adieu celine

we had a short but lovely time together this weekend, eating lots of good food and trying not to fall asleep during meditation.

one of the highlights was eating out at a thai restaurant her first night in town and seeing this sign for new zealand snapper. my favorite part is the fisherman.

om, dude

every morning at the ashram, we'd get up at 5.30 and be seated for satsang by 6. popular mantras are scrawled under the top bunk where i slept. somebody really grumpy wrote "lame" and it made me laugh whenever i saw it. i love finding graffiti in odd places, like the time i saw "jail is fun" on the back of a chair in a san francisco hall of justice court room.

after our satsang activities of meditating + chanting + lecture, we did yoga for two hours. brunch was at ten followed by an hour of karma yoga during which you assist the staff with whatever chores need to be done.

free time was usually slow and blissful. by midday everything is baking in the sun, so you're either tucked away napping in a sliver of shade or trying not to fall asleep in the library, one of the only public spaces with ac.

at 4pm, activities resumed with another two hours of yoga, dinner, and another two hours of satsang. by the time lights are ordered out at 10.30, you're already asleep because you've had quite a day!

it sounds like a rigid schedule, but i really enjoyed it! having a few days away from the great multitude of daily distractions plus all that good indian food was very pleasurable and i can't wait to do it again.


celine and i slept in a teeny cabin near the woods.


tons of blackberries grow around a small foot bridge on the ashram grounds. visiting children picked a bunch and made a pie.


right next to where we eat our meals, there are cute little bunches of grapes growing. i wanted to snatch some up but couldn't risk the karma.

retreat

k guys, celine and i are embarking on our spiritual journey to grass valley for the weekend. we will be getting up at 5.30 every morning to chant and do yoga. don't laugh.

celebration

swimming

i just spent a solid hour sifting through all of the photos i've taken in the past month or so and have for you here some lovely shots from around kathleen's pool on the 4th of july.


stephan took cogan for a swim. at first cogan wasn't too sure about being wet, but then mellowed out quite nicely.


cogan made a friend.


me, too.

loot

the renegade craft fair finally came to san francisco last weekend! i picked out a few choice items.


wild printed tunic t from raeburn ink, $32.


adorable/scary onsie from ferdinand, $16.


limited edition letterpressed print set/4 from satsuma press, $40.

sweet & kind proprietor lynn russell printed these in collaboration with artist yoo-ii, who mined inspiration from both the lily ponds found in a park in her hometown of tainan, taiwan, and the horizontal register of traditional chinese painting.

sunday

on a whim, i decided to invite a few friends over this morning for a pancake breakfast. scott & judd brought over the biggest donuts i have ever had the pleasure of devouring.

afterwards, nathan and i braved opening weekend crowds to see the dark knight. heath ledger is the best joker e v e r, seriously! he does a great trick where he makes a pencil disappear. i am so very sad that there won't be any more performances from him. he was quite a piece of work.

target practice

we went to walmart (sorry dad) and for whatever reason, nathan was moved to purchase a bb gun. the boys thought it would be fun to go shoot at the family farm where we were approached by the horsie and shetland pony pictured above.


the mosquitoes at the farm drove us back to ma & pa lintner's backyard for the rest of target practice. the boys were feeling especially patriotic, so they took advantage of free target printouts from some website.

kansas city sky

hours later, it was pouring down rain and thundering and lightninging!

hammertime

as soon as i knew we were coming back to the midwest this 4th, i started to dream about visiting hammerpress in kansas city. design*sponge published photos of their studio just a few days before we left san francisco, so i was very grateful that brady had any time at all for us what with all the attention he got to bask in post-blog. brady vest is the hammerking: he lead us on a tour of the shop and let me take all the photos i wanted.

i dearly miss my college days spent in funky old print shops, so believe me, standing in the middle of a room chock full of random bits of vintage print ephemera, i was in Heaven.


for all my printmaking experience, i've actually never worked with a letterpress, hammerpress's method of choice. ironically, letterpress is my favorite of all printmaking methods even though it is the one i know the least about, besides litho. i think it is so very beautiful.



nathan and stephan were all about this vintage plate of andre the giant.



everything in the shop is old old old. i love it.


i'm pretty familiar with hammerpress cards and the like, but not so much with their concert posters. we had a good time perusing their collection and picked out a whole bunch to take home. close relations take note: there will be a hammerpress item in our gift exchange this xmas!

at the farm

on wednesday, we drove from atchison to kansas city and saw a random sign on the way for fresh corn & peaches. we pulled off the road and drove down a dirt drive that lead us to the red barn farm. every farm amenity a native californian could imagine was there; wagons, tractors, chicken coop, angry geese, horsies, pigs, sheep... oh, and of course, fresh peaches!








twin calves!!

almost there

we flew to kansas city last tuesday to celebrate the birth of our nation in our nation's heartland.