A New Hello, World

How can I even begin this post? There is so much to say and very little organization in my head to say it, so I’ll just start here: We’re Moving.

It probably feels so sudden in some respects, but in many ways, this was a long time coming and I’m not sure from where to explain this story. Here’s my attempt (warning: this post is a little cheesy, but I really just can’t help myself today):

So, a couple of years before I met McKay, I spent a good solid year going to the Bay Area just about every weekend. I had a couple of friends who I routinely visited and during those visits I got to have a lot of time in personal reflection as I explored San Francisco: I really enjoyed walking the town, exploring the tourist traps, the trendy streets, snacking from the sidewalk markets, sitting for hours at some random cafe or bookstore. It always felt like the city was a big hug opening up to me for a cozy snuggle. I decided I wanted to live there someday, but didn’t really take that thought seriously. I had a toddler waiting for me and I couldn’t just leave her behind and I was just getting my career started.

Eventually McKay and I met and we talked many times about moving out of L.A.. It seemed that every town we visited was more appealing, but there was always some event, project, career opportunity, or -insert all excuses not to move here- that kept us from leaving. McKay also felt a special bond with San Francisco during his visits there and eventually we started having a shared fantasies of moving there.

Meanwhile, reality was happening and we eventually established ourselves in our neighborhood (Atwater Village), McKay built a studio on the main drag and we even made a home out of the old nightclub building behind it. We’ve made lifelong friends of our neighbors and our planted feet really grew some great roots. Then, a few months ago, the moving bug returned a new strain with a louder voice and it seemed that despite our resistance, it was more persistent this time around. I remember just over a month ago, sitting down to talk about moving and deciding to hang out in L.A. a little longer. We created some markers that would help us decide when would be the right time and it seemed like just as quickly as we thought them up all of those question marks were being answered with all the arrows pointing to an exit!

If you have been spending time with us and suddenly noticed that we suddenly disappeared, sorry about that – almost as soon as we realized this was our time to move, we headed straight for the bunker for some strategic planning time. After many long and thoughtful discussions, we decided that now is the best time to move and the best choice is San Francisco (no big surprise if you’ve heard us fantasizing about it over the last couple of years). I believe I can say with 98% certainty that we are moving there. I reserve the 2% for when we actually have moved there, but the picture is pretty much all in focus so I think I can say it out loud now. Why San Francisco? That would take an entirely new blog, but in short we both love this town, feel equally inspired by it. Bonus: we’ll be close enough to LA that any business we need to continue will not be interrupted and the people of SF seem to love their bikes!

So, over the next couple of weeks, we will be in a mad dash to move both our home and studio to much smaller quarters in our new hometown (I’m not even really in that process yet and I’m already overwhelmed – it’s a real test of how attached I am to my material possessions) and there will certainly be plenty of stress and excitement along the way. So, if you don’t hear from us anytime soon, put your ear to the ground and stay close to your computer so you can eventually hear the humming of our machines again as we start to stir in our new hometown.

Saturday Crafternoon (Another Great Weekend!)

This Saturday, I had the pleasure of hosting a bunch of awesome crafters for the first ever Saturday Crafternoon. This craft event was made possible by Adam and Kelly, some folks I had known about 5 minutes from a brief interaction at Barcamp; my OG craft buddy, Crystal with her daughter, Pape; Kat (who I met once at Crystal’s last birthday party), her son, Colin; a friend I hadn’t seen since high school, Ferrie with her daughter, Hailey; Ferrie’s friend and fellow crafter, Tina (who I also went to high school with, but we looked at each other with the same, should-I-be-embarrassed-not-to-know-you-? followed by but-that-was-a-long-time-ago face); and my mommy. Chain-mail making, Jewelry beading, scrapbooking, sewing, fabric cutting, knitting and organizing – oh, and ice cream! – left me mushy with an overstimulated brain. And while we all definitely earned our craft badges, I’d also like to hand out some adventure badges:

• Ferrie and I attended the same Junior High and High School and I really hadn’t seen her since then. So, it was a wonderful surprise to me that when she found me on Facebook a couple of days before the craft party, we quickly discovered that we both liked to craft. After a few email exchanges, I had invited her for the crafternoon and she’d accepted, noting that she’d be bringing another friend who likes to sew and, by the way, did I want any of the left over fabric they discard at work? (Of course, I said of course!) Even better than her showing up, she decided that she wanted to learn how to sew and managed to make and stuff a couple of pillows during the crafternoon (that’s her in the pic with one of her pillows). Congratulations, Ferrie!
• Similarly, I’d briefly met Adam and Kelly at Barcamp two weeks before. We probably exchanged no more than 5 sentences with each other, tweeted a few more and without hesitation they RSVP’d, were the first ones to arrive and were one of the last to leave. *** Extra props to Adam for being our token fella for the day. ***

Despite my habit of taking as few pictures as possible during my most memorable moments (probably because I am simply busy enjoying myself), I hear Kat took some (which I KNOW she is going to post – right, Kat?) so we might actually get to see our works in the making!

THANKS for the vibe and inspiration, crafternooners! AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!

20090520 update: Kat posted about it in her blog, too!

Bike To Work Week 2009

May 11-15 is Bike to Work week, and this week is promoting more than getting everyone to bike to work, but to find alternative modes of transportation (train, bus, rideshare, walk, etc).

If you’re just hearing about it now, I encourage you to join the festivities – start with the Bike Month Specials Page on the League of American Bicyclists website to find events happening near you.

If you live in Los Angeles, there will be refreshment stations around town all week and several evening gatherings you can bike/bus/train to. You can also pledge online on MTA.net to win cool stuff like a new bike!

If you MUST drive to work EVERY DAY this week, you can still follow those links to find out how you can safely share the road with your friendly cyclists. (Who knows – it may get you excited enough to try one day this week or the next one!) See you on the streets!

BarcampLA7 – thanks for CATURDAY

I met a bunch of (and didn’t get to meet a whole bunch more) SUPER AWESOME people at Barcamp LA yesterday. A geekfested fantasy wonderland!
I watched nerdy girl, @baconqurlyq, talk about AIBO (Sony’s robot dog), comfortably navigate through command lines to get her robodog to perform! perform! for us. Then, later, I got to talk to her at a side table and found out that she was a crafter too! AND she lives near my neighborhood! BONUS!
‘Attended a session delivered by @tara called “Your Tweets Suck | Let’s Play a Game” and joined (and worked through) a game of Twitter Jeopardy (Followed a bunch of them on Twitter this morning when I woke up at 5AM and then watched them “waking up” as they followed me back – that was even more entertaining and exciting than I thought it would be).
Ran into @susankitchens in the kitchen as she was pouring her last bit of self-brought coffee; she shared it with me (thank you!) and I was lit pretty much the rest of the day! (In fact, I felt it this morning when I woke up) That coffee was amazingly strong (or am I really just that wimpy?) and it was just in time for me to deliver my own talk…
I decided to deliver a very short presentation on this year’s Bike to Work Week. Only problem was, I was so hyper from the coffee and nervous in general that I
1. completely forgot to mention the best part of Bike to Work Week – You can make a pledge on metro.net and win prizes (like a vacation!)
2. left my presentation feeling like I didn’t really connect with the people who actually showed up to my presentation! – this bummed me out the most once the coffee wore out. I don’t have enough bike friends and how much cooler could that have been to have nerdy bike friends?!
So, I’ll do my best to remedy that on the user group. And, if you were one of those folks who came to my talk
1. THANK YOU for not leaving my talk with tumbleweeds
2. Here’s my Bike To Work Week PowerPoint Presentation if you wanted to see it again and connect to the links I mentioned – they’re all embedded on the presentation.
3. Please contact me and let’s go biking!
The cookies I brought seemed to be a hit, too 🙂 I met a slew of other super awesome creative-innovatives, felt completely at home and was super inspired. I really needed that! Thanks, Barcamp!

I miss you blog

Ok, SO I have been seeing other microblogs (BrightKite, Twitter). It’s because they are easily accessible through my phone – I only even really need to post on Brightkite and it takes care of Twitter and Facebook for me. Not to worry, though – your posts are still updating on Facebook, in its very own tab (I checked to make sure). And, look, if it helps you feel better, when i’m posting on Brightkite, I’m thinking of you, WordPress. Really.
So, I really wanted to try something with all that crazy shiny pastely green fabric I got loads and loads of and I ended up making this “scarf”/”collar” thingie. My first attempt was with the legs of some of McKay‘s old pants – it was a bit too short after all that pleating, but it was a good starter. ‘Gotta go make sweets for Barcamp. Who’s going?