![\"IMG_2444\"](\"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/IMG_2444-e1555940928539.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis was our first Easter without any family.\u00a0 It was odd for sure, and I don’t plan to do it again, but I had a wonderful afternoon on Saturday with my sister, sitting in a coffee shop and catching up on a couple of months of news together.\u00a0 Before that, Bob and I spent 10 days in California with Chris and Melody!\u00a0 Those wonderful days should keep me smiling for a long time.<\/p>\n
Northern California is a wonderful place, even without the added treat of being of with family, and being there in April when the hills are so alive with poppies and Indian paintbrush and myriad other wildflowers was just the thing<\/em>.\u00a0 It was a perfect time away.\u00a0 To top things off, Melody and Chris made sure I got to visit some places that have been on my ‘wish list’ for many years.<\/p>\n How about dinner at Chez Panisse?\u00a0 I actually never thought I’d do this because it is on the other side of the country, in a town I’ve never visited, even when I was visiting the West Coast.\u00a0 But fast forward to now, when our younger son works in Berkeley and lives just a few minutes south! I’ve been intrigued with Alice Waters since she started this restaurant,\u00a0when I was a teenager on the verge of falling in love with cooking.\u00a0 Remember the 70s?–the back-to-nature movement to whole grains and locally sourced, sustainable veggies?\u00a0 Molly Katzen and the Moosewood Restaurant?\u00a0 And how about\u00a0\u00a0The Vegetarian Epicure<\/em>?\u00a0 For me, Alice Waters is all tied up with my initiation into cooking.\u00a0 Her restaurant conjures up all kinds of magic for me, and the reality of it was every bit as magical as all my years of imagining!\u00a0 We got keepsake menus for the night…. Amy Dencler was our chef that night, which was a thrill to me since I’d read about her joining Chez Panisse.\u00a0 And to top off a stellar evening, Alice herself showed up for a while during during the prep of our meal<\/em>.<\/p>\n My favorite course may have been the soup, which was a pureed asparagus.\u00a0 I decided to make it for our Easter dinner yesterday.\u00a0 I looked online for a recipe by Amy Dencler, or even Alice.\u00a0 No luck, so I fell back on Julia’s recipe from the first volume of Mastering the Art<\/em>…. which I already knew from years of making it that it would be delicious!<\/p>\n The Lacis Museum<\/a> has also been on my wish list for eons.\u00a0 It is also in Berkeley.\u00a0 All these years, Berkeley has just been a place name to me.\u00a0 We’ve been to San Francisco and along the northern coast of California numerous times, but I’ve never included a stop in Berkeley.\u00a0 I never even bothered to look up where the Lacis Museum is located.\u00a0 So I’m not sure you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Chris works only a few blocks from there!<\/p>\n Inside is an unbelievable opportunity to buy lace supplies for lace knitting, tatting, bobbin lace, embroidery–I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg!\u00a0 I got some supplies that I’ve been putting off searching for online.<\/p>\n Upstairs from the shop is where the lace exhibits and classrooms are.\u00a0 At the moment there is an exhibit on embroidered shawls from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 Jules Kliot arrived to take us up to see the exhibit.\u00a0 I have been getting the email newsletters from him for at least a couple of decades.\u00a0 Now I’ve met him!<\/p>\n There are so many shawls in this exhibit, and all beautiful.\u00a0 The early ones are all hand embroidered with hand tied fringes; Jules said they took 10 years to make.\u00a0 Later shawls were machine embroidered with machine tied fringes.\u00a0 I took a lot of photos which I’ll enjoy looking at in detail for years–some in natural shades and some in such brilliant colors.<\/p>\n I want to include all the photos I took, but how about just this one shawl?\u00a0 It is hand embroidered with attached faces done in painted porcelain.\u00a0 The embroidery was all done in shades of cream, natural, ecru. One or two of the faces were missing, and underneath the missing porcelain faces there were still embroidered <\/em>faces.<\/p>\n The hand-tied fringe is pretty elaborate too.<\/p>\n Next on my wish list was a shop called A Verb for Keeping Warm<\/a>, or AVFKW….kind of a mouthful!\u00a0 It has only been on my list for a couple of years, since I keep reading about it in the Making<\/a>\u00a0and Madder<\/a>\u00a0magazines.\u00a0 I didn’t even know it was in Berkeley until I just happened to be looking at one of my knitting patterns while out there.<\/p>\n What a fun shop.\u00a0 They dye all of the their own line of yarns with natural dyes.\u00a0 Their own yarns range from worsted weight to lace weight, in wonderful wools and blends that include silk and alpaca.\u00a0 As you can see the shop is full of luscious yarns and wonderful knitted items to entice anyone.\u00a0 Look at all that dried indigo hanging along the wall.\u00a0 They grow about 250 pounds of indigo every year.<\/p>\n I fell for a knitted shawl on display designed by Andrea Mowry of Drea Renee Knits<\/a> called “Find Your Fade.”\u00a0 You can make it in as many as seven different colors, or just one.\u00a0 I took a look at the naturally dyed, laceweight merino\/silk blend yarns and chose two skeins that were dyed with logwood. My version of the shawl will use these two skeins.\u00a0 I also bought a packet of ground madder.<\/p>\n There were so many highlights to this trip–a visit to the UC Berkeley campus where we could see all the way to the Bay from Sather Tower.\u00a0 We visited Pegasus bookstore which has been an online resource for me for years.\u00a0 Now I’ve been to the brick and mortar shop, where all three of us–Melody and Bob and I–found books we had to buy.<\/p>\n And then there was a long weekend spent up in Mendocino County, a place Bob and I have returned to since our children were young.\u00a0 Chris also loves this part of California, so he arranged for all of us to spend some time together there. We\u00a0knew the years have flown by when our son, who once stayed home with grandma on our first trip to this area, now drove us around while we relaxed in the back seat!\u00a0 Bob and I loved it!<\/p>\n Chris found a house right on the coast for us to stay.\u00a0 See the bit of deck railing in the lower left?\u00a0 What a view we had from this house!<\/p>\n Melody and Chris playing with new family member, Mila.<\/p>\n Chris brought\u00a0his barware, including glass coupes,\u00a0for several kinds of cocktails.\u00a0 He is becoming quite an accomplished mixologist. We loved this comfortable house!<\/p>\n We visited wineries, took walks along the coast, and ate some amazing meals, both that we made ourselves at our rented house and in restaurants in Mendocino.\u00a0 You can get some creative meals at various wineries too–like Pennyroyal<\/a>, where the daughter of one of our long time favorite wine makers has started her own business.<\/p>\n I can’t resist sharing this photo of Chris and Mila at our favorite vineyard in the Anderson Valley, Husch<\/a>.<\/p>\n We spent our last day in San Francisco.\u00a0 It was a wonderful time of year to be on the coast of California and to be with Chris on his birthday.\u00a0 We got to know Melody better and see Mila for the first time.<\/p>\n I was thinking of the poppy seeds I scattered in my garden at home\u00a0as I visited this wonderful garden in Golden Gate Park.\u00a0 It’s one of Chris’s favorite destinations and now one of ours as well.\u00a0 He used to live\u00a0only a short walk from this park and wouldn’t mind moving back here someday.<\/p>\n<\/a>Dinner is served.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n