Meeting Velosewer

Velosewer of How good is that? mentioned that she had a 24 hour layover in LAX in June and asked if it would be possible to fit in some fabric shopping. We made plans to meet up, but they went awry.  Fortunately, we still managed to hit SAS Fabrics near the airport and meet up later for dinner with our respective spouses before they crashed with jet lag.

FWIW, I think that fabric shopping is a great way to get over jet lag. It's stimulating enough to keep one awake, and mistakes made due to fatigue can be quickly ditched before you get on the home-bound plane.

SAS does NOT generally allow photography on their premises.  But, we got another shopper to sneak a fabric tourism photo of us anyway.  The manager is looking down, not at us.  (The manager is really, really nice, but she has to enforce the boss' rules.)

Velosewer is wearing her me-made !purple! jeans that I covet so much, and cardi-wrap.  I wore the outfit from Fail to win!  I even bought the fabric from SAS.

I forgot my camera so these photos are courtesy of velosewer, who used the same photos in her post.

One possible reason why SAS does not allow photography is that they are an odd-jobber that sometimes sells high end and designer fabrics at very low prices. Those designers might not be happy to see their old stock photographed in settings that they can't control.

It's all good, because you will find gold interspersed with dross in this jam-packed store.  In the photo below, I'm stroking silk tweed for $10/yard.  If you want to make a silk tweed Chanel-style jacket, select one of the $3/yard silk charmeuses (see how Trena used hers) on the other side of the doorway in a coordinating color.  They also received a shipment of 50/50 Merino wool (ultra-smooth Australian 120s)/polyester blend suitings in subtly textured basic colors like black, navy, tan and gray for $10/yd.

It's June and I've just finished sewing up the pieces I selected when I met up with Rose there in March. Shopping with other sewists is illuminating; they pick stuff I wouldn't have normally have glanced at.  Then I become inspired by how they use it.  This could be really bad for my fabric hoarding tendencies--but the company is so much fun.

BTW, I am always happy to receive Tim Tams and Easiyo Biolife Yogurt packets from Aussie and Kiwi friends.

Update: Internet karma!  An Aussie friend I met through our blogs just asked if she could stay with us next month.  I'm making a wish list of Style Arc patterns and books available in Australia but not (easily) found here.  She's visiting LA, SD and SF if you need a pattern mule.

The demise of Google Reader

What are you using instead?

I've tried several, but find idiosyncrasies in each one that I don't like.

Right now, I find Feedly and The Old Reader the least irritating.  TOR is a real shoestring operation and their servers are swamped.  Consider sending them a donation so that they can add servers.  It looks the most promising (for the way I like to use RSS readers, YMMV).

I also signed up for Bloglovin and claimed my blog, but I am not sure I recommend that service.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

After spending an evening trying all 3 services, none of them do what GR did.  Why, oh why, can't they just allow us to pay to use Google Reader instead of canceling it?

It was a good week

at the Lair of the Golden Bear, Camp Blue.

Mark read when he wasn't hiking.

 Iris and I cruised the creek when we weren't at the pottery/art grove.

 We did a little bit of paddle boarding, kayaking and mountain biking.  All three of us also read a lot.

On the way home, we stopped by the Twain Harte Market to purchase locally-produced wines that we can't find elsewhere. When we got out, we saw two other silver Toyota Sienna minivans parked alongside.

That reminds me of this photo of our other car.
Regrettably, we missed Ciclavia Iconic Wilshire Boulevard so that we could help Iris get settled into CTY (sleepaway) camp the day after we got home.  We got home around 6 PM Saturday, registration for CTY camp was the next morning.  I performed a heroic laundry feat to get everything unpacked, washed and repacked.  I'm not sure if anyone noticed; no one thanked me.