As you’ll know from previous posts, I’m a big fan of the American Craft Council San Francisco show held every August at Fort Mason. The ACCSF show is much like a grown up “back-to-school” shopping excursion for me where I go to see what’s new in handcrafted jewelry, clothing and home furnishings.   I popped into this year’s show this morning and thought I’d share some highlights for any of you local readers thinking about attending this weekend.

For the past few years, the show producers have presented four home decor vignettes featuring items that can be purchased at the show (helpful, since some of these craft items are so unique it’s hard to see how they’d work in a space.)  This year’s  theme  was “4 Directions” so there were vignettes depicting North, South, East and West.

Above you’ll see the elegant North vignette designed by L.A. designer Leslie Shapiro Joyal who used the Northern California coast as her inspiration and featured rock sculptures by Gerald Arrington and witty lamps by Will Richards as well as her own Cocoon Bed.  ”Though I’m from L.A., I really tried to capture the Northern California vibe in this room,” says  Joyal. Some of you may know Joyal from Ellen DeGeneres’s “Design Challenge.”

The West vignette was designed by Alden Miller Interiors and inspired by a California beach sunset.  I loved the cozy beach shack feeling of the room and found the whimsical octopus sculpture by Evan Chambers charming.

Some other favorite home decor things included:

Tiles, vases and dinnerware patterned with traditional motifs in a sophisticated neutral palette by Petaluma potter Forrest Lesch-Middleton

Handwoven wool blankets  from Dianne Nordt of Virginia’s  Nordt Family Farm

And indigo-dyed pillows from Berkeley-based textile artist Jenny Fong of Modern Shibori

As always, I came away with some one-of-a-kind items for my home and names of designers I’ll be tracking in the future.  The ACCSF show runs through Sunday. If you live in the Bay Area and would like to attend, you can find out more here.

Happy Weekend All!

Even if my mailbox overfloweth, I still like to look through a good newstand now and then for new-to-me periodicals.  This weekend browsing at Issues off Piedmont Ave. in Oakland I discovered Issue 1(!) of Hole & Corner, an oversized British magazine about “craft, beauty, passion and skill”—with heavy emphasis on skill.

H & C is filled with artful images of tools and profiles of real-life cheesemakers, cobblers and lady tailors.  The text includes words like “bedsit” and “pensioner” and other Britishisms that are vaguely familiar but charmingly foreign. There’s a tour through a Straw Museum. Need I say more?

Billed as an antidote to publications that are all about style with little substance, Hole & Corner is, as defined, a place to get lost in.

Though I was raised in the ruby red heart of the Rocky Mountain West, I live in midnight blue territory. With friends and family on both sides of the political spectrum, my own leanings tend to a more moderate shade of rosy periwinkle. But I was genuinely happy about how the Supreme Court decisions played out this week and tickled pink by Senator Wendy Davis’s fuschia-sneakered filibuster.  Inclusion, respect and female empowerment are all principles my red state community taught me to value. You can travel far from either coast and still find intelligent, kind people who are trying to make sense of things through the lenses of their own experience. I hope my bluest neighbors and friends keep that in mind when they decry opinions in various shades of scarlet. My true-blue Republican parents taught me that everyone should feel welcome at the God Bless America parade.

Oh look--a 4th of July bouquet from my very own garden!

Here are some other things worth celebrating this week:

1. Moms playing video games.

2. Defense of my college (English) major.

3. Wendy and the Boys.

4. Yankee Doodle Dandy decor.

5. Simple flag decorations for drink straws.

Oh, and remember that Google Reader goes away this weekend (sigh.) Personally, I’ve switched over to Feedly and the process was painless and free.  My husband is going with Feedbin based on this article.  Clearly we value diversity in our household. I hope you’ll keep reading wherever you land.

 Happy 4^th Y’all!

I thought I’d be rhapsodizing about cherry blossoms this morning.  Instead, I’m waiting for the Opossum Angel of Death to remove a dying critter from my crawl space. Mother Nature is full of complexities.

A few nights ago as I lay reading in bed, I heard something scratching underneath our bedroom floorboards and woke my soundly sleeping husband to confirm the noise. “Yep, something’s there—hope it goes away,” he muttered before falling back to sleep. This was followed a day later by an ominous animal smell which blossomed into a full blown dead animal smell in the master bath last night.  This morning, when it became almost unbearable to enter the room, my now fully awake (and very brave) husband crawled underneath the house and saw a barely breathing creature in the far corner. We called Oakland animal control who directed us to a private animal removal service and a woman named Angel was summoned. She should be here shortly with her “very small, crawlspace-expert, brother-in-law.”

And so we wait. In case you’re suffering a few complexities of your own, here are some distractions.

1. Anne Lamott commits to a year of online dating through match.com and explores commitment along the way.

2. Conservative columnist David Brooks weighs in in favor of more commitment by way of gay marriage.

3. Inspirational workspaces from successful creatives make me commit to cleaning my desk.

4. Roger Ebert confronts death in this 2009 column. He will be missed for much more than his movie reviews.

5. On a lighter note, aren’t these French cutting boards lovely?

6. And looking ahead, how about this simple embroidered scarf project for a lovely Mother’s Day gift?

Happy Weekend all!