Saturday, 21 February 2015

Lixie Reaches San Francisco

Finally! Two month after leaving Tokyo, Pooch and I have arrived in our temporary flat in sunny San Francisco (ignore the blog header suggesting I'm still in Japan - the image file is on a hard drive in a box somewhere in another country). Even a temporary lease of two months seems like heaven when you've changed location 16 times in two months. It seems nuts to complain about it when we were made wonderfully welcome by family and were fed all our favourite meals and were warm and clean, but I was definitely getting to the end of my tether. Living out of one suitcase for that amount of time is no fun, and all those meals have damaged the Byrne waistline.

Since arriving here this has been much walking to explore the local area and never more so than when we went to the weekly Ferry Building Marketplace this morning. Quite a selection to choose from.
Vegetables at the Ferry Building Marketplace
Tulips at the Ferry Building Marketplace
Vegetables at the Ferry Building Marketplace
Mushrooms at the Ferry Building Marketplace
Fish at the Ferry Building Marketplace
This one was mental.
Meat at the Ferry Building Marketplace
All those chickens and what looked like whole pig...bodies? Not sure of the technical term. They were all cooking and dripping juices and fat onto the baskets of brussel sprouts in amongst the meat and then onto the potatoes at the bottom. The smell was amazing. The only thing I tried was an ASTONISHING ice cream from a place called Humphrey Slocombe.
Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Flavours
I had the Malted Dulche de Leche and, my word, I seriously think it is the best ice cream I've ever had. Obviously it doesn't have a chocolate in, but then nothing is 100% perfect. We also brought home fish and veg for dinner.

Getting here and being able to have more than one tiny project on the go has already paid dividends. One block for the I Love Lucy patchwork bee.
February Lucy Block
My Crazy Stripes Tee has blossomed a sleeve and the start of another.
Jumper in progress
I tried this on last night and couldn't be happier with the fit.

I've also got the desk set up with Nickerjac's LB's parting gift - a polka dot television he made himself complete with Japanese scene. Plus one or two other reminders of Tokyo.
The television

Exploring so far has been largely of the necessity rather than the crafty nature, but then Pooch starts work next week so I am planning trips to Thrift and Craft Stores for then (look - I said 'thift' not 'charity and 'stores', not 'shops'. La! I'm so american already).

Have a nice day!