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):