Tailwind

I came home from PR Weekend San Francisco and realized that I didn't take any photos. Must have been all those fabric fumes. I did shop at Fabrix (twice!), Britex and Stone Mountain and Daughter. I had an enjoyable time at Lacis and will definitely go back when I need something special that only they stock. But for right now, my sewing room is overflowing and it is back to my regularly scheduled life.

I carpooled with Raye Ann and we talked about people who roll through stop signs. My husband, a white male, insists that it is OK to slowly roll through stop signs as long as you could stop in time if someone else is already at the intersection and has the right of way.

 I beg to differ. Some (if not most) don't have the reaction time or braking distance to stop in time. Plus, little kids and critters are down low, where you don't notice them until you are on top of them. So, no. It's not just the law; it's a good idea.

So how did a guy reach 40 with such a selective interpretation of the law? I call it driving while white. I have seen so many blacks and latinos (and some Asians) pulled over for driving like my husband. Yet, he's sure that the way he drives is fine because he's never been pulled over for his rolling "California stops".

When you come from a position of privilege, it's easy to think that everyone has it as easy.  You don't think you are lucky; you think that you are just good.

It's like having a tailwind through life.

When viewed on the global scale, I also live a privileged life.

For example, I read that if you asked people around the world where they would most like to visit (if money and visas were no object), San Francisco is at the top of the list and Santa Fe is not far behind.  In the month of April, I spent long weekends in both.

Here I am, taking a break from art gallery hopping with my husband on Sante Fe's Canyon Road while wearing Butterick 5816.

Food fetishism is another hallmark of privilege.  I enjoyed the most amazing BLT at Cafe Pasqual's in Santa Fe.  It shares a plate with cold beet soup and kale salad.  Yum.  We managed to eat three meals (2 lunches and one dinner) there in one weekend.

Shifting topics, I want to show you the kind of picture I can't take because I am an Asian woman.  This picture comes from Marcy Tilton's blog, but I'm not saying that she hasn't earned her success.  This is just a convenient example of a privilege that is denied me by racism.

Many blogs feature photos of store windows while on travel.  Marcy posted some lovely photos of Parisian store windows from her recent trip of digitally-printed flower images on clothing.

When I traveled in France and Italy, store personnel would literally run out of their stores and push my camera down whenever I tried to take a picture.  This happened even when I was merely trying to take a "cute kid street scene abroad" picture of my daughter.  The stores worried that I was going to rip off their designs and mass-produce it in factories in China.

The way the store personnel treated me was just plain racism.

If a knock-off manufacturer wanted to rip off the designs, they would send a well-dressed white person to take the pictures or to even go into the dressing rooms with the clothes for a more detailed look.  Actually, rather than to wait for the clothes to hit the stores, they would use runway pictures, which appear right after fashion shows.

Storefront photos abroad are conspicuously absent from my photo album.  Instead of flower images on clothing, I have flower images period.  BTW, the roses were in glorious full bloom at the South Coast Botanic Garden yesterday.

If you want to learn how to replicate those cute three-dimensional flower appliqués in Prada's Spring 2013 RTW collection, you need only purchase an used copy of Kumido Sudo's Fabled Flowers book, published in 1996.  Although I've only made one project from the book, it's chock-full of techniques to create all manner of three-dimensional flora embellishments in fabric.

People are always looking and appropriating, consciously or not. Those designers trying to prevent me from taking photos stole got their ideas from somewhere (and sometimes from Asian women!).  Trying to stop the flow of ideas harms society as a whole.

#oldpeoplearegoodateverything

I watched the conclusion of The Great British Sewing Bee tonight and I have only one thing to say: #oldpeoplearegoodateverything.

Ann deserved to win the competition and all of the participants were worthy competitors.

The epilogue confused me.  It said that Ann had recently taken up quilting.  That's not true.

Look at Ann Rowley's Flickr stream, particularly the Patchwork and Quilting sets. There are examples of her quiltwork going back several years.  Check out the label on her Stars in the Garden quilt.  The quilt was started in 2005 and finished in 2007, years before The Great British Sewing Bee.

Exploring Ann's Flickr photostream, you can learn that she knits, crochets, quilts and makes garments.  She can pretty much do anything well.  Is this among the neatest and best executed tubular cast-ons you have ever seen?

#oldpeoplearegoodateverything and may we all live to make it true!

Ciclavia April 2013

Iris passed up a chance to ride between Venice Beach and downtown Los Angeles on the back of the tandem. She stayed home to do whatever it is teenagers do at home. Bad Dad and I rode Ciclavia to the Sea on our own. I practiced stoker photography.

It was pretty thrilling to ride city boulevards without worrying about dodging cars and trucks.

Crossing California 101.

Crossing Interstate 110, the Harbor Freeway.

We saw about a dozen of these double decker bikes.  They show incredible skill getting on and off these elevated bikes at intersections.  You'd be even more impressed if you knew how crowded the event was on the west side.  (Follow that link for physics professor Clifford V. Johnson's photos of overcrowding and thoughts on how to make the next Ciclavia better.)

Bad Dad refused to pack any ride snacks, preferring to forage off the land. In Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, Jonathan Gold wrote, "There may be as many as 500 Salvadoran restaurants in central Los Angeles, and at least half of them are pretty good."  The route along Venice Boulevard gave us a chance to sample the odds.

We are happy to report, we struck pupusa gold at Con Sabor!  We picked it because it looked like it could be a good place, didn't have a line out the door, and had bike parking.

Neither of us ordered stuffed pupusas, but they brought hot, fresh plain ones with our entrees.  I ate shrimp in garlic sauce with plantains and Salvadoran rice.  Yum.  I was also impressed that they offered about 30 different pupusa choices, half of them vegetarian.

We are going back. But, just like the reviews in Yelp warns, the food is good, but the service is slow. They cook it to order so bring a good book or conversationalist while you await your food.  We ate so much, we negated all the calories we burned and then some.

The next Ciclavia follows Wilshire Boulevard, between Downtown and the Miracle Mile (aka Museum Row aka Midtown) Los Angeles on June 23, 2013.  If you see a family with a silver Tandem, do say hello.  Contact us in advance and we can meet up for Ethiopian food in little Ethiopia in Midtown.