When I lived in Los Feliz, one of my favorite things to do was visit other neighborhoods in Los Angeles and take pictures of cool things I’d never seen before.

This tile mosiac mural at the Federal Building downtown totally captivated me — so beautiful and so well preserved.

Speaking of tile mosiacs, Clifton’s has some of the best ones I’ve ever seen out front.

I loved these two — the Observatory and the saber-toothed tigers at the La Brea tar pits.

Griffith Park is probably the place I miss most in the whole city… and speaking of the Observatory, it’s hard to take a bad photo up there.

Union Station is such a majestic place — I love train stations, and it is one of the most beautiful ones in the world.

And one day when I was in Chinatown with Jessica on our Day of the Dead tour, I took some pictures of the Cathay Bank. I didn’t know anything about it, except that I loved the way it looked. Then last month, the Los Angeles Conservancy contacted me about using one of them in a photo archive they created to celebrate 60s architecture in LA. The site just went up and it’s fascinating — there are tons of great photos from all over the city. The interactive timeline is really cool, and I was so honored to see my photo in it… and find out more about the bank, I had no idea it was so significant!

March 8, 1966: The first Chinese American Bank in Southern California, Cathay Bank, opens and provides much needed services and capital for development of the Chinatown area.

Visit the site here and add your own photos of 60s architecture in Los Angeles to their flickr pool, too. And if you are in LA, take some pictures for me, please! I never did get a good one of the Capitol Records building.

I got a copy of Christine Haynes’ lovely book, Chic & Simple Sewing, a little while back and had a chance to sew myself one of her pieces — the Retro Shift. It’s one of my favorite dresses ever!

Christine gave me some advice on grading the pattern up slightly. (I’m about a size 12 in ready-to-wear sizes, so I just added a little width on each side of the front and back pieces following the cutting lines, but used the L collar piece provided in the book’s patterns as-is.) I made a simple sash to give it some shaping, but I really like the way it fits without it.

I added a layered set of vintage buttons and some tucks to my neckline too. When I have time to sew for fun again, I’m definitely making another one, but this time I think I’ll make the Back-to-School version, which has sleeves and (optional) patch pockets.

What I love about Christine’s designs is how utterly adaptable they are. I was able to change the size of my dress pretty easily, and the simplicity of the lines on many of the pattern pieces give you an idea of how to adjust them to fit you in either direction. Even more, I love the custom bits and pieces you can add to her basic shapes — they make the clothes totally yours.

Diane sewed herself the Back-to-School dress and it’s gorgeous!

She used vintage fabric from the Kitten and added a casing with a drawstring tie belt as well. So cute. I also adore the fabric flower she’s modeling here, from her wonderful book, Kanzashi in Bloom.

I saw Karissa Jo’s fantastic Baby Doll dress in the Chic & Simple Sewing flickr pool and just loved it too.

She made it as an anniversary dress, and added some very cool modifications, like custom pockets and contrast fabric, which you can read more about here.

Meanwhile, Christine has some fantastic sewing classes lined up at Jenny Ryan’s beautiful new Home Ec. store in Los Angeles!

She has some amazing classes for fall: Sewing 101, Baby Doll Top, Reversible Wrap Skirt, and a couple of others.

And Jenny is throwing a party tonight to celebrate her beautiful new space — I wish I could go!

Lots more details are here, and Jenny says:

Our Grand Opening Celebration is Friday, September 4 from 7-10pm. We’ll have snacks and drinks, and there will be fun crafty surprise giveaways to boot. Be there!

Home Ec. Silver Lake
3815 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90026

I hardly ever get to use all three of my mighty Oregon, Washington and California tags for a single post, but today is an exciting exception!

Here in Portland, we are in for a treat tonight: Linda will be at Powell’s at 7:30, talking crochet and signing copies of Crochet Adorned! You can also check out this interview with her on the Oregonian’s knitting blog, and her live segment on this morning’s AM Northwest show — and she took this lovely photo of her book while visiting the Rose Garden yesterday. So pretty.

I’ll be writing more about her beautiful book tomorrow with some photos from her event…

And tomorrow night August 14, Ryan Berkley has a fantastic art show, Creature People, opening at Schmancy in Seattle!

I wish I could make it in person, but luckily for those of us not in the Evergreen State there will be plenty of online awesomeness to admire.

And all weekend, Handmade Nation is showing at Cinefamily in Los Angeles! Woo hoo!

Check out the Cinefamily site for lots more info on the gift bags, giveaways, book signing, mini-craft fair, and more!

If you go:

Linda Permann at Powell’s, 1005 W. Burnside St, Portland
Thursday, August 13 at 7:30 pm

(and at Yarn Garden, 1413 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland on Saturday August 15 from 1 to 3 pm)

Ryan Berkley at Schmancy Toys, 1932 2nd Ave, Seattle
Friday, August 14 from 6 to 9 pm

Handmade Nation at Cinefamily, 611 N. Fairfax, Los Angeles
Saturday, August 15 at 12 noon and 7 pm
Sunday, August 16 at 3, 5, 7, and 9 pm

Well, the good news is that Button It Up will be at Maker Faire this weekend! Yay!

Somewhat more of a bummer is that I won’t be there myself. I was so excited to go, and then instead of the family vacation we’d planned, things downgraded to me wrangling a lively toddler solo while flying, button-ing, and Maker Faire-ing. So I had to regretfully cancel my own plans, but lucky for me, my lovely friend (and bona fide button hairclip expert and book contributor) Diane Gilleland offered to teach my demo! So I brought over a box of buttons and a bunch of other sparkly bits

and I know it will be awesome!

I am so grateful that she is going to lead the crafty half-hour of power — and that CRAFT: will be selling copies of my book in the Maker Shed. I really appreciate the support for my book and my crafts — thank you to Diane and everyone at Maker Faire, especially Natalie, Rachel, and Dan, for making it happen with me a whole state away!

All the details for the Buttoning It Up demo are here, and it is in the Craft Demo area from 4-4:30 on Sunday afternoon. If you’re at the Faire, I hope you’ll stop by and make yourself something pretty!

I can’t believe how many amazing demos are going on , and I would love to see what you make if you stop by any of them! I’ll be glued to the CRAFT: blog and flickr to see some peeks at the awesomeness.

Diane will be teaching this cool little Maker Notebook project at the Provo Craft booth. Stop by and make a whole bunch of good things with her, Michaela, Jennifer and Jeff.

Cathy Callahan will be teaching Vintage-Inspired Paper-Mache — so cool.

I would love to know a few of Kathy Cano Murillo’s Secret Tips for Using Craft Supplies!

and I’m sure Michaela Murphy’s Kids Crafts: Story-Telling will be amazing too.

And in the world of needle arts (a personal favorite of mine), there are so many incredible workshops: Rachel Hobson’s Embroidery 101, Bonnie Burton’s Star Wars Sock Puppets, Craft Leftovers’ Mending 101, and Moxie’s Plush Monsters. Wow!

Okay, I’m already getting excited for Maker Faire 2010!

This weekend was just amazing. I can’t remember the last time Andrew and I both had three days off in a row (it definitely wasn’t in 2009) and I got to do a lot of my favorite things — gardening, vintage-dress-wearing, barbecuing, visiting the farmer’s market, going out to lunch, taking a long walk, and playing with Pearl. And on Sunday, the three of us headed out to Silver Falls State Park and went for a beautiful hike, right around the curve that takes you behind the South Falls.

We also got some unexpected inspiration for a last-minute Monday-afternoon baby-playdate-cocktail-party-barbecue with some friends in the neighborhood, which turned out to be awesome. Sunset is my favorite magazine, and I’m always happy to see the colorful new copy in my mailbox (and maybe try a new recipe, or file away another place I want to visit — this time, it was grilled corn and bay shrimp risotto, and Boise, Idaho, where Andrew and I went about nine years ago and haven’t been since).

But the timing has never been better than the June issue showing up just before the long weekend. Aside from falling madly in love with the cover (and putting “find some wooden chairs and paint them an awesome color” at the top of my backyard to-do list), I loved the luau feature, which updated a 1965 Sunset piece on the same topic with some very cool modern ideas and recipes.

We spotted a recipe for pineapple drops in the mix,

and wow, those are good.

We made them along with dark and stormys (my all-time favorite cocktail)

with a few different ginger beers to try on the drinks table.

Neither of the cocktails are supposed to have mint, but it’s so green and fresh in my herb garden right now that I couldn’t resist.

I made the shishkebobs and Andrew did all the grilling.

Our friends Mark and Mary brought quinoa salad

and amazing homemade strawberry shortcake

and Andrew found another Sunset treasure, an asparagus summer salad recipe, and made that too.

My plate was gorgeous.

I only wish I’d gotten a picture of the shortcake stacked up — it was beautiful, but with babies to wrangle, I just couldn’t pull off that one last photo before it was all gone.

There are a lot of other cool things in this issue (those fuschia chairs in that gorgeous backyard are my personal favorite), but super exciting to me is that Sunset used one of my photos for their California Road Trips insert!

They saw this picture I took at the Rose Bowl flea market a couple of summers ago in my flickr,

contacted me about using it, and here it is!

I was so excited to see it on the page. I love the Rose Bowl, and it’s such a treat to be part of their travel guide (which I really hope I’ll be using myself one of these summer months). Thank you, Sunset!

When I saw a peek at this in Jenny’s flickr, I couldn’t resist zipping over to Home Ec to do a little fabric shopping… what an awesome idea!

You can find your own set of 10 vintage-sheet fat quarters right here. No two packs are exactly alike, and I can assure you that Jenny has the cutest prints ever in her collection! Just look at the super-sweet projects she’s made with them for Sew Darn Cute.

Home Ec also has lovely new fabric (Liberty and beyond), kits and patterns, and books extraordinaire. I just can’t wait to get to Los Angeles and see the new ReForm School in person…

Oh, and the classes are completely rad too.

Hey, I’m in the middle of a massive round of button-cookie production but wanted to quickly pass on a Maker Faire update — applications are due this coming Tuesday (3/31) and if you’re interested, you should definitely jump on it!

I’m applying to teach some button and bead projects — I had the best time at MF 07 (missed 08 due to imminent baby arrival) and I am looking forward to 09! Andrew has never gotten to go so we’re planning to make a vacation of it. Yay!

from the CRAFT: blog:
There is still time to get your entries in to be a crafty Maker at Maker Faire Bay Area. The ultimate DIY weekend is May 30 and 31 in San Mateo, California, and this year’s Faire is celebrating President Obama’s call for all of us to participate in remaking America. We’re looking to showcase “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.”

Call for Makers for Maker Faire Bay Area 2009
Entry Close Date: March 31, 2009. Space is limited, please submit your entry by the due date!
Maker Faire Bay Area: May 30-31, 2009
Hours: Saturday 10am – 8pm (6pm – 8pm evening program); Sunday 10am – 6pm.
NOTE: This is NOT Memorial Day Weekend.

Hey! I hope you can stand one more round of cross-posting over here and yes, a little more button talk. I’ve been trying to do most of it over at the Button It Up site, but since my first book event is next week(!) I wanted to officially invite you all to come make crafty things with me:

I finally made a little dedicated events page (why I didn’t think to just do that earlier is unclear; what can I say, having five sites keeps me a little too busy sometimes) so some further-out crafty things I’ll be doing are stashed there too: button-crafting at Maker Faire (Bay Area), Home Ec (Los Angeles), Urban Craft Uprising (Seattle), and hopefully a few more in the mix too.

So if you aren’t in Portland, I might be coming your way sometime soon! I never really got to travel with Bead Simple, what with the whole late-pregnancy/newborn thing, so I am really happy to do some fun book events in some favorite places now.

And for anyone out of town who is interested, I thought I’d put together a little bonus pack of the Portland book events projects to go with signed copies of my book in my Etsy shop. So if you want to buy a book, I will also send you a little random button assortment and two blank hairpins to get your first project started as a thank-you!

Okay, I’m off to finish up some work, do some chores, and take some project photos while it’s actually sunny out [another (!) here for sure]. I hope you’re having a nice Thursday!

For about the millionth time, I wish I could be in a few places at once… and this weekend, I would love to be in California! We are planning a trip down there in May and I can hardly wait to visit these super crafty places and learn a thing or two.

Tonight is the kickoff party for Home Ec, Jenny Ryan’s lovely craft studio venture with Tootie and Billie of ReForm School! As a bonus, along with the crafty treats to check out, classes to browse, and cupcakes to enjoy, she’ll be signing copies of her fantastic new book, Sew Darn Cute.

It sounds like such a fabulous evening — if you are in Southern California and get to go I would love to hear all about it! Home Ec is offering some amazing classes, including paper-maiche jewelry, power tool empowerment for women, and this awesome kids’ charm bracelet class taught by Laura Stokes-Estrada.

Meanwhile, in Petaluma, Nicole Vasbinder of Queen Puff Puff is celebrating too — her StitchCraft studio has been open for a year, so she is offering her customers 20% off on all her fabric and craft supplies!

Besides all the pretty things she has for sale, Nicole also offers some amazing sewing and craft classes, from a-line skirts (my personal favorite sewing project, ever) to running your own crafty business, pattern-making and draping, and creating a custom-fitted duct tape dress form (which I have always wanted to do). Here’s a photo from one of her recent handbags classes… so cute.

I got to stop in and check everything out the month StitchCraft opened, and it’s such a lovely place to find something pretty or learn something new! Be sure to keep an eye on the blog for more shop + class announcements, too.

I’m in a rush but wanted to post about some awesome, AWESOME stuff in LA this weekend! Man, I wish I could make it down there. Weren’t we all supposed to have personal jetpacks and moon colonies and time machines by now?!

and coming soon…

woo hoo!

And if you are in Portland, Alicia is having her first book signing Sunday night! See you there…