Kids, I always leave my heart in San Francisco, but I believe part of my liver was left in San Diego at Tikioasis last weekend.

So, here are the photos, because really, they say so much more than words, don’t they?

This was inside the hotel, the Royal Crowne, which used to be the legendary Hanalei hotel with all of its glorious tiki-fabulousness. Yes, that is the inside of the hotel.

During the day as you nursed your hangover, you could wander around checking out all of the tiki vendors, like this charmer with the tiki bar. Because, really who doesn’t need a tiki bar in their house. (I’m so not kidding on this, people…)

My favorite part of the entire weekend was this amazing symposium on the Tiki drink. Reminds me of my college days studying art history. But we weren’t *supposed* to get drunk in the art history classes. Tikioasis-1: Vassar-0.

Oh yes and there was dancing. Much go-go dancing madness! Here were are at the pool. Don’t you love the outfits?

Speaking of outfits, check these outfits!

Eric, a similar look is coming your way…

And here’s Baby Doe showing people how to go-go in our class!

Look at these matching cuties from Icon vintage!

I love this guy AND his styling ensemble!

One of the great acts at Tikioasis!

Once again I love this guy and he loves us!

And here I am Sunday morning, feeling the rum.

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First off, Minnow is fine and sleeping/shedding on my pillow as I type this.

However, a very dear friend of mine had to put down her beloved cat, Bitty, yesterday due to kidney failure.

Now, please note: Bitty wasn’t your average little cat. At first meeting one might think she was very shy. And she was. But given the right moment she Bitty would come out and let you know her thoughts, purring all the way and playing with yarn and her toys with the vigor and charm of a twelve week old kitten. You felt honored that she would come out just for you. What is it about little black cats and their sparkling yellow/green eyes that just make me so happy?

But what I will always remember is that Bitty had a bond with her owner that was almost magical. Karen was devoted to Bitty and Bitty’s love for Karen was just as strong. It was as if they fell in love from the first moment Karen saw her. Bitty was Karen’s cat. Period. Even with the addition of a new cat, Leroy and Melinda’s fiesty (albeit at times mildly bullying) man-cat, Ralph came into the scene, Bitty’s charms still persevered.

Exit Melinda and enter Spiegy. When Eric moved into my flat, he had to win Minnow over–a process that probably took a good part of three months. No so with Spiegs. I think Bitty fell in love with Spiegs just as much as Karen did. One of my all time favorite pictures is of Spiegs asleep with Bitty snuggled on his chest just as happy as a clam. They were a happy little family.

I know Bitty would have been just as delighted about the new baby coming in November and would have happily shared her beloved mommy and daddy with little Miss Molly.  But I know Bitty will be there in spirit.

Ah, Bitty, you’ll be missed!

………………..

PS: Tomorrow–Tikioasis–I promise!

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Whew! Forgive the absence dear blogfriends, but I’ve just been busy sewing my heart out to create a dandy muu-muu-tastic Hawaii-rific wardrobe for my weekend-long shebang at Tiki-Oasis where I danced my little heart out and drank one too many Mai Tais. Oh, but it was fun.

The Devil-Ettes were scheduled to perform three times during the weekend and taught a dance class, but we did manage to fit in some fun tiki shopping and attend some amazing lectures such as Beachbum Berry’s “History of the Tiki Drink” symposium, which not only included a brilliant slide show, but samples of some of the drinks.  Who knew that by blending white, gold and dark rums can create such amazing layers of taste?  And I finally found out what falernum is! (Whenever I see it as an ingredient , I’m too tipsy to remember to look it up by the time I leave the bar. Sigh!)

I will post a much longer photo-filled entry tomorrow but I did find this fun one of the Devil-Ettes dancing! Boy, was it a blast!

Until tomorrow, my sweeties!

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I’d had it. I was officially OVER IT.

Done with the obnoxiously loud music that was more suited for a rave.

 
Done with the blaring instructions that sounded more like the teacher in the Charlie Brown specials than what would come out of a real human.

 
Done with the flashing lights that would send anyone into a mild epileptic fit.

In short my love affair with spinning was over. They changed the teacher, the bikes, the music, etc. and it was all too much.

 
Don’t get me wrong–spinning and I have had more than our fair share of good times. In fact, almost every group exercise class and I have bonded over the years. Kickboxing/kwando/tai-bo and the myriad of other names that I sweated to—honey, it’s been real.  Boot camp, I thank you for the tough-love lessons you taught my upper-arms. And you’ve grape-vined all over my heart, step-aerobics classes.  But right now I’m between gym-class loves and like many past break-ups, I’ve turned to predictable one night stands that gave me the sugar rush of love and left me with a tighter waist-band and sunken dreams–Damn you, evil twins, Ben and Jerry…

 
But one day after chatting with Dana, my work-out partner for the past year, we decided that we needed to do something extraordinary that would bring us back to the days when working out wasn’t a necessity–but a joy. We needed to find the delight in working out again.

 
Admittedly, I was always a kid that enjoyed reading a book to say, running around in circles or getting hit with balls. But through the years, I’ve tried to become an “athlete”. I’ve run a marathon, bicycled through Italy, played varsity field hockey in college (mind you, I did this more for the cute plaid skirt, than actually say, having the eye-hand coordination to deal with small balls being whirled at my shins).  Heck, I even rowed in graduate school and continued to do so during my early working career in San Francisco. But getting up at 4:00AM three days a week became a distant memory the moment I started dating.

 
Anyway, long story short: I need to do and find something to help me lose weight and to keep my body from deteriorating faster than it already is.

 
Solution—roller skating!

 
So after much debate and discussion and hours spent on eBay finding the perfect Sketcher quads (that’s roller-skate talk for four wheels as opposed to the rollerblade ilk), Dana and I are determined to roll away the pounds and come up with some fierce roller dance moves as well.  I mean, I loved Roller Girls—those ladies were FIERCE! And I could do that, right?

OK, maybe not the woman with the bat, but you know what I mean, right?

Anyway–with visions of Xanadu and size 6 hot pants rolling through our heads, Dana and I plodded out to our gym’s hockey rink.

 
Holy crap, those skates are heavy. Extra bonus—upper body work out. YEAH!

 
Hmmm… OK, the skates I bought off of eBay are actually a half size too big. Note to self: bring two pairs of socks tomorrow for the work-out.

 
Here goes nothing…

 
Sweet Jesus. Face plant within the first minute of entering the rink. I have no balance, no rhythm and no chance to making it through the next half hour without a pulled groin muscle.

 
Within that first half hour, I managed to sweat through my jog bra and my shins are in spitting pain. Let’s just hope I can make it to the next day.

 
Stay tuned, folks. I just need to make this quick trip to Walgreens for some Ben-gay, and I’ll be right back to blogging tomorrow.
 

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OK, as I mentioned in earlier posts, I’m not allowed to knit until Labor Day to give my arms a rest. Looks like spending eight hours a day in front of the computer is having an affect on my arms. And coming home to knit for an hour a day exacerbates the problem. So, I’m stretching and working out the muscles and waiting patiently to knit again. Sorry, little twin sweaters–I’ll get to you soon enough!

But on to more merry topics, like sewing. Eventhough I’ve owned a sewing machine for 25 years, taken classes and even worked in my college’s costume department, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken a pattern and put it together. So, I’m going to start slow on this.

Eileen and I are going to Tiki-Oasis where we shall woo the crowds with our fabulous tiki-inspired dresses.

And to make this as painless as possible, I’ve decided to make the “walkaway dress” which I believe half the women in the world are sashaying around in this charmer of a dress.
I ordered both of these fabrics from Hawaiian Fabrics and got quite a deal on them.

So Saturday morning I started cutting the fabric to make the dress.  My pattern cutting was very intriguing to Minnow. Here she is licking her chops, just thinking about all of the good fun she could have with tissue paper…

Apparently it was too tempting for Minnow, who is more into fullfilling the id desires than holding back. Naughty kitty! You can hear my screech to stop her!

But thanks to a power session of sewing at Eileen’s place, ten hours later (but probably 2 hours spent actually sewing, the other watching bad Amanda Byne’s movies and gabbing) I have this hanging for at least 24 hours to “set the bias” whatever that means…

Wish me luck in finishing the rest of it by August 15th! It shouldn’t be too hard, eh?

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Well, I’m officially off sugar and flour.

And I’m cooking for the week, starting with these clever french style mini-crustless quiches made with lite chevre, herbs de provence and asparagus.

Here they are before we pop them in the oven.

And continuing the theme of green, we made this divine Indian pea soup flavoured with roasted cumin and coriander. It’s just amazing! Madhur Jaffrey RULES! She is the queen of Indian cooking and I beg all of you to rush out and buy any of her books!

I can’t lie–this first week has been a doozy. Very tough to stay away from wheat and sugar, but the benefits are completely worth it in the long run.

And thanks One Red Boot for her bloggy support on going sugar-free!

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Hey, remember those booties…

Well, I finished the hats to go with them.

Wear them well, Nora and Lily!

Oh and it looks like thes jaunty hates will be the last things I knit for awhile–too much typing and some knitting have given me a rather icky case of repetitive stress injury. So I’ve been asked to put down the needles for awhile. I can’t tell you how bummed I am about this. All of those babies growing bigger and bigger and without knitted goodies from me. Bah! I’ll start knitting again during our upcoming vacation to Tomales Bay over Labor Day.

So early apologies for the lacking knitting content for August. Oh, but I’ll find something to be crafty with! Don’t you worry about that!

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Well, sadly the Jaywalker obsession and my return to knitting baby sweaters has been too much for my arms and hands, alas. So, I’m going to have to put my knitting aside for awhile. Breaks my heart, but what are you going to do? And this time, I knitted myself into so much pain that my thumbs can’t even support my purse.

I hope to be back at it in a couple of weeks. Perhaps I’ll take some Bikram yoga classes–they’ve always helped in the past. Oh, and my rocking workplace has a place to handle these RSS issues, so I’m going to the doctor to have it all worked out.

Of course this RSS sassiness won’t make me stop my all consumer desire to get crafty! Exit knitting and enter sewing! So, Mr. Sweetie and I went to Poppy’s Fabric, an East Bay sewing institution with the most gorgeous fabrics–second only to Britex in San Francisco. And they were having a sale to boot.

The one on the far right is going to be transformed into nice pillows for our sofa. Our pillows now are downright raggedy. I’m so ashamed! And the other fabrics I bought because of the sale. You can never have enough fabric and these darling vintage inspired ones are too cute to say no to. I particularly like the white, red and black one. I might come back to get more of that fabric. I might use the one all the way to the left as bias for the twins sweaters. We’ll see.

When we went up to the register they had a letter saying that Poppy’s is closing! Their last day is Sept. 30th, so I’m coming back and buying as much fabric as I can afford. The inventory is already showing signs of depletion–particularly the clever cotton patterns that I relied on for ages. Right now at 25 percent off, but I’m sure that will go up as the days pass along.

So, ladies, run there and get what you can. Even the trims and patterns are on sale. Good for the pocketbook, but it’s breaking my heart to see this wonderful store go. Damn you Bay Area rent costs! First Straw Into Gold and now this! 

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