Farmer Don's Secret Patch

Okay, so I went strawberry picking again - Tim hadn't gone yet and I happened to read Farmer Don's blog and see that there is a "secret field" of strawberries somewhere on Kruger farm that you can only know if you ask Farmer Don.
Secret Patch you say?! I thought this sounded exciting, and I'd spotted Farmer Don on his farm before. This seemed like a great opportunity to say Hi and get the inside information.

I had no trouble finding Farmer Don and he was a pleasure to talk to and we got to learn a bit about his farm. And this secret patch was worth the trip! It was honestly amazing. The berries were huge and luscious. Warm from the sun and red ripe and juicey. They tasted like strawberry pie.

I was very impressed by this particular plant. Look how perfect it is!And on the way I had fun with my camera, experimented with taking pictures from the car. I am constantly impressed by the Nikon D80. I got some great pictures on the road up to Sauvie IslandI like how the blue train car looks against the white silos.And the beautiful St. John's bridge... and then this house that is right before the bridge, I swear it looks like the house from the movie "Fight Club". I'd love to know the story behind this building, I think its very mysterious and intriguing, totally eye-catching.

I got a haircut today

I love my new haircut. And I love what the floor looks like after you get a haircut with all the little pieces of hair.

Falling Ginkgo Leaves

Ginko mobiles have been wisking through my life. Jan and I are working on some more ginko printing later today.

Why does my spell check want to spell ginko ginkgo - is that right?! Seems odd to me, but I have always been a terrible speller. This latest batch of ginkgo mobiles that Jan and I printed and I put together for this last weekend have birds perching among the leaves. The imagery of the ginkgo leaves, which evokes symbolism of memory as the leaves are used by some herbal practitioners to increase blood flow to the brain, improve attention in patients and possibly slow the onslaught of Alzheimers (although this was proven to be ineffective by multiple studies - I was just checkin this out in Wiki). Anyhow, the little birds in the mobiles are funny - as Jan says "its the auxillary memory for their tiny pidgeon bird brains!"

Click here to see more pictures of this particular mobile

Birds sitting on lines and falling ginkgo leaves, in greens and neutral tones. Its just lovely, and popular. So we are making up more creations this evening.

Its always wonderful to find good homes for fun creations like these. I am so thankful to meet great people down on the waterfront at the Portland Saturday Market on the weekends. Its quite satisfying when my work finds good homes, I think its one of my favorite parts of what I do. So let me take this opportunity to say Thank You!

Geeking Out With Type

I think there is an inner font geek inside my brain somewhere.There is something about looking thru drawers of type. Letterpress equipment is fun stuff to hang around, and there is something about the type in particular that is so delicious to me.
All the little metal pieces in their little compartments in drawers, little bits of ink staining the occasional well loved letter...I had my camera with me the other day while visiting Jan in her studio. She has a letterpress and many drawers of different type.
and then there is the bag of random type that is waiting on the to-do list to be put away in their drawers, Jan had a name for this bag of randomness... I don't remember it though. Visually this bag is really appealing to me, how the camera picks up on the occasional letter and the pieces that are still inked... it looks like rubble sort of metal alphabet soup :)

By the way, we have played around with using lettering in our glass process a few times, like on this little plate pictured above.

A Long Hike

Today was a long awaited long hike for Tim and I. Its been a while since the two of us had simultaneous free days and we made plans to hike Eagle Creek. The plan was to do the entire hike, all the way to the tunnel. For some reason I thought it would be a 4 mile hike, which sounded great. Turns out I completely made up that figure (my brain gets creative sometimes) and its way longer than that.
It was absolutely gorgeous, mostly going up on the way in, coming back down the same trail going out.
The trail was carved out of basalt rock around 1920 and created by Italian designers. Its quite incredible how you easily walk along steep cliffs and meander along-side the Eagle creek. I loved it. Punchbowl Falls (the picture above) was absolutely magical. You had to walk out along some rocks in the shallow water to see this view and when I saw it come around the moss covered cliffs I had to catch my breath. The water is stunning. In the summer I guess people go swimming here, I'll have to come back and see.
It was a long trail, we got tired after about 5.5 miles in (you have to turn around and walk out the way you came) and had a picnic (baguette, wine, brie, prosciutto, chocolate...and water) and doubled back to the car.

We had reached a sign that indicated entry into a part of the forest that all the Douglas Fir are less than 100 years old because there was a forest fire and it described that the next 13.5 miles of the trail would be this type of forest. I thought the whole trail was only 4 miles long, so this sorta freaked me out and we stopped to picnic within a mile of this sign. The thought of hiking over 10 more miles only to walk back the whole way was daunting. Little did I know that the tunnel which is 6 miles in was just a half mile away, ah well, we'll have to try again sometime. It was an awesome hike. In the end we walked about 11 miles. It kicked my butt.

I saw this leaf in the trail

I'm on the Etsy Community Council

I've been randomly selected to be on the Etsy Community Council.

So I took a picture as to fit in with the rest of the crew (see other About Us pictures here) its possible I just wanted to wear my orange lab coat (cuz its awesome) because no one asked us to take pictures of ourselves. ha! I saw a comment on their blog post where a girl said she wanted to be on the council so she could have her picture taken in a lab coat because her mother had always wanted her to be a doctor, and I immediately thought of my orange lab coat. It was too perfect to pass up.

The gig lasts 3 months, I am not sure what it entails just yet. Its a new idea that Etsy is organizing and I love it. I was on student council as a highschool kid (president of my freshman class), I dunno if that is any sort of credentials... but its all I've got :)

I hope I serve my community well.

Strawberry Jam

Today was a strawberry jam making day. Whew - we made about 30 jars! It was wonderful and fun, lots of strawberries and hanging out with my lady friends. We cleaned a lot of strawberries and my friend Maggie had her mother's strawberry tool on hand to make things easier. This tool is really neat - super simple and almost ridiculously unnecessary, but really, its awesomeness! It makes plucking off the ends of the berry so easy and simple and fast. No longer will I be satisfied with a mere small knife. :)