And now for something completely different....

Lighthouse at Fort Point, San Francisco --
Processed with Kim Klassen's "Felicity" and a texture I created from a photo I took at the fort,
 using the tutorial Kim shared in our "Beyond Layers" class
(linking with Texture Tuesday)

I'm taking a break from showing images from my trip to Thailand ..... Instead, my husband and I decided to take a quick trip out to California last week to visit family.  The weather was wonderful, and we were outside as much as possible.  One day we explored the parks around the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  

Although I've been to San Francisco many times (I even lived here for a few years when I was a child), I had never visited Fort Point before.  Fort Point was the main naval defense for the city of San Francisco until the civil war.  It is tucked away under the base of the bridge, and probably isn't high on tourists' must-see lists.  Despite my fear of heights, I had a marvelous time -- there were so many interesting angles to capture:

This was the walk back from the fort towards Crissy Field:

Crissy Field was originally an early aviation strip, and is now a well-used park along the beach.  It certainly is a magnet for dogs!  We met my husband's sister and her boys there with their Golden, Brooklyn.  As you can see from the first photo, he was so happy in the water (it would take an awful lot of treats to get our Golden, Jackson, to venture anywhere near it)!  I was surprised to see how many professional dog-walkers were out, too.  I am still a little nervous about taking pictures of strangers, so I only got a few shots of them, but they were legion that day:

And now, on a completely different subject......

My creativity seems to run in cycles, and lately all I want to do is work in fabric.  In the last few weeks I have completed three quilt tops.  I will send two of them out to be finished by machine, but I plan on quilting this one by hand.  Since it might be awhile (a long while) before I am finished, I'll show it now:

It's really big, so wish me luck!

Mid-winter blues (and pinks and purples....)

Right about this time of year, winter starts to gets old.... the novelty of the season wears off and I start thinking about the colors of summer.

Luckily, our trip to Thailand over Christmas gave us a brief respite from the relentless brown of bare trees and dead grass (there hasn't even been much snow here to mix things up a bit).  I loved seeing a profusion of flowers everywhere; but I am used to thinking of orchids as an extravagance, and couldn't quite get used to seeing inexpensive armloads of them for sale in the markets (believe me, I could try.)

Storyboard and texture ("Thursday") courtesy of Kim Klassen
linking with Texture Tuesday

On the road to Mandalay

My grandfather was a great fan of Rudyard Kipling, and one of his favorite poems was The Road to Mandalay (although it was mandatory in our family to substitute "Wild Bill Robie" for "British soldier" in the 4th line).  My son had a Kipling fixation when he was six or seven, and memorized every word of "Mandalay"-- you might say that it has been an undercurrent in our family's collective memory for many years.

So when we visited Thailand recently, Kipling's words couldn't help but run through my head at every point along the way.

......from the "tinkly temple bells":



.....to the hathis "piling teak":

" .....If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else.

                                                          No! you won't 'eed nothin' else  
                                                          But them spicy garlic smells....."

"...For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be —

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea."

(all photos processed with The Coffeeshop Blog's "Butterscotch Vintage" action)