Santa Barbara surprise

We left home Sunday morning without a particular plan, but with the picnic suitcase in the back. We were vaguely thinking about a nice beach, or Ventura, but ended up in Santa Barbara. The drive up there is beautiful, especially the part between Ventura and SB along the ocean. By the time we got to SB we were quite hungry. We went to the Rocky Nook park to have lunch. It’s a pretty little park close to the mission, with picnic tables and barbeques. It was very comfortable in the dappled shade under the oak trees.

After lunch we stopped at the mission, which always makes such a pretty picture against the background of the mountains. The rose garden in front is completely cut back at the moment, so there wasn’t much to see there. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to cut back roses in southern California. If you don’t they just keep on producing flowers. However, official rose gardens always do cut back their roses, even if at home I still have flowers on my rosebush.

Our next stop was the Alice Keck garden, a beautifully designed garden on appropriately named Garden Street. It has streams, a pond with turtles, an island, and many more garden features. Gorgeous unusual plants, many in flower. It being Sunday and nice weather, it was very busy. People with picnics and lots of children.  A great place to go on a weekday!

After driving around it a few times to find a parking space we went to the courthouse. It’s a beautiful building that looks very old, but is actually from 1929.  there is a beautiful view on top of the tower of all of SB, 360 degrees. It’s even more obvious here SB is hemmed in by the mountains on one side and by the Pacific Ocean at the other. The city has very stringent building codes, therefore most buildings have the beautiful terra-cotta roof tiles.

Later we spent some time in the garden of the courthouse. It has a nice lawn with palm trees and is a very pleasant place to spend part of an afternoon.

Malibu Creek Lagoon

On monday we went for a lovely walk along the beach at Malibu pier. There were lots and lots of birds on the ocean side as well as in the lagoon.

The water in the lagoon was a little low but it was beautiful nevertheless. I love watching the pelicans and cormorants land and take-off. They have to expand quite a lot of energy to get airborne. The snowy egrets are adorable with their yellow feet and fluffy white feathers. You can sometimes get quite close to them just walking along the beach and get a decent picture, unlike with the other birds that keep their distance.  (I don’t have a long zoom lens)

The following picture is not that great, but the egret is. It’s a great white egret among the snowy egrets.

On the way back we had to cross Malibu Creek again where it flows into the ocean. The water was very cold!

It was difficult to estimate how deep the water was, and on the way in we were hesitating before going in. Some other people joined us and urged us to try it first, even though they were the ones wearing shorts and we were wearing jeans! In the end I went in first, with rolled up jeans,  and the water only came up to about my knees, so we kept everything dry.

Bird feeder?

The squirrel ate all the bird seed when I first put up the bird feeder and I’ve been trying to come up with a solution. I’ve covered the feeder with a cage with holes the birds can enter easily but which are too small for the squirrels. See here the result:

I was quite wrong, however, thinking the squirrel couldn’t get in. Today he entered through the same small holes as the birds. Maybe squirrels are like cats, and their bodies can go wherever their heads can.

The joke’s on me!

San Clemente State Park

This past Saturday and Sunday we went for our annual family camping trip to San Clemente State Park. Several cousins + family get together for a big free-for-all on the beach, a potluck dinner in the evening, and a nice campfire.

The weather cooperates  surprisingly often. This year the week-end was sandwiched between rainy days,  and we didn’t get wet, except for a cold shower down my back when the wind got under an awning.

The campground is beautifully situated on the bluffs. The cliffs are nicely sculpted and make a beautiful background for the beach. From the campground a paved path takes you to the beach. Halfway down there’s a bench, and some people never get farther than that, the view is so gorgeous.

The train tracks are right along the beach here and Amtrak trains come by every once in a while. People just walk along or over the tracks and it’s allowed, or at least nobody tells you not to. This always seems amazing to me. Growing up in Holland I’m used to Dutch railways which are extremely dangerous with frequent, high speed trains. I would never dream of walking on the track there, or even crossing it at any other point than an official crossing.  I suppose because of that one of my guilty pleasures is pausing on the railroad tracks to take a picture. So call me crazy.

A day for the birds

Today was a lovely rainy day. Lovely to stay home and not do much of anything, with time to watch the bird feeder I made last week. A pole with a tray on top stuck in a very bushy rose bush. P was home as well and he first noticed the birds. Last week in Malibu we bought black sunflower seeds on purpose to have a real gourmet treat for the birds, but until today there was little interest. The first guests were house sparrows and white-crowned sparrows and they are great fun to watch.

Later in the day we had a larger critter looking for a snack: our neighborhood squirrel, who also loves sunflower seeds, and can quickly eat a whole dish full.  I chased him off about seven times and am now thinking about how I can make a cage for the feeder so he can’t get to the seeds anymore. There are lots of trees in the neighborhood with fruit for him to munch on and he even likes to eat roses.

In the afternoon we went for a quick walk on the beach since it was dry for a while. Of course it started raining right away when we got there but luckily not very hard and we had a nice walk. Here too lots of birds.

Birds must like rainy weather. I’ve never seen so many plovers and sand pipers, with the occasional tern and gull. Also geese in the water and a few pelicans flying by. (even an airplane now and then).

Tomorrow I’m going to show you some of the pictures I made this last weekend in San Clemente, where we stayed at the state park on the bluff above the beach.

Garlands.

I absolutely adore garlands and have been wanting to make some. Last year (just a month ago) I made some for christmas presents. I’ve done one paper one, sewn together. The others are fabric ones. This first one is from Dutch ‘delft blue’ fabric I bought when last visiting Holland two years ago. I cut out the pictures and doubled them up, wrong sides together, stitching around the edges with a zig zag stitch. It worked fairly well, but here and there some threads are sticking out. I sewed them all on a piece of chord I found in the back of my drawer. I later realized the reason the chord was so thick and irregular was because it’s candle wick chord!! I suppose I won’t be making candles anytime soon.

For the second garland I didn’t have to deal with small pictures so I could make proper little flags, sewn right sides together and then turned. They look much better, I think.

A while ago we had a big wind storm in the area and my rose bush in front of the porch got blown over. In hind sight this was a very good thing because now I can use the porch railing for exhibiting my quilts and projects.  I’ve pulled the bush in front of the window, from where I can now see the birds sitting on it. It looks a little strange from the garden side but I think it will look better when the bush fills out a bit and gets used to growing the other way….

Leo Carillo Beach adventure

Today P and I went to Malibu to buy strawberries at PC Greens, (they are sooo good), and from there continued up Pacific coast highway to Leo Carillo State beach. It is one of the most beautiful beaches in the area. First a nice cove, than rocky areas with sea stacks and exciting caves, and then another lovely beach.

It was high tide so it was impossible to walk around the headland since most of the little beaches and the tunnel were under water. However, from the top of the cliffs the views were lovely. We watched the cormorants on their rock and also saw some pretty awesome waves, with a beautiful sea-green color. The cormorants were alternately fishing and then drying their wings.

The beach with the tunnel was entirely under water and looked very dangerous. I’m hoping to come back next time during low tide, to be able to walk through the tunnel, and also to explore the tide pools.

This is tunnel beach. The tunnel is on the left where all the water is going.

For lunch we decided to try to find a spot on the mountain side of the park, at the campground or maybe a picnic area. We went underneath the highway through the (dry) creek and followed it for a bit upstream. After a while I saw a little trail climb out of the creek. I followed it and found the most beautiful picnic spot. It actually was a campsite but luckily it was empty.

P went back to the car for our picnic suitcase. It’s a thrifted vintage suitcase that we’ve been using since P’s birthday breakfast at the beach this summer.  One of my vintage sheets is used as either a table-cloth or ground cloth. A thermos of tea is usually included with my vintage Corning centura cups, which are very strong and have so far survived lots of rough handling. The plates are red-checkered melamine, also a lucky thrift store find.

The only things not vintage are (obviously) the plastic containers with the handy snap lids. They are very practical though, air tight and easy to open and close, so there is something to be said for those as well.

The picnic tables are under giant sycamore trees. They do give us fall color here in Southern California, but at very odd times, hardly ever in the actual fall. We had a visit from a very forward scrub jay as well, who was very interested in P’s potato chips. He came so close I was able to photograph him quite nicely.

Western scrub jay

A lovely day.

Vintage quilt tops

Inspired by the (old) beach pictures I put up yesterday I decided to go back to the beach to take some pictures of my latest quilts. I got to cheat a bit on these since they are made with a quilt top I found at a thrift store. I right away loved the colors and the fabrics, which I think are from the 1960’s. It was quite large and I decided to get out my trusty seam ripper and ripped it in half, very carefully, so as to get two quilts out of it.

They are just the right size for cuddling up on the couch on a cool California evening, of which there are quite a few. I adore polka dot fabric and am particularly taken with the red one, so that was an easy choice. The batting is polyester, so as to keep it nice and fluffy and light. One of the quilts has double batting for when it’s even colder than usual.

I had planned to try my new sewing machine’s quilting capabilities but the quilt top was a bit wonky so I ended up just tacking down the corners of the squares, which worked out fine and keeps the quilt fluffier and warmer. I did some ‘stitching in the ditch’ around the binding, which turned out okay, although I could probably use some more practice…. Can’t wait to start on the next quilt, this time with “a top of one’s own”.

Bags on the beach

Beach bags, or they could be. The beach is just brilliant for taking pictures, and in the off-season the life guard stations are usually not peopled, so they make a nice background. These bags are all from my bag making period, when I was churning them out one after the other. Most of these have found nice new homes with family and friends, except for the pink one. I’ve been using that one as a purse. They’re so nice and big and the inside pocket has a zipper to keep things a little more safe.

The Dutch print fabrics and some of the polka dot ones I bought when I was in Holland. Others are from the fabric section of the garment district in down town Los Angeles, a wonderful place for fabric hunting. There are also some fabrics from my local buy-by-the-pound fabric store. The interfacing comes from Jo-ann’s, which I buy during their sales or with the coupons they provide.

I haven’t been fabric shopping for a while and even have a new years resolution that I’m not going to buy any new fabrics, but do some major stash-busting. In my thrift shop adventures I still buy the odd vintage sheet when I find a nice one, but that is quite different, don’t you think? Although I must admit I’ve started sewing with those as well….

London underground shopping bag

In the last couple of years I’ve made a great number of shopping bags and I just found some pictures of one of my favorite ones that I would like to share. The bags are made from a very basic model. My pattern consists of a modified paper bag that is a little wider across the top. Most of them have some inside pockets, and some have thread spool closures. They are all lined and are sturdied up with iron-on interfacing.

This first one is made from a pillow case with a map from the London underground on it and I absolutely love, love it! I found the pillowcase in a Ventura thrift shop and wish I had more. It was enough to make two bags. They went to my sister and a friend who had been to London recently, so that was all very appropriate. I hope to one day go to London myself and maybe find some more of this great fabric.

For the pictures I took the bag to my metro station. There obviously is a formula for underground map making since the LA style is exactly the same as the London style. Mmmm, maybe I should start looking for LA metro fabric. Of course the LA metro isn’t as nicely intricate as the London underground so you would need many more repeats to make a pattern.