I finally got to the de Young's Amish Quilt exhibition

I finally got to the de Young's Amish Quilt exhibition and spent hours studying the quilts, taking notes, viewing them with a small magnifier, comparing their colors to a set of color cards I'd brought with me.  I want to construct some Amish-style quilts, so I wanted to know how they actually made theirs.  When they put on a border, what did it look like?  What colors did they use for the hand quilting?  I was lucky enough to visit with Stephen Brown, the owner of these quilts, and we talked about how important it is to preserve the colors by displaying the quilts in low light.  Once a quilt fades, he pointed out, there's no way to reverse the process and get the original colors back.

[June 15: the exhibit has ended, and the de Young has removed the link, so I've edited this post. -- reh]

Another page about the Amish quilt exhibition (the page may look blank, but scroll down for text and illos)

A site that displays many of the Browns' collected quilts

-- Rachel Holmen

BIKE SAFETY: blinky lights, lights at knee level

As a driver, I try to notice bikes, but some riders seem to INTEND invisibility. Others mount lights on their arms, their shoulders, their helmets. If you can only use one light, it should be at approximately the same height from the ground as a car headlight. That's where drivers are scanning the street ahead of them.

I found this light yesterday, thanks to the Rock the Bike folks' participation in Bike to Work Day: Rock the Bike dot com. I particularly like the Down Low Glow -- a set of fluorescent lights that attach to your bike frame.

-- Rachel

Bike to Work today - May 13, 2010

Join the Velorution!!! www.sfbike.org

I can't bike this year, because my bike was stolen and I'm waiting to drive to LA and pick up my dad's recumbent (he's not riding any more). But at least I take public transit and use casual carpool.

An invention for weaving

I invented something before breakfast!  (A new kind of reed for use in rigid heddle looms.)  The invention was prompted by an article in WeaveZine by Syne Mitchell (who once sold me stories when I worked as editor for a fiction magazine).

Of course, once I started trying to record the original idea, seven variations popped into my head, so breakfast was very late indeed as the ideas took precedence, clamoring to be recorded and illustrated. -- Rachel Holmen

George Scithers, Rest in Peace

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.discuss.obituaries

A sweet, gentle man who loved science fiction and trains, and knew an enormous amount about both.  There's a nice article about him, with an oldish photo (though as I remember, he ALWAYS wore that jacket), at http://2001.worldcon.org/gscithers.html.

-- Rachel Holmen

Lost Bus Pass

During a precarious, busy week, worried about finances, lost ALL my bus passes.  And discovered, by checking my TransLink use online, that somebody else has been using them.  *&)*(&)&#&*#&*).  Turned off the Translink.  The BART pass, however, and the monthly Muni pass, are lost causes.  I have approximately $2.83 to my name; this will get me home tonight, but not back to work tomorrow.  My mailing address is ON the Translink card; clearly the thief didn't care.

I finished listening to WICKED

Was a bit disappointed by the ending; the author seemed determined to jumble into the last few pages of the book all the things that were needed to match the Baum telling of the story, without having it make a lot of sense.  Yes, officially most loose ends were tied up, but why did Elphaba suddenly become so UNsympathetic?

Not sure what I'll listen to next. -- Rachel

New-to-me Cat Settling In

I've taken a friend's cat, and the first two nights she just hid. Tonight, coaxed out from under the bed with a dancing bit of junkmail on a string, she was much more social, curled up on my bed, and then went off to eat some of her dry food. After that, she actually came back onto the bed. 

She has her own blog (yes, I know, it's rather precious of me to pretend to know what a cat might think), acatmia dot blogspot dot com.

-- Rachel

WICKED

I'm currently listening to WICKED, the audiobook. Some of it is very amusing, but the current section is quite serious. I am impressed by the author's creation of names for his characters, and his universe-building skill.

The book is based on the Wizard of Oz story, but tells it from a different point of view, with some interesting parallels to pre-World War II Germany. There's a long wikipedia article, but I'm not reading it until I have finished the whole book. And there are two sequels.
-- Rachel Holmen

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

(And how about donating some $ to KSCM, the San Mateo jazz radio station, which played FABULOUS Mardi Gras music during drivetime this morning? -- Rachel Holmen

Aloo Gobi recipe to watch

I just watched BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and then watched some of the add-on features. The one that cracked me up was "How to Cook Aloo Gobi", where the director, an Indian woman raised in Britain, shows us how to cook this dish -- with added advice and grumbling by her aunt and her mother. Worth checking the DVD out of the library just to watch this 5-minute episode.

(Yes, I'm very behind the times in my film-watching; I checked this one out of the San Francisco Library, which has a branch near my office. And I probably haven't had my TV on in, oh, eight or nine months. Another fab film I got from this branch was CHILDREN OF PARADISE, a French film made during World War II.)

-- Rachel Holmen

All Lit Up

Here's the tree with its tiny string of battery-operated lights.

Live, small holiday tree

I don't usually have a Christmas tree, I have a WREATH on my front door. But this year, I kept buying little tiny ornaments, and while I could have put them on a wreath, I realized I wanted a tree, and the scent of pine in the house. So I bought a dwarf Alberta Spruce. It's not gorgeous, but I'm hoping that as it grows, it will improve. Its full height is only six feet, so eventually I will plant it in my yard.

Last night, I had great fun making an extemporaneous garland from red wire and fake pearl beads. I even have lights on it, but until I buy 2 C-cell batteries, they won't light up.

Happy holidays!
--Rachel Holmen

Handsewn leather

Years ago, I made a split-cowhide vest for my brother Scott. He outgrew it, and gave it back to me, barely worn. (Around the same time, I hand-sewed -- ENTIRELY -- two jackets, one for my Dad and one for my boyfriend, out of shearling -- sheepskin with the fur still on it; but I later realized that nobody could wear them; the fur made the sleeves so bulky, nobody could get an arm into the jacket sleeve.) I ran into the vest recently in a closet, and I recalled how I created the design I put on the back of a thistle - I went out into my yard, sketched one, simplified it, stylized it, cut it out of colored suede, tacked it in place with rubber cement, and hand-sewed it on with a glover's needle.

Glover's needles look really odd -- instead of a sharp point and smooth, cylindrical sides, they have 3 sharp edges for a quarter inch or so back from the point. And you must sew with a sure hand. If you make too many attempts at one stitch, instead you have created a hole in the leather.



Here are a couple of photos; I'm still proud of the design, and the workmanship.
--Rachel Holmen

Salvaging a Cooking Mistake

It was, oh, 1970 perhaps. I was poor. I was hungry. AND, I had friends visiting, including handsome auburn-haired Jimmie. I wanted something for all of us to eat. I boiled water and added the only package of noodles in the house, drained the noodles when they were done, and stirred in some melted butter. So far, excellent. Then I went to add a little garlic powder -- and the lid came off the jar. In dumped WAY too much garlic. I scooped out some, but a lot was still in the dish. There were no more noodles. What to DO????? I tasted the dish, and it had so much garlic in it, it was bitter.

I searched the kitchen, found a block of mozzarella cheese and a big can of whole tomatoes, maybe 24 ounces. I drained can of tomatoes, added them, stirred everything up, grated a whole lot of cheese on top, and put the dish briefly into the oven. Success!!!

"What do you call this dish?" Jimmie asked. I confessed the dish didn't have a name. "Glop!" Jimmie pronounced, and I still call it that.

(Now I make the dish on purpose. Often I include hamburger meat crumbled up in the frying pan, cooked, and drained before adding to the noodles.)

I'm cooking up some today, for my quilting group; the weather is grumpy-looking and grey, and this will be just the dish to sustain us on a cool evening.

-- Rachel Holmen

Food for Colder Weather

I had an old family favorite meal today for lunch:  Campbell's tomato soup made with milk, with Cheerios in it.  (Plain, old fashioned Cheerios, not the sugar-coated ones.)  Good on a chilly day. -- Rachel

Bridge Open Again

They did manage to get the bridge open again -- and some idiot promptly earned himself a Darwin Award by taking the new curve too fast and driving over the rail. For a day or two afterwards, other drives actually slowed down for the curve, but by now, two whole weeks later, most drivers take the curves too fast.

SG Gate info on the fatality: link

-- Rachel Holmen

Bay Bridge Broken Again - Oct 27, 2009

I took the 108 bus from work to the TransBay Terminal, and there was my J bus. The driver opened the door for me, but a dispatcher waved me away. "The Bridge is closed," he said. Luckily, I had a BART ticket, so I took that home, but it was pretty crowded, and with one extremely quick stop at a grocery store for frozen veggies, I got home just before 10 pm. The word I'd heard in the bus terminal was: closed for 24 hours. What SFGate is now saying is, Closed Indefinitely.

I'm not a big fan of BART, either. TOOOOO noisy to hear my audio books; in fact, I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit about deafness among the ridership.

-- Rachel Holmen

Home-made cards

My talented friend Keli made me these cards, on what looks like hand-made paper. If you're interested, contact me (reh at sff dot net) and I'll put you in touch with her. She is a wizard at birthday cards, and could probably come up with designs appropriate for other occasions as well. (And if you know great sources for rubber stamps, I'll forward that information to her as well. My favorite store, in Petaluma, seems to have disappeared.) -- Rachel Holmen

Another cat lost to me

My gray cat, Pearl Too, died two weeks ago today, leaving me once again sad and angry because, as another cat-loving friend reminded me, Pearl forgot the part in her contract about living forever to be my companion. Some cats have a lot of personality, do silly things you can retell to your friends. Pearl wasn't much like that, although of course she did have her moments. But mostly, she just wanted to be wherever I was, watch whatever I was doing, and if possible sit in my lap and purr. So she leaves a big hole in my life, especially when I'm home in the evenings. (And those darn grocery stores. Do you know, they have PET FOOD aisles, just to taunt me?)