No Kings in Los Gatos

Saturday morning, my family joined up with one of my mom's groups, a local branch of the AAUW for a spontaneous gathering for No Kings day. Most of their members live in a retirement community nearby, so there were mostly older folks. DS was one of the youngest people showing up. We had 120 people, flags, signs, cute dogs, walkers, wheelchairs and enthusiasm.  And yes, that's $4.99 a gallon gasoline, (car wash included)!

We found a nice shady spot to expand the demonstration when the corner got too full.

Mom was glad to have some shade, and to have us show up. She got to introduce us to a bunch of her AAUW friends which was super cute. She's holding her sign from the first Trump presidency, a vintage yet still true item. We got a whole lot of supportive honks and thumbs up and only one middle finger that we noticed. That person actually stopped and videoed us, so we waved and said "have a nice day!"

After the first group tired out we went about a mile and a half down the road to one of the larger Los Gatos protests where there were about 600 people gathered in front of a Tesla dealership. They had music and two of those car wash dancers that had slogans that went with the demonstration, "Protect Our Democracy"

And "Trump Lies", DH seen grinning like a maniac because he thought it was funny (and true). I had no idea you could buy one of those with your own slogan on it, they're not very expensive.

It was super fun seeing both of these groups, one average age of about 80, and the second closer to 40 being so passionate and engaged and fired-up. We skipped the demonstration in our little mountain town that had a turnout of 400 people. Turns out on that day, all around the whole country there were between seven and eight million people out on the streets at various sizes of demonstrations or marches. There were even international efforts like the No Tyrants rally in front of the US Embassy in London (note, not a No Kings rally). I really recommend going to one of these, it made me feel all the things: Proud to be an American, happy to wave our flag, thrilled to see so many others in our communities out there too. 

 

Wandering Wednesday on a Friday: Alum Rock Park

For our usual New Year's Day hike we went a few days early (yesterday that is) to Alum Rock Park in East San Jose. It was rather muddy due to the recent rains and we braved a "closed" trail. Thankfully no one fell in the river.

We managed to time it just right and go in-between rainstorms and had blue skies most of the way.
There were a lot of old bridge pilings from the former steam train that went over the river that were quite interesting.

 I liked the big wreath with sparkly ornaments hung on the overpass.

Interesting cave spots on the crumbly rock face.

An old falling apart cabin from 1915. I believe that it's made out of redwood given the peeling bark on the logs.

Plenty of Red-Hot Poker aka Torch Lily (kniphofia)

These are really interesting plants and I really should grow some in my own garden.

There was an interesting structure with this interior roof.

It was set over a non-functioning water fountain. Reminded me of the Las Pulgas Water Temple

We got a little elevation and got this lovely view.

Up at the summit of the trail we were on, looking back out into the South Bay, the view was blocked by clouds unfortunately.

The underside bark of one of the oaks was so striking.

All in all, about 4.5 miles were hiked with my SIL's family and then we had wonderful ramen at Hinodeya and got to light the menorah with them for the 3rd night of Hannukkah.

Wandering Wednesday - West Cliff Drive

 

Last weekend was DS's 29th birthday so we took him out to an awesome sushi dinner in Santa Cruz. He suggested a walk along West Cliff Drive. Even though it was close to sunset, we snagged a parking spot near one of the lovely curbside plantings. This is a Hooker's Evening Primrose, which I keep meaning to plant in our garden.

The late sunset was so soft and lovely, I really love the pastels in this picture.

A seagull had her nest way out on the point with the best view.

There were still a bunch of surfers out there catching the last waves of the day.

A little more sunset with one of the shoreline coves.

We made it as far as the lighthouse, which doubles as a surfing museum.

The birthday boy! 

Wandering Wednesday: San Mateo County Fair

A couple weekends ago, we made the trek over the hill to the San Mateo County Fair where we met up with some of my Phi Mu sorority sisters, including friend Jaye. I mainly went for the socializing with people I don't get to see often, and to also get to see the BAMQ quilt challenge exhibit. Here it is as seen from far away.

What a terrific showing from our group, eight quilts.

As you can see, I was very surprised to see a blue ribbon pinned on my quilt. This just happens to be my first ever! 

And here's friend Jaye too, with her quilt and ribbon!

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the larger quilt exhibit, but I took this close up of this wonderful quilt made up of the Tilda fabrics I recently bought. I just loved the quilting on the lanterns so much. Sorry for not getting the name of the quilter here.

Friend Jaye and I were looking at this quilt block and trying to remember the name. Isn't it fun? I just love that checkerboard center. And the effective use of "Snowballed" corners on the squares. I need to look this one up in EQ8 and/or Block Base.

We walked around a bit, watched a great local high school's robotics clubs demo robots scooping up foam rings and tossing them in a basket. What fun that would have been in high school to learn robotics. We had some great lunch, there were a ton of choices. We went into the barn with all  the 4-H animal exhibits. There were some great Polish chickens, the ones with the crazy "hair-do's". I really liked this one pig, she was having herself a great dream, kicking out with one of her hooves and ignoring all of us gawkers.

Apparently her name was Trix and she weighed in at 273 pounds.

There were a lot of great exhibits set up, one of which had historical presentations of games, like this Monopoly one. Including the Anti-Monopoly version, Landlords Game and the "Don't Go To Jail!" dice game, ha ha!

Rich Uncle! That's a great play on Monopoly. They had enormous versions of classic games, like Connect Four, including a huge Etch-a-Sketch. My DH tried to turn the knobs, but they just fell off. We unfortunately missed out on the sushi eating contest. (Can you imagine?!)

It was a really fun day out, and I did pretty well with my knee right up until the very end of the day when it suddenly got Very Tired. Thankfully this isn't a super spread-out fairgrounds like ours in Santa Cruz County so our car wasn't too far away.

Wandering Wednesday - The Big Basin Burn Scar

Last Sunday afternoon, DH and I were driving home on Highway 9 towards our town, Boulder Creek and the traffic came to a complete stop. Thankfully we were in a cell service zone, so I could check what was happening, unfortunately a head-on crash. One person helicoptered out to the higher level trauma hospital over at Stanford, and four more people in ambulances. We sat for a while and then decided to double back a bit and go through the much smaller Highway 236. This road goes through Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

I haven't been on 236 since the Lightning CZU Fires in August 2020. I'd seen the other side of the mountains from the Pacific Ocean in 2021 and it had really really bothered me. Gutted me, really. When you're a forest dweller, you tend to identify with the forest you live in, at least I do. So it's been four years and I knew it probably didn't look as bad as I'd been imagining by now.

This is from the top view looking back towards the unburned (so far at least) mountains where we live. 

The redwoods are mostly all still alive. They've lost their big wide branches, and now look like green furry phone polls or those fake cell phone "tree" towers. The usually reddish trunks are almost all a solid ashy black.

Really bizarre looking!

Most of the other sorts of trees are not showing much signs of life, the oaks, firs, pines, etc. at least in drive-by mode. Looks like the Redwoods will rule for a while. It's going to be so interesting to see what happens with this forest over the next few years. It seems to have things well in hand and underway to recovery with no help from us. That's how it should be I suppose. I'm relieved that we went through and saw it with our own eyes. Now I think I can go back and go for a hike. Big Basin has a couple of trails opened. It was very very strange to drive through the main part of the park and see no permanent buildings, they're all gone. But the trees are still there, that's the important part.

Wandering Wednesday: Bridges of The Bay

 

Last week I got the chance to hang out with friend Jaye for a couple days. These are some of the pictures I took on our journeys around the Bay Area. First up a stormy morning drive over the Golden Gate. Not so golden looking in the overcast. You can still see the orange-nesss of the closest to the viewer verticals. The history of the specific paint color: GGB International Orange is so interesting. And there's even an equivalent Pantone color: Pantone 180 (CYMK 19.4%, 77.9%, 79.6%, 3.6%). Sadly, this wasn't included in our Pantone postcard box.

A nice but very cloudy and windy view of the northern part of the San Francisco Bay from the Marin Rod and Gun Club building. Very nice location, which is literally right off the same freeway exit as San Quentin prison. We were meeting with the long arm quilter that friend Jaye works with. She's now the first female president of this 92 year old outdoor sporting club. Not many quilters can claim this sort of day job, very interesting!  Looking at this picture I always forget about all the little teeny island bits scattered about in the bay. It's amazing that they're not all inhabited. Some of the bigger ones are of course, like say, Alcatraz, another famous prison. 

The half mile long fishing pier that the club members get to fish off of. I've never tried pier fishing, I bet it's really fun.

A view of the Richmond San Rafael bridge that we were about to drive over. On a blue sky day, this would be a really gorgeous picture/view, but I like the drama of the sky about to open up with much-needed rain. As a native Californian, I always need to remind my self that to stay out of drought conditions, we almost always need the rain, however inconvenient it might be in the moment.

I've always loved the linear designs made by the trusses and supports of different types of bridges. Also, it's worth mentioning that it's very nice that someone else is driving so that I can safely take a picture. It might be fun to pull out all the bridge pictures I've taken over the years and do an abstract quilt series based on them.  Putting this is in the quilt series ideas bucket. It's probably already in there, so here it is again.

As mentioned previously, we visited Bay Quilts, they had a very famous Hollis Chatelain quilt from 2000 installed about the thread choices, Blue Man. It was very fun to see this one in person, it's hand-dye painted and really gorgeously stitched. There was also an installation of a great group of quilts by Ileana Soto, which are up through the end of January. I honestly wish Bay Quilts was my LQS, could I convince DH that we need to move to the East Bay for that reason? Probably not.

And then finally, after a great BAM meeting, we went and had some dinner in downtown Redwood City I took this picture across an intersection because I love the frescoes, or maybe they're just painted or tiled. I have no idea how old they are, or if they have a story, but it's such a great and striking design. Guess that means I'm putting this in the maybe someday quilt design bucket and the inspired by building motifs quilt series bucket as well.

Five Pantone Project Blocks

 

Now that I've made two of each type of block for the Pantone Project, I'm going back around for round 3. 

After making these five blocks, I'm up to having made 60 now (out of 100). I really like how this group of colors looks together.

I think I'm really into this using the same background on each block that we're doing in this project. It really sets off the fabrics so well. Even with all the varied colors it's cohesive.

Some of these blocks are quite simple which is nice. No paper piecing required.

I did this Chevron with templates, including sewing a Y-Seam (eek!)

This wide stripe was paper pieced so that the stripe would end up in the right place to play well with the other blocks.

Ahhh the simplicity of the good ol' four patch. 

While sewing together the five Pantone Project blocks, I used the squares of the 9-patch donation blocks as leaders and enders.And voilá all 8 are done and ready to turn in.

As I was piecing the last of these blocks I noticed that the fabric on the lower left featured a logo for the Roaring Camp Railroads, our local steam train. It either takes you up into the redwoods or down to the beach. I thought it made for a funny block when use along with the Cal fabric.Very specific to me personally and quite local yokel-ish.

And speaking of local yokel stuff, c'mon, pumpkins for sale on 9/4/23?!? That's too soon by several weeks, maybe a month? I love Halloween a whole lot, but really, early September?