new colored pencils
Author: Emily
DIY Upcycled Travelling Picnic Blanket
Its summer, which means its time to sit outdoors quaffing beer and delicately spearing olives with a toothpick. The challenge is getting comfortable on hot sand, pigeon-y urban concrete, scratchy drought-dried grass (for us Californians) and splintery decks. The answer is a cute, compact picnic blanket that rolls into a neat little burrito (and can even be tied onto your bike’s crossbar) and costs just about $4 to make. Your local thrift store or Goodwill has this strange section no one ever goes to, full of household linens. Score yourself a cute curtain or sheet for a liner and a thicker blanket or curtain for the bottom side and you’ve got yourself fifty percent of the way to this DIY picnic blanket. Head over to Inhabitat to read the whole step-by-step instructional by yours truly!
URBNPLAY: Yoga in the Alley Part II
Taught a sunny, lovely free yoga class honoring the Summer Solstice on Sunday! Part of the Greenalleys project, repurposing and re-imagining alleys as a vibrant neighborhood space for multiple activities.
THE DESOLATION WILDERNESS
Our private island campsite: granite, rockscrambling, brook trout and only a few mosquitoes. So grateful to live in a state and country where this landscape has been preserved for playing, enjoying, experiencing only by foot and under the stars.
BAYLEAF KITCHEN
Enjoying this delicious, colorful, organic produce picked with grubby little child fingers over at Eatwell Farm. Spending a week with 4th-6th graders, San Francsico chefs and bakers, and the lovely ladies of Bayleaf Kitchen, teaching kids about sustainable agriculture, cooking, and tasting a delicious variety of healthy, creative, cuisines.
URBNPLAY: Yoga in the Alley
Thanks to all the lovely yogis who showed up for my free outdoor class with the wind rustling in the palms this morning! Activate public space, be healthy, enjoy the outdoors, take it over, humans not cars.
This class is part of the http://www.greenalleys.org project, and is a way of activating the alley space and experimenting with ways to provide recreation, fitness and fun opportunities in urban environments without any special infrastructure. Ames Alley neighbors are using this tiny “street” as a laboratory to experiment with solar lighting, plantings, and community building.
a blue bloom of #velella and a strong onshore wind means a very squishy run at #oceanbeach #sf today
a giant spiny agave in potrero hill. check human for size comparison. this specimen had been “de-clawed” (to prevent snagging passersby?) – check out the tips of the leaves. agaves are a lovely drought-tolerant plant for your new california drought friendly landscaping – you’re already putting it in, right?
HOW TO SEW A WEDDING DRESS
That’s the dress, there, showing itself off in San Francisco’s beautiful City Hall. Raw silk dupioni in off-white fully lined with a silk chiffon lining, hand hemmed and hand finished waistband, handmade crinoline underneath. All materials sourced in San Francisco.
Full post, with photos of sketch-to-completion process coming soon!
NOW SF Festival – April 2015
a group of early morning yogis and yoginis enjoying the momentary break in the fog.
last week, i had the pleasure of attending and co-creating a bunch of fun events for the NOWSF festival – check out more on the festival here and here – a DIY neighborhood public space activation festival, which was open source and totally free. all the events focused on creating a sense of fun in the general panhandle neighborhood, getting to know new friends and neighbors, being active, and sharing ideas, music, and art.
i teamed up with fellow Yoga Garden alumna Court Green for an early AM yoga session by the McKinley statue, complete with sun rays breaking through just in time for child’s pose and savasana.
jonathan and and i teamed up to celebrate our one-week wedding anniversay with “wiggle treat”, a pop-up bike-in happy hour with hot cocoa and homemade ginger snaps for cyclists biking directly into a stiff 15 knot wind on their ride home from work on friday.
we rolled that clankety bar cart all the way from our house, assaulting the ears of everyone in the neighborhood. unfortunately, the thermos didn’t work either, so we didn’t serve very much hot cocoa. so, we gave out cookies instead and focused on sharing the genuine SelfiStick (actual wood, wedding gift from Cresa) with friends and passersby.
maybe there are some new customers for this piece of functional social commentary. we teamed up with some other NOW festivalers to create a one-stop fun shop on the edge of the panhandle – giant crossword puzzle, free flowers, AND the wiggle treat cart!
we talked to lots of interesting people and even gave away bike-by flowers!
finally, was one more yoga class – a thursday evening class that was cut a little short by the extreme chilling winds that rake from the beach toward downtown at that time of day. teaming up with lovely canadian cynthia for a team taught class with lots of wide-legged forward folds and an extremely short, shivery meditation and savasana.
see you around the neighborhood!
*note – not sure why my photos in this post are displaying all wonky and stretched. this is a new issue, working on it!