nerdy Swedish crafts in San Francisco

While I was in San Francisco there was an Etsy labs event at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, connected to the Open Source Embroidery exhibit. I put it on my list of things I really wanted to do in our short time there, and yay, we made it happen! I spend a lot of time at etsy.com, so I knew I'd like something organized by Etsy people.

We got to the entrance and behind the desk there was this knitted poster:


We were looking at it with squinty eyes and the woman working there said "you won't be able to read it, it's in Swedish." ha ha haaaaa, because my guy is Swedish. He didn't get it because it is a knitting pattern, knit into the ..... knitting! I almost had it figured out before she said that.

Turns out that the exhibit came from Sweden! It was mixing fibre arts with technology. Here's a quilt of text messages embroidered onto different fabrics. The texts are in English, Swedish, Norwegian and Spanish:

So the picture quality isn't great, but I like them so I can practice. I like to read stuff that Swedish people write casually, because that helps me learn how they really speak, which I don't really get in my workbooks.

There was also an embroidered motherboard:

An HTML colour quilt, it was spectacular:

A chair you could embroider on while sitting in it, listening to the iPod woven into the armrest:

And other cute textile art, like this:

California Highway 1, suburban LA and Hermosa B

Drove the fantastic highway between San Francisco and LA. It really is as gorgeous as they say. I miss it! I hope to spend more time at the ocean next year, or at least a lake or river. Water is so gorgeous.

Of course we had to take off our shoes!

November and they can play volleyball in bathing suits!

mmmmm veggie burger at beach-side pub, with avovado:

if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

I went to California for about 5 days, I'd never been west of Winnipeg before then. The first cool thing that happened on my trip .... Wayne Coyne smiled at me! He so sexy, and always seems so amused. He was stopping over at Newark, and so was I. That's him:
I slept a lot in San Francisco, that's kinda boring, but the 3 hours jet lag knocked me off my feet. Good thing the hotel was cute! We had grand plans to see some bands and get out on the town early in the mornings, but .... zzzzzzzzzzz!

San Francisco really is as hilly as they say. Taking the city bus up and down those hills felt treacherous but the locals weren't fussed at all.
There were pretty houses all over town:

Thursday was our only full day in San Francisco. We went for a nice long walk in Golden Gate Park and then OMG we were sure to go to Amoeba Music, a fantastic music store in Haight-Ashbury!
More wanderings. The Castro during the day:
The Castro at night:
Not quite a cable car, not quite a street car, I love public transit!
We also went to a really great art show, but I'll make that a separate post, it was that cool.

The food! I didn't go food-crazy like other trips, but here are the highlights:
Lasagne from Herbivore:
Basil pesto from Herbivore:
Potato salad, also from Herbivore:
Soup and veg from Beautifull:
Soy ice cream sundae from Maggie Mudd:

Friday we had a late breakfast and picked up a rental car so we could drive the fantastic California Highway 1, and drove north to see the Golden Bridge before we headed south to LA. We couldn't see much of the bridge, though, because of the fog. Ah well, the rain didn't last long.

More trip pictures soon!