Ginko Tree in Little Tokyo:







Graffiti in Larchmont Village:



My Dream condo (which is now for rent but WAY out of my price range):

Left


Right

Husband and I had a wonderful day today!

We decided to have an adventure and take really long bike ride to some place new. We choose the Monterey Park Cherry Blossom Festival.

We started on the train and went all the way out to South Pasadena, hopping off at the Mission street Station where we were greeted by this guy:



We bike about 6 miles from there through Alhambra to Monterey Park. Well - that's 6 miles according to our bike computers.

The festival was kind of a flop and did have nearly as much cultural stuff to do. Most of the booths were the kind of thing you regularly see at local city festivals with a few exceptions. The anime was scarce most of the booths had t-shirts and food.

The long ride was very enjoyable and Husband got some photos along the way. I got an image of a flower I hadn't seen before.



One of the biggest surprises was stopping at Taco Bell and actually really enjoying the meal. I love Taco Bell for fast food but the stores around my neighborhood aren't very good. It mostly has to do with the food preparation - it's sloppy, sauce every where, burritos falling apart, etc... Not at this store.





See - nice and neat!

I know I'm weird but Taco Bell got me through college and I have a really soft spot in my heart for the cheesy mexican food.

My lovely friend, Marleine, and I had dinner last night at Katsu-Ya in Studio City. Fab sushi, arty, crafty, design talk were included in a few hours of total awesomeness. Mar and I used to sit in cubes next to each other, work on the same web site, and talk almost everyday. I saw her plan every aspect of her wedding, which I attended, and was so pleased to see her get extremely creative during that time.


Isn't she pretty?

In the last two years, we've both taken on new jobs and moved around a bit which means that neither of us has a chance to talk much face to face any more. I miss it...a lot.

She started a business shortly before we both switched jobs the first time, working on what seemed to be her favorite part of the wedding planning process, designing custom wedding invitations. I have mentioned her before, but she has a new stuff out now and I thought I would share a few of my favorites from the new line of letter press invitations! They have the cutest name too - The Olive Press Collection!





As you can see, this lady has some style. I think her designs completely capture a modern and chic aesthetic in wedding invitations.

Find out more about Paper Olive Invitations at these links:

Wedding Invitations - Paper Olive
Paper Olive Blog - Paper Martini
Become a fan on FaceBook

Since the official death of my machine - I have gone out and made another purchase... I have a new Singer Tradition purchased from Target.

I haven't done much with it yet, but I have started a new shirt. I used the drape top pattern from Stitch Lounge. Some one needs to tell Stitch Lounge to get a new site and a better search engine optimization person. It took me TWO HOURS on google to find the pattern. I just gave them three directly referenced links so hopefully it will be easier for the next girl to find.

Here's my progress so far:


I got everything cut out and the inside seams complete - now I just need to hem it!

I don't know how I always seem to post around lunch time, but I do...

any way - here is the latest piece I've made:















worked on it 10 minutes here and there over a month or so. I was inspired to finally get over my irrational fear of french knots and go hog wild. As you can see I now have the trick to the knot down. This was the first really successful attempt at the french knot! YEAH!

look at what husband surprised me with:



It's a Brooks B18 woman's saddle. I am super super excited!!! It's so pretty and feminine. I love that it's so old timey - I don't have the guts for steam punk attire, but this is a close as I get - totally modern bike with old school trimmings.

Heather Bailey did her March of the Tools series again this year - my favorite one mentioned is the Color Munki. really really want one of these.

True Up has an article on using Pantone swatch books to match colors in fabrics[/url]. They mention at least one site that lists Pantone colors in conjunction with fabrics.

oddly enough, Boing Boing Gadgets has a tutorial for creating your own letter press. Not sure how viable it is, but could be cool.

Make your own crocheted bike seat cover with the translated pattern from Carina's Crafty Blog.

Anyone in LA want 2 TV's and 2 monitors for free? email me via the "contact me" link at the top. TV's are completely functional. large CRT monitor has a gun going out and I have no idea what's wrong with the other one except that it is showing signs of going completely dark. Could be used for art projects maybe?

yeah - I left it sitting for a long time after the last debacle because I was so put off. I just got around to digging through internet archives last night to find instructions on fixing it.

I went through them all and tried every known suggestion. the needle is not hitting the bobbin chase any more, but not it won't pick up the bobbin thread and makes a "chunk" noise when I start sewing.

ARGH! oh well - I officially am putting the machine back in the box and am sending it to salvation army along with the monitors that need to be picked up.

poor little machine, I'm sorry you are sick and I can't fix you, but it would cost as much to buy a new one as it would to fix your problems.

pictures of the inside:

I saw this on Celestina Carmen and thought I would play along....

So apparently, the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


Instructions (if you want to play): Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read once. Enter a number for the number of times you read something. (Make sure you delete my X's!) When you've finished put your total at the bottom.OK, fellow bookworms, let's fight dirty!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
x 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
x 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
x 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
x 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
x 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
x 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (SIDE NOTE - I DO NOT LIKE TO READ STEINBECK!)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -
x 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
x 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
x 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
x 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
x 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon -
x 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck-
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( I love this movie but have never read the book - the original movie not that horrible remake a few years back)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
x 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
x 76 The Inferno - Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
x 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White-
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
x 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
x 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
x 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -
x 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

TOTAL :: 21 out of 100

EDITED TO ADD 4/10/09 - I ahve downloaded several of the books on my G1 and can now say that I am up to 22 books now. X next to "Benjamin Button"....

I am swamped at the office - so much so that I am completely left without the time or desire to do anything but veg. It's good - I have a really really big project I'm working on. (yeah)

PLUS - I had a wisdom tooth pulled on Friday and it's KILLING me still (on Wednesday). I swear I would be billionaire if I got paid to complain.

Here are a few cool things I've found in what little surfing I've done in the past few days:

TrueUp.net has a cool article about repeat patterns in illustrator. most of it I had already learned but they had a few cool tricks :)

Lovely cherry Blossom pics from Please Sir

Treasuring's article on personal art style

Vintage Button Desktop Wallpaper

My favorite author's executor is ill - go here to find out more. Philip K Dick is one of my all time favorite authors.