Trip to Swamis (Self Realization Fellowship Garden)

The surfers call this place" Swamis". It sits high on a cliff overlooking a famous surfing spot. It's a retreat started by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1936. He lived here then and wrote "Autobiography of a Yogi" here. It has a beautiful view of the Pacific and the gardens are gorgeous. It's in the city of Encinitas.

We also shopped in downtown Encinitas. Lots of cute shops and great places to eat.

Nancy was dressed appropriately in the trendiest color.

Jeri, Nancy and I then met Steve (our photographer/graphic artist)

for lunch and we discussed a possible exciting new job.

Book Club- Catch 22

We wanted to read a classic. We chose Catch 22, which I thought was quite hard to read. Several others thought so, too. Kathy remembered reading it in the 60's and enjoying it then

but since that time so many other books (Mash, for instance) have been influenced by it that it sort of lost it's steam. Beth noticed that almost every sentence had two contradicting parts. A clever and complicated way to emphacize the theme.

Beth brought her infamous Margarita machine.

What a marvelous contraption! This is the second time Beth has gone to considerable trouble to bring it and the second time it didn't work. She says the only time it doesn't work is at the book club. A friend of hers put it together from a walker and a motorcycle. They use it all the time for neighborhood block parties when electricity isn't close at hand. Poor Beth had to make the margaritas the old fashioned way by plugging the blender into electricity.

The finished product. A perfect Margarita!

Laurie's ratatouie.

Roxanne's fruit salad.

Vickie's tomato, mozzarello, olive salad

Vickie's antipasto salad

Helen's taboulie.

Helen's plum galette

Vickie's lemon cupcakes.

Kathy brought wine. And a good time was had by all. Even though most of us didn't like the book it made for a very lively discussion.

How Nancy wraps our Etsy sales

Fallbrook 4th of July

Fallbrook's 4th of July celebration is always held at the beautiful " Grand Tradition".

Nancy and I have volunteered to help for the last three years. Last year we were at the V.I.P
table and Nancy escorted Rita Coolidge and her party to their table. She's one of the few celebrities in Fallbrook. (Another is Duke Snider )
Our "town philanthropist" Arleen Ingold is always the main sponsor of this gala event.
It's a fund raiser for" Fallbrook Beautification". The fantastically able Jerri Patchett runs the whole affair. There's great food, music, rubber duck races and fantastic fireworks.

Watercolor Workshop-June 22

Mary Tomaskevitch taught this workshop and we learned a lot of great techniques. I used a few of them on the painting above:
Used a wax candle to draw the lines on the bathing suits before painting on the color,
used the edge of a credit card (an old expired one!) dipped in paint to add the straight lines on the umbrellas,
dipped the other end of my brush in just-painted wet paint to pull out thin wispy lines for the designs on the umbrellas,
shook salt on the background and then painted over it with the sand color ( this would have been better if I had kosher salt).
Mary said not to use all the techniques on one painting and I actually didn't use them all. There were several more that I can't think of right now. I think I'll paint a sampler sheet of all of them and keep it close at hand.

Some of my fellow classmates paintings are below. I didn't get everybody. Some people had already left before I thought about taking pictures. They're not all finished. We were going to all go home and finish them. Somehow I never seem to do this, though. If I don't finish it in the class it just sits there for ages.

Nina

Margaret (the bird lover in the class)

Kathy Rote (part of a mother and daughter painting duo.) See her mother's painting below.

Carol Yowell (mother of Kathy) What beautiful water!

Beth Taft

Gasper Vacarro ( our only male) The beginning of a painting.

Carol Zaleski ( a beginning)

Diane Jansen (a beginning)

Lynn Davis hides behind her painting.

Partial clean-up

Nancy and I started cleaning up and got some things ready for Amvets to pick up. It was a pitiful few boxes considering all the junk that's left. It might have looked like junk but I had the hardest time not going back and taking things out of the boxes. When the man was loading it up I was watching through the window and forcing myself not to run out there to take one last look. I'm sure I could make something out of that teacup that had just the tiniest little chip.

Nostalgic 8 mm wedding movies

If you or a relative is planning a wedding you must see this site. My very talented niece, a graduate of Emerson (film school) makes the best 8mm wedding films. See her link at the right (Lovebird Films).

New ATCs

Here's 6 artists trading cards that I just did. I like them too much to trade them, though.

Renaissance Music Concert

We attended the Fallbrook Library Sunday afternoon concert. A Courtly Noyse is a very authentic Renaissance music group. They had wonderful costumes and a varied assortment of instruments. They also sang beautifully.

See the link to their website to hear the music and read about their instruments.

Our new book, hot off the press.

Just received our latest book.

Back cover.

One of the cuter embroideries in the book adapted from an illustration from the 1940's.

The book features quick and easy things to stitch with designs gathered from our collection of vintage linens and books from the 40's, 50's, and 60's. There are over 150 designs which all can be done with just 5 easy stitches. Perfect for beginners. And to make it really easy the designs can all be ironed on with the included iron-on transfers. It's published by Leisure Arts and can be bought at Michaels, Joanns, etc. or through Leisure Arts website.
(see link at right- Look for"Stitchin' Retro" Page 2 of the Needlework category)

June Book Club-"Things Fall Apart"

Vickie couldn't stay for the meeting but still brought this
beautiful berry cheesecake which she made.

Roxanne brought berries from her garden.

Beth brought a wonderful melon and prosciutto appetizer,
which I forgot to photograph.

The book was a classic book about Africa written in the 50's. It was one ( if not the first) book written by an African (Chinua Achebe) told from the viewpoint of an African. You really felt like you were there, living the life and it wasn't pleasant. Their culture was completely disrupted when the Christian missionaries arrived. Some good things came of it
but an awful lot of bad things, too.

This picture represents how sometimes they had very little food to eat as we did, too because

most of our main food providers were absent this night. Oh, the starvation!! We did have a lot of good desert, though. Luckily Beth brought something with a little meat for protein. Nancy rushed into the kitchen and whipped up an avocado salad with the only two avocados that were ripe. We do have an avocado ranch and our meetings our held here but somehow we hadn't gathered any lately. Since I'm living here now and I seldom cook there was absolutely no other food on the premises. No, wait... I did manage to conjure up a bowl of almonds and some chips.

But we did have plenty of wine thanks to Kathy and Roxanne.

Elegant Polling Place

View while lunching before voting.

Our polling place was at the elegant Pala Mesa Country Club.

We had a nice lunch before voting. A nice voting experience!