Another week and more action – this weekend we had a date with the beach! We went to a place called Davenport near Santa Cruz for the morning. It was quite overcast in the morning but still warm, we even found people camping on the beach. Yes that is illegal & we asked them about how they went about it and as long as your car is out of the way and you don’t get a ticket you are golden! Still it is a haul carrying all your gear up and down the steep slopes.
The feeling of walking in the sand is perfect to melt away any stress or worry after a busy week. Even playing in the cold water was exhilarating and woke me up, igniting my appetite. So the plan was to go to a favorite bakery of mine in Santa Cruz,
Kelly’s French Bakery and I found the gooiest eclair with a custard filling that I had been craving for all week – it is amazing how the universe works!
The plan for the Santa Cruz day trip was to go to a lecture at the Seymour Center at UCSC to hear about the book ‘
The Extreme Life of the Sea ‘which was fascinating for everyone, I did feel somewhat sleepy after an amazing lunch of smoked salmon, avocado and poached eggs on sourdough toast. Ash was so excited to get the book signed by the authors (a father and son team) and he finally met an ‘actual’ author of a book! Let’s hope that it inspires him to continue his writing in class 🙂 he has a very creative writing style and at 8 years old how lucky is he to be encouraged to write creative poetry about his loves in his life!
 |
Kids enjoyed a wave waterfall |
 |
Love heart in the sand from Missy to Mamma |
 |
Kids create a path of rocks around their little creek of water |
 |
Ash being daring by the waterfall from the waves |
 |
Finding a ‘By the Wind Sailor’ or Velellla |
We took this guy, in the above pic, back to the Marine Lab at UCSC to find out what it was and they are meant to be blue – this guy was a bit sun burnt! And as we talking about this guy there has been thousands of these them washing up on the
beach along the west coast this year. Last time we saw one was our weekend away at Carmel 3 weeks ago.
 |
At the marine lab – a nudibranch creeps up the side of the tank, I loved the colors |
 |
A shark egg sac awaiting fertilization |
 |
A sea hare moves very fast indeed |
After the lecture we wandered around the lab to check out the sea creatures that were on display and this guy the Sea Hare was enjoying sea lettuce and apparently they grow to 20 lbs – that is one huge slug! The volunteer we were chatting to was enjoying getting him fresh lettuce from the beach outside every day and watching him grow very, very fast!
This week’s projects are in production mode so slowly but surely the inventory will get there as I have less than 4 weeks to get it all together! I found these bows to experiment with and as they were huge and I wanted to jazz them up somewhat so out came the scissors and the metallic markers and what a transformation! They look like watercolor on silk and I just love them!
 |
Bows Redux – a perfect size for your hair |
The other project I had on the calendar was to get these snakes made for the show. I had made a couple for the kiddos and I have a lot of scraps so to add to my quilt / patchwork theme the four of these came together.
 |
A snake posse |
 |
A close up of the snake eyes! |
And here is another patchwork bag nearly ready to go, it just needs the straps and then another 2 more to make for inventory… Step by step everything is coming together – yay!
 |
Another bag for the collection, nearly completed! |