaster.

that blog title comes only from my exhaustion and has no relation to this day's events.

first off, i would like to give a big shout out to something's hiding in here for giving both me and aitor a big pre-renegade boost. you guys are some top notch sweeties. and now...

we loaded into the first ever renegade craft fair in san francisco early this morning and were thereafter treated to one of the nicest and most illuminating craft events i have done in some time. not to slight the other craft fairs we have done recently, but it was exceptionally nice to do a craft fair so far from the midwest/northeast. the west coast has its own vibrant craft scene filled with its own genius - and we've never seen it. after starting to know so many vendors at eastern fairs, it was overwhelming to be at an event so full of new wonderful things. and all this while trying our best to provide some semblance of customer service to the throngs of people that the renegade organizers always manage to get out.





i had to begin the day finishing up some button sets. between fairs, store visits and etsy, i had run right out of emma's love porn button sets. this is a minor craft fair tip of mine: bring something to do. it should be portable and not too overwhelming. it also shouldn't be something central to your display. but i find there are lots of advantages to bringing a project to a fair:
a) it gives attendees a peek behind the curtain and can start good dialogue about doing/making things.
b) it offers and alternative to simply sitting at your table/booth staring at potential customers (i, personally, am a slightly self-directed and shy shopper so i find myself avoiding booths where i feel i will constantly be stared at).
c) you get things done - a great advantage when one is traveling and stable work time/space is at a premium.

but enough about me and on to other attractions. there is way to much quality here to mention all the splendor, so i will just go through some hits. first off - the postcard machine! the pictures kind of lay it all out. except the pictures don't communicate postacrd machine's charming robovoice. that's a real treat.





we also got to see our great craft love, faythe levine, who has way too many amazing projects on the go to even begin to discuss here. the most timely and important are her impending film and book and also paper boat, the gallery/shop she runs in her home town of milwaukee. but she also makes art, makes music, make crafts, keeps blogs and tends bar. it's impressive and presumably exhausting.





faythe also has these lovely prints (below) for sale now to raise money for her craft documentary. the text is written by cinnamon cooper and amy carleton of the diy trunk show in chicago and was designed by kate bingaman-burt. if you can't find faythe at a fair, they are also available in her etsy shop.





i also bought a ship print (a mild new obsession of mine) from treatzone. dumbly, i did not photograph the print or their booth. but treatzone's website will communicate the necessary aesthetic information. oh, also the print looks like this.

decisions at the crossroads.

on our way from eugene, oregon to san francisco we made a critical decision at grants pass (as i'm sure many before us have done). we decided to go west and take the scenic and longer highway 101 down the northern california coast.

this also wound us through the giant redwoods of northern california. aitor had never seen them before (me, i once lived around these parts). he was pretty impressed at the huge trunks that extended down to the earth like the legs of dinosaurs. we needed to stop a lot to touch them.

when we got out of the giant tree park, i noticed that the sky was orange. for a brief momet i thought maybe all thr driving had affected my brain but then remembered all the forest fires smouldering through the state. it was weird. and spooky. and all the light that came through this orange sky was also orange, giving a day-glo martian glow to everything around, including us.

unhindered yet disturbed, we continued down the california coast, both very happy with our decision to take the 101. there is plenty to see and do on the trip - this is one of those strips of highway with plenty of both natural beauty and roadside america.





that paul bunyon up there is at the amazing tourist trap called trees of mystery in klamath, california. if you go there, paul will talk to you and say things like "i'm weight watchers' worst nightmare". it's pretty choice. we squished a penny, bought some post cards and splurged on a viewmaster (with archaic technology disappearing the way it has been, it seemed special to find one of these new - but maybe it isn't).

as we wound down to coast, we managed to sneak in a very quick visit to my old stomping ground of blue lake. it was very surreal for me to be back there. i spent my year of intense post-secondary education there and have only been back once since for a funeral. below is the old odd fellows hall that house the school i went to, dell'arte.



we managed to roll into san fransisco at a late but reasonable hour, full of excitement towards exploring this city and seeing how tomorrow's renegade craft fair goes.

hello, san francisco. leah tells us you are swell.

destination, san francisco.

wondering what comes next for us?


here is our san francisco destination, the big city's first installment of renegade craft fair. see you there!

and thanks to little otsu for the pre-fair shout out!

buy, eat, live, love olympia.

on our winding journey from seattle to san francisco, i had to bring aitor to olympia. first of all, i sell to a fantastic shop there, dumpster values, that is run by a fantastic woman, kanako. my lack of preparedness got us to town only to discover that kanako is on tour with her band right now. no matter, really. dumpster values usually keeps well stocked with buttons. i am deeply charmed by the fact that they are just about the only of my stores that calls me to reorder. nobody calls anybody anymore.

with this store visit swiftly out of the way, we had a small bit of extra time freed up to lollygag around town. many of you out there will no doubt know olympia for its ample production of punk/indie bands throughout the 1990's. but olympia is also an inspiring leader in the realm of town-sized localization. in the world of handmade goods, this was most notably exemplified by buy olympia (now based out of portland and hosting vendors worldwide).



whenever i go to olympia, i also like to visit the spar. i'm not sure if this is a cool thing to do, as it is a slightly pricey place, but i discovered it with my dad a couple years ago when we drove from vancouver to los angeles together so it's been a little magical ever since. it's also an old 1930's logging-themed multi-use establishment with food, a bar, pool tables and an erstwhile tobacconist. i guess they were removing the tobacco counter the last time i passed through, as it seemed to be all boarded up and i thought closed forever. it's good to see it back up and running. however, i do miss the jars of tobacco. whenever i would pass through (which was frequently for a while), i would pick out some pinches of whatever sounded interesting and send them off to aitor for pipe smoking. i'm not smoking's biggest proponent, but there is something about an old-school tobacconist that i like the same way i like handmade goods - blends from all over the world sitting in big jars and being dispensed by a knowledgeable and slow-moving old dude. there is craft in tobacco curing and blending. there is ritual and skill.



the spar is also filled with great artwork. it is clear that the owners have worked with artists to create unique pieces for self promotion. these intermingle on the walls with historical clippings about the area and establishment and newer framed flats for things like sleater-kinney concerts. it's nice to see a place like this acknowledge that the present (or near past) are also part of a place's history.

the day after the day before.

sarah got hungover. she is a funny hungover person. we decided to divert her hangover (and my crazy allergies) with some death breakfast at the mecca, a divey cafe/bar where matt works. the mecca is one of those places with poor lighting all day and night and service that is pointedly rude (although not at breakfast, we would experience this notorious rudeness later in the evening). as a sidebar, i think you can deliver slightly rude service if you do your job well and make me feel that you have things under control. i actual find the terseness comforting.

after chocking back some very good diner food, aitor and i went on a mission to go to my seattle stores (both red light stores - in capitol hill and the u district). both red light stores are pretty cool. they specialize in vintage and (although they certainly don't have thrift store prices) everything is really well picked and maintained. aitor got a little misty about a very nice sharkskin suit. maybe next time, sweetie. right now we need to siphon our dough into the hungry pockets of oil barons.



on the way home from our manic store visits, we found the university bridge to be broken. it seemed like a sign. so when we got back to the apartment we stayed in and watched thirty days of night while i made buttons. it's a surprisingly good movie (and pretty) with a terrible ending. there, i did a movie review. this blog is becoming as anti-specialist as its author.

seattlelite of love.

this evening we left our brief visit with my family to hit the open road again and headed south into washington state. that up there is mount baker. i was trying to make aitor take pictures of it but conditions would not conspire with my designs. instead, you get a picture wherein it looks like i am about to consume some pylons like little candy corns.

we are lucky enough to be staying with our friend sarah and her fiance matt while in seattle. we met sarah a few years back in a dark and noisy bar in baltimore where we were all trying to hock our wares at the city's first big art show. we were fast friends.

upon our arrival here, matt and sarah took us out to a place near sarah's night job called the whiskey bar. they had like fifty kinds of bourbon! what a welcoming. i can only hope our full day in seattle tomorrow will live up to this start. i also hope we don't have headaches.

terminal city.

terminal city is my favorite of vancouver's nicknames. it gets this name from the railroad terminus (originally intended for new westminster) but sounds so bleak and hollow and skidzy. i've always liked it.

today we also saw a bit more of vancouver's terminal underbelly as we drove from main street down to gastown. this is also a part of vancouver i've always felt i understood - the drugs and destruction of a pacific port city, but also the community that bustles and works far away from the sheen of fancier neighbourhoods. i could ramble on about the slums of vancouver, but the truth is i've never lived in any of them (although i did put in some formative years working on the downtown eastside). when i come back to these parts of my hometown i am mostly just happy that i have had the good fortune to not be a junkie. i am also appreciative of the freewheeling, independent life i have built for myself in a new light.

so back to that freewheeling life...we were on our way to gastown to have a meeting with my longest-standing vancouver store, dream on cordova (no website, can you imagine?) wendy opened the shop around fifteen years ago and i probably met her close to that time. she specializes in independent canadian clothing design with lots of accessories and a few other things thrown in on the side (books, pouches, art dolls...you know). i've bought some of my all-time favorite dresses there, some going back to high school. go there.

after our visit (she stocked up on some new artist sets), aitor and i finally got an actual visit with our friend ehren and his studio/collective space, little mountain studios.



little mountain is some sort of collective studio space that also serves as a performance venue as well as housing a little gallery in the front. when we visited today, our other friend, aaron read, was building a little recording studio in what can only be described as a series of cubby holes. he also sits in these little holes to make music. he's a small guy.



this sort of arrangement kind of sums up the exciting shambles that is little mountain. i can only imagine that the space is in a constant state of flux. but the creative output there covers the walls. working right in other people's work must be fortifying to the little mountaineers.



ehren also showed us one in a series of large-scale pencil drawings he was commissioned to do for nat bailey stadium. i can't really express how perfect ehren is for this job. not only is he an incredible artist, but he is also the only one i know who had to leave art for a while to pursue a professional baseball career. i think the art won out in the end.

we rounded our day out with a double-date dinner party with our friends taz and olivia. they have some strict rules around their place:



olivia also makes a mean thai curry.

sweet dreams, vancouver, wherever you sleep. we have to leave you again tomorrow. we will try to write. it's just...you know...it's complicated.

new person alert.

my friend emma made a baby! we met him by chance on the ferry back from pender island. world, meet isaiah.

pender island adventure day.

my father lives on pender island, british columbia, and has since i was in my teens, so i usually just spend time with him and fall into an allergen-induced coma when i go to visit. but with aitor in tow, and fostering our current lust for exploration, i undertook a day of intense activity (by island standards).



we started late, i guess (by farm standards), with a trip to the weekly pender island farmer's market. it runs every saturday from 9:30am to 1:00pm. we got there just before noon and all of ewa's famous baked goods were sold out. so if you go, go earlier. we did get to see lots of cool stuff, though, like the spinning demonstartions (above). to our great joy, we also discovered the table of an artists collective/partnership/residency called islands fold. we had heard of these folks before from our friend zeesy powers who just finished a residency with them a few weeks ago.



it's interesting to encounter different artist projects in rural areas (like all citizens) and to see how they manage to survive (or not) in different ways. it's also neat as a pseudo-resident to see art that i identify with appearing in the gulf islands. in spite of possible offenses this may dispatch, i have to say i have never had much fondness for the bulk of "art" i have seen coming out of the gulf islands. i mean, i have seen beautiful native art (and cruddy knock-offs thereof), and some impressively skilled craft (there is an amazing metalsmith here, and spinners), but the ratio of these things to wreaths with dried flowers glued on them is shockingly low. to be diplomatic, wreaths and ceramic cat buttons are not my thing. if everyone is being out-priced by the surrounding cities, it is nice to know that young artists who don't fit the "country kitchen" aesthetic of art and craft are also making a sustainable migration. long story, short - i bought this book:

...and i'm really happy with it.

from the market, we went to the pender island recycling depot. the depot also houses pender island's free store.







i thin someone needs to give a home to these guys (below). maybe the regional assembly of text? whoever you are, these are just waiting for you on pender island. for free!



we poked around the free store and found an adjustable eat-in-bed service tray that will probably find its way into my craft fair displays back in toronto. after shopping for free, it's hard to go back to shopping for money but the nu-to-yu is a happy medium. besdies, we were trying to do everything there is to do on pender island and this thrift shop is a real social hub on the weekends. we found so many silly goodies - glass-top mason jars, an old collapsible egg basket for my dad, some rick-rack, vintage fabric with a large football print, an old portable stapler, a vintage two-hole punch, some picture frames...all sorts of fetish-worthy trinkets. and when the ladies behind the counter tallied it all up, it was under three dollars! this is why i go so crazy at out-of-the-way thrift stores. they also packed all the jars up in old mismatched sewing patterns.



after our loot score, aitor and i reconnected with my father to go get oysters for dinner. the tide was so low that we didn't even have to hammer them off the rocks very much, the just littered the beach. we also learned that to test the potential poisonousness of oysters, you should rub their juice inside your lower lip. if it tingles or your face goes numb, eat no further. or so my dad says.







aitor was pretty much in hog heaven and asked that i take and post these pictures to make anahi jealous:





good night, pender island. we really ate you up.

tales of the high seas.

today we hopped a ferry for an all-too-brief visit to my father's home on pender island. man, the ferries have gotten expensive. fuel expenses have made their car fares almost double. my dad says less and less people are able to leave the island anymore for supplies. it is also cutting into tourism.

but we are not out this way very often, so i paid through the ass to see my dad. he also thinks he can do some fixin' on our car's bumper which is still hanging off the car like a big battle wound.







we didn't get a lot done today. we just went down to port washington to get live crabs from my dad's friend pat then we had an ol' crab boil, ate and went to sleep. ah, a pirate's life for us!





oh, and we got a tour of the ever-changing farm that my aunt and dad run. this year, fancy greens are the new black.

cabinets and curiosities on main street.

the last time we visited vancouver together, aitor and i were graciously housed in our friend noah's apartment. noah lives on south granville and he and i were performing at a a festival down on granville island. those who know vancouver will appreciate that this little strip of swanky shops and tourist haunts is not the best representation of vancouver (or at least the vancouver that young, poor people like me and aitor would inhabit if we lived here). south granville is great if you want to watch bif naked shop at caban or eat with your grandparents at the normandy, but mostly people in fleece vests just stared and pointed at aitor when we were there.

with no slight to noah's hospitality, i was happy that we were offered housing by my pseudo-stepfather this time. he lives right near main street which, in spite of recent yupping up, had a better chance of changes aitor's sour impressions of vancouver.

today we decided to go walk a bit of main street with the ultimate goal of eating some of the best and cheapest sushi in the world. but before we got to that, we stumbled into a curiosity, antique and "surrealist decor" shop called either alexander lamb antiques or wunderkammer. to my great amazement, the back room of this shop now houses the remaining collection of the exotic world museum. with aitor's general interest in curiosities (and desire to convert our apartment into a museum), i had long told him stories of exotic world from my childhood. it used to be housed is the storefront now occupied by neptoon records and was this crazy collection of things maintained by a couple who liked to travel and archive. i have the fondest memories of this place and thought it had disappeared years ago. and then all of sudden, we were in the midst of all this stuff (well, what must be a smaller collection of it).







nearby on main, i also saw these:





i'm sure some local crafty could tell me what these are. i mean, i know what they are - a softer finger-crochet version of knitta-type public art. but is this part of a larger action or someone's small whim?

we finally stopped digressing and made it to simply delicious, an outstandingly cheap and amazing sushi place at 28th. i kind of panic there because the gomae is like $1.43 and rolls are all $2 and it's all good! i just want to order everything. sushi is one of vancouver's most shining miracles. so much so that i actually broke down and took a picture of our plate of sashimi (i didn't think i was the meal-blog type):



i guess i come by it honestly. my mother photographs almost all her meals (and those of the people around her):



after refueling, we doubled-back on our walking tour of main street with some more art/craft appropriate stops. we stopped first at little mountain studios, an art gallery and performance venue run in part by my old pal and multi-disciplinary wunderkind, ehren salazar. ehren wasn't there - actually it was closed - so we just stalked around the windows like creeps. then we went to red cat records to look at the album art that ehren did for woodhands' lastest cd and 12". it was kind of like visiting with him but not really.



we are going to have to make a better visit when we get back from the gulf islands. i wish we had more time here.

we rounded out our tour with a visit to the regional assembly of text. do you ever have the experience of witnessing something that is at once aesthetically uplifting and also disheartening in that someone has already done it? i get this double sinking/lifting feeling a lot at this shop. the two artists who run in must share many aesthetic tendencies with me but they are more focused and seemingly get more done. they also make buttons and are on my snobby list of button superiority (with popnoir and what what, among others).



amid all the things they make, the shop itself also features gallery drawers (that artists are commissioned to fill) and the lowercase reading room - a former storage space, turned gallery, turned zine collection. if you are going to vancouver, i recommend a visit, especially to all you typographical/design/officephile kindreds.

the charm of the highway strip (and tiring thereof).

for the right amount of money (too much), canadian tire will fix your car on a long weekend and give it back to you on canada day. pricey, yet somehow miraculous. after getting our car back yesterday afternoon, we opted to spend yet another night in edmonton with the lure of a barbecue at our friend andrew bursey's place.

this was a lovely choice, save for the troubles that would face us trying to drive from edmonton to vancouver the following day. it's a fourteen hour long drive at the best of times - a length of drive i was hoping to leave behind me with my twenties - so an ambitious undertaking to begin with. this was only enhanced by the fact that the yellowhead highway had washed out west of jasper (for those who don't know, that's a pretty major route to wash out). so we were rerouted from jasper to lake louise. this involves driving in kinda the wrong direction amid mountain goats and slow-going rv's for about three hours. the upshot is that driving from jasper to banff usually requires having a park permit and is therefore something neither aitor nor i has ever done. you know what? canada is pretty fucking beautiful.









oh, whoops. did i sneak in a picture of my beautiful life partner?

to make a long story even longer, the trip ended up taking us eighteen straight hours of driving (did i mention aitor doesn't drive?). british columbia is beautiful but after the sun went down sometime after we passed kamloops, i was pretty ready to get to ol' terminal city. i had to stop from driving the prerequisite 130 kph down the coquihalla.

when we did arrive, we were met in vancouver by my family who greeted us with a big platter of sushi (the best things about vancouver). i say my family, but really it was the vancouver contingent of my family - my brother, mother and her spousal equivalent. we will be visiting my dad on the island where he lives in a few days. but for now, sushi-filled sleep calls.

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