Patterns In LA

I've been in LA this week as my DH attends a conference at the LA Convention center and so I've been walking around the area, or taking the metro, and going to museums. This is the very interesting entrance to The Broad museum.

These next two were taken by accident when I didn't turn my phone camera off and kept walking. It was 97F and I was in the direct sun, that's my excuse. But they capture the excess of pattern one can see in a city (or really anywhere) if you look at things from an unusual angle.

I thought I'd be able to capture the shimmer of the heat-haze of the day off the street and buildings. But maybe it's only visible through polarized sunglasses?

This overlap of both grids and the angles of the posts of the storage system inside The Broad is such a great design.

In the downtown main library, the cupola dome is really gorgeous and pattern-filled.

There's a great exhibit about the building of the library nearby and they included these detailed color and pattern guides to some of those patterns. I bet there's a book out there (or maybe in that very library) that contains all of them. How about any of these as the center of a medallion quilt?

The old library card catalog drawers are still there, but glued shut, still look very cool though.

A riot of patterns looking down into the new wing of the library.

And then one of many interesting mosaic doorsteps. This design would make a great quilt.

Wandering Wednesday - Quail Hollow

We've been trying to go hiking every weekend and made it four out of five of the weekends in January. Two of the hikes were on the same trail in Quail Hollow Ranch in Ben Lomond. DH is making his best "wood rat" face as we start on the Wood Rat Trail. This is a clever little fence block to keep the horses off this trail.

The first time we pooped out and didn't get all the way to the top, but the second time we made it the whole way. Gradual improvement is still improvement.

The peeling bark of the madrone is so funny to see, it somehow gives the tree so much personality.

Halfway up the trail, but we can't see the ocean yet.

Sometimes the fallen logs look unreal or even fake to me, like this one. The texture of the bark splitting as it all dries and retracts is so interesting. This would make a good quilt design. Adding this to my possible quilt designs list.

Gorgeous Jack O'Lantern mushroom.

We made it to the very top that has the view out to the ocean. A very nice picnic spot.

Waiting Snake

 

Yesterday was a traveling back from Spokane day, with an almost three-hour flight delay. At least I got this beautiful picture in the morning on Tuesday in San Francisco. Those glowing red squares are so interesting, especially with the offset squares and additionally offset circles inside them That plus all the lines on the pavement. A great start to a possible quilt design.

In the extra time I had to sit around and wait for our plane to even decide to show up, I got a whole lot of the sky stitched on the Snake in the Garden quilt. Just one more section of green left to go on this!

Wandering Wednesday - Portland Japanese Garden

It was a real treat to get to visit the Portland Japanese Garden once again, and this time during a different season--Autumn, and with friend Jaye who hadn't been there before.

It was truly marvelous to see how different the garden looked with all the changing colors of the leaves.

This one maple was the most vibrant glowing red, it really stood out against the dark rhododendrons behind it.

There was a lot more moss happening which was lovely to see.

I loved the colorful messiness of the fallen leaves on the orderly raked gravel designs.

I really enjoyed this gorgeous artwork, Cross Currents by Anne Crumpacker, which is made of cross-cut bamboo.

Even the bonsai trees had color-changing going on.

This little leaf is So Big in this picture. It was really about an inch and half wide.

Now we come to some of the many pattern and texture pictures that I took during this visit. Honestly, I took a lot of the same pictures during my last visit with DH in the summer of 2024. I find these all very intriguing and worth examining for possible quilt designs.

Some would obviously and easily make great quilt designs.

This would be interesting piecing.

This makes me think of framing of interior quilt borders, or very heavy quilting designs. With the gorgeous colors behind of course.

This picture reads as a quilt design to me.

That's probably enough for now.