i’m saying goodbye to my random nicole blog and heading over to my new blog dear handmade life. hope you all join me there where delilah my business partner, aunt and friend and i will be blogging about craft, food, business and our adventures.

we got super lucky at the holiday 2012 patchwork show in long beach. the weather was perfect–sunny and still. we loved having more artisan food vendors than in the past and we had two rad photobooths. we’re so thankful to our long beach sponsors, especially ‘we love long beach’ who has been with us since our first show. we had amazing makers including some first timers, who we hope will return in the spring. check out the photos for some highlights from the day.

this season marked our second patchwork in our new downtown santa ana location. this time we even had to expand and close down another street. the crowds filled the streets and the show was amazing, chock full of multiple dj’s and live band stations, tons of hands-on diy workshops, delicious food trucks and of course the awesome crafters, artists and designers. big thanks to everyone who made the santa ana show rock!

and now for some amazing photos courtesy of matthew william photography. you can see more of his photos from patchwork santa ana here and his other work here.

we finally ventured up to northern california to debut the first patchwork show out of the so cal area. we had so many amazing sponsors on board that really helped make the show awesome. we’re so thankful to them along with our volunteers, staff, the great people of jack london square (what a perfect venue) and of course the makers. the show featured makers from all of over the north bay, music from our local dj, multiple DIY craft stations, on site screenprinting, photobooth and so much more. we can’t wait for our spring show!

our sponsor: rock paper scissors collective

our sponsor: chevy with their electric car: the volt

our sponsor: yelp with their rad photo booth

our dj from vamp music

patchwork indie art & craft festival oakland

we loved the interactive art exhibit from the oakland museum

our sponsors gogo craft & teahouse studios make n takes

our sponsor loakal had on-site screen-printing

our sponsor oaklandish

many thanks to ALL who came out to support the handmade movement at patchwork culver city last sunday. the show was awesome and we overheard comments from attendees about how amazing all the goods were. we are so lucky to have such talented, hard-working vendors–without them, the shows would not be possible. big thanks also to our determined staff, volunteers, sponsors and our venue for making the first show of the season lovely. check out some photo highlights below.

looking forward to the rest of our holiday shows:

patchwork long beach * nov 11th * marine stadium * bayshore @ appian way

patchwork oakland * nov 18th * jack london square * 98 broadway

patchwork santa ana * nov 25th * downtown * 2nd @ sycamore streets

all shows are FREE to the public and hours are 11-5pm

you remember reading my post on craftcation: indie business & diy craft conference 2012? wishing you could have been there for all the awesome networking, business lectures and DIY craft workshops….well, craftcation is coming back in 2013! we’ve had an awesome response so far and tickets are going fast! make sure to get yours asap for four days of industry professional leading attendees in hands-on DIY workshops and lectures & panels on creative small business. some of this years topics include:

SMALL BUSINESS: starting a creative small business, social media & PR, blogging, wholesale & retails, craft fairs, ETSY, legal a& financial, publishing and more!

DIY CRAFT WORKSHOPS: sewing, knitting, screen-printing, soap making form scratch, photography, letterpress, terrariums, bookbinding and more!

DIY FOOD WORKSHOPS: pickling & fermentation, farm to fork meals, artisan ice cream making, salted caramels, seasonal jams, rustic italian cooking and more!

COMMUNITY EVENTS: bbq opening celebration, yoga, happy hour networking, dance party, food tours and more!

we have so many awesome instructors on board like: aida mollenkamp, amy tan, brittini mehlhoff, cathe holden, cathy callahan, christine haynes, diane gilleland, evena kleiman, kayte terry, kelly lynn-jones, steph cortes and way more!

register now before tickets sell out!

blog posts have been few and far between over the past month or so. once i get into the planning stages of our patchwork indie art & craft festival and craftcation: indie business and DIY craft conference i end up spending a lot of time on the computer and the last thing that sounds fun to me is spending more time on the computer writing blog posts. aside from that i’m back in school getting my MFA in creative writing and working on my thesis (a creative non-fiction collection of short stories about my crafty life) this means even more time on the computer. however, i have recently rediscovered my digital slr camera, which i pretty much ignored for the past year when my iphone and instagram took over documenting my life and crafty adventures. diy tutorials, maker weeklies and more will be back on the blog in a few months but in the meantime i’ll be gathering my favorite photos of the week and sharing them. enjoy!

*station wagon on my walk to the sonoma county fair + lovely ceramics found on a day of indie boutique shopping in oakland at marion & roses workshop, piper & john’s general goods and more shops in the pop-up hood, tiny yellow and white flowers on my morning dog walk, my man at the boat shack at nicks cove in tomales bay.

*jenny at santa rosa dive bar, the belvedere, claudia at glen ellen star, dancing at the chrome lotus in santa rosa old school style and brunch with lukka at barn diva

*driving home from tomales bay, our awesome nicks cove bartender, nick who is also a pilot! and the pier to the nicks cove back shack where seth and i had drinks and played cards.

i was never a club kid. math club, science club–not even art club counted me as a member when i was young. in my twenties i did not go ‘clubbing’ although if someone would have approached me to join a dive bar club, i would have done so gladly. so, when my friend jenny (a sonoma county transplant by way of la) told me about the club she was starting i was hesitant at first. that uncertainty faded pretty fast when she told me what the club was about…hunting, gathering, gleaning, growing, cooking, fellowship, eating, lots of wine and a club t-shirt emblazoned with the most bad ass club logo ever, all included with the club dues.

growing up in the 80s in southern california meant that for me, food came from the grocery store. i knew farms existed but they were magical places from a lost era like the unicorns i collected figurines of. even though i knew that a burger came from a cow and had seen cows, something in my brain didn’t make the full connection that i was indeed eating that animal i had seen grazing on the side of the freeway when we drove east to visit my aunt and uncle. like many artsy kids, i ended up going through my vegetarian phase and vegan phase and eventually ate raw foods only for about six months. i was called back to my carnivore roots on a college road trip by some beef jerky and i never looked back until a few years ago when the tentacles of the slow food, farm to table and homesteading movements finally reached me. 

my aunt delilah was a big part of this resurgence of me caring about what i put into my mouth. delilah, a master food preserver and food crafter began talking about artisan food and what it means to eat consciously. i admired her root cellar and watched carefully as she taught me how to properly can preserves and pickles. then i moved to sonoma county where pretty much everyone has a backyard chicken coop and cans their own jams. my DIY ethos still hasn’t pervaded my culinary life the way it has taken over the rest of my life, but thanks to the dry creek gun club i’m getting closer.
i attended my first gun club event, a salmon feast on sunday. the menu was born of the fruits of the members labor. jenny caught, cleaned and prepped the salmon which was grilled. she even buried the head under a lemon tree and made salmon cakes from the carcass. there was a bear leg on the bbq. huge beautiful oysters. a goat (some of the best meat of any kind i’ve ever tasted) that was raised and killed by the man who brought it. veggies and fruits from gardens not even 100 feet away from where we sat on red and white checkered covered picnic tables feasting and drinking local wine from mason jars. i ate each lovely bite with grateful attention to everything and everyone that brought it to my plate. everyone that was there seemed as grateful as i was, maybe even more so. 

i couldn’t help but feel like i was in a strange church of honest good people gathered on the hill of jenny’s tiny white house on the grounds of a winery to appreciate a few hours of food and wine and regular old happiness. it was brilliant. among the gathers— burro bob, a man with 80 burros who lives off the grid and who can only be contacted through a po box. an amateur taxidermist from oakland. a buddhist veterinary nurse. a hollywood set designer. a man who invented part of the technology that allows me to even be posting this right now. a lawyer. winemakers and cellar workers. a hunter who let jenny watch him skin a boar he’d shot and asked her to stick her hand under the dead animals thick pelt of fat to feel how deeply a bullet must penetrate it. there were so many more interesting people there too, but i didn’t get a chance to talk to all of them…which gives me just one more reason to count the days to the next dry creek gun club meeting. and yes, in case you were wondering there are guns and lots of talk of planning hunting trips. for now i’ll stick to practicing on PBR cans with the BB gun in my backyard.

seattle-trip-vacation-ladies-random-nicole

“oh girls… you say that now. BUT wait until the turkey drop”. -jeannette (varci’s mom)
i went to a tiny catholic girls high school-and by tiny i mean our graduating class consisted of no more than 40 of us walking in floor length white gowns that had to be inspected and approved three weeks before the graduation ceremony when we picked up a dozen red roses with our diplomas. maybe it was because there were so few of us or maybe we were just lucky to meet kindred souls at such a young age…but whatever the reason…the fact is, that the friends i made in high school have stayed a part of my life, my head and my heart even now, 18 years after that day of white dresses and red roses.

“the turkey drop” varci’s mom was referring to was that first holiday home after college when you come home and reunite with your hometown friends and find that the connection that was incessant and constant throughout high school is gone. i’m grateful  as hell that that never happened to our little group of friends. this year, we decided that instead of births, weddings and funerals being the reason we would all get together every year…we would create our own reason–an annual trip. this first destination was much debated on but we all finally settled on seattle. i’d been to seattle once before and fell in quick love with it but it had been nearly 15 years since that first trip. after spending four days in seattle i can now say without any wavering that if my family, friends and work didn’t prohibit me from leaving california, i would move there in a hot second! seattle is the perfect combination of everything i love about all the other cities i love.
a short list of what i love about seattle:
1. you can walk pretty much everywhere and if you can’t walk, there’s a taxi or rad public transportation.
2. there is a thriving independent creative scene.
3. bodies of water surround you.
4. the buildings have architectural loveliness.
5. you can buy pretty much any fish any day of the week.
6. lots of artisan food and cocktails.

peek at my photos below to see why i love seattle and then book a plane ticket asap to head to the best damn city on the west coast. here are some links to the rad places below: the melrose market, marigold & mint, kate greiner, butter home, molly moon’s, sun liquors, sweet perversion, oddlfellows, the rockbox, the belfry, tin table, cakespy, schmancy, greenleaf restaurant, pike place market, king’s hardware, cupcake royale, dry goods design and velouria. thank you seattle and all the awesome people we met who suggested such perfect spots and most of all to my high school ladies who year after year prove the falsity of the turkey drop.

the tiny santa rosa airport...our ride in a stretch limo circa 80s prom...lovely views and varci

1. a rad wall that says, "boy, what a life" 2. inside the melrose market a lovely flower shop marigold & mint 3. butter home-LOVE this shop upstairs in the melrose market 4. the melrose market 5. kate greiner paper goods 6. butter home

1.the ladies getting down on some molly moon's ice cream SO GOOD 2. lisa and really yummy cocktails at sun liquors 3. more yummy cocktails at sun liquors 4. couldn't pass a chance for this photo in front of that awesome wall 5. claudia sporting a bourbon is the window to the soul shirt by sweet perversion 6. helen outside oddfellows an out of control yummy restaurant

1. the best damn karaoke bar ever at rockbox 2-3. the belfry: rad shop with all sorts of preserved animals and oddities and reminded me of that david sedaris story when he's in paris 4. inspiring bathroom graffiti 5. love this building 6. artisan cocktails at tin table

1. & 5. love this shop: cakespy 2. oysters, oysters and yes...more oysters 3. varci 4. kristen rask at her rad shop schmancy 6. loved the rad sewn plushies

1. headed to chinatown 2. my rad fourtune said "follow you(r) heart" 3. tracey outside the awesome greenleaf restaurant where we pretty much ordered the entire menu 4. city view form the ferry we took to bainbridge island 5. varci and i on the ferry 6. claudia and varci on the ferry

1-4. pike place market-even though it was touristy we loved it 5. king's hardware-a rad bar 6. happy hour

1. we headed to ballard in a taxi and ate more outstanding ice cream at cupcake royale 2. love this town 3-4. drygoods design: the best fabric shop ever! 6. velouria boutique: totally full of indie designers

i’ve been on a little blog break as you can tell. july was an awesome but busy month. i have some great posts coming up including my trip to seattle where i encountered so much crafty goodness. i’ve also been hard at work planning craftcation 2013. although it’s eight months away planning starts early and we’ve been booking awesome presenters, rad workshops and tons of after hours events. the video from our 2012 conference was released as well… and it’s amazing! you can watch it here. i’ve also been working on our holiday patchwork indie art & craft festival shows and we’ve added a new location in oakland! this is the first time patchwork will be in northern california and i’m SO excited! here’s the postcard i designed for the festivals.