A real 70s cami dress...

We all know modern designers are copying vintage clothes for their sweetness, details and because what else are they gonna do?
Madewell is the little sister of J Crew : ) and this dress caught my eye while checking out what's going on in Retail Land......
It's made of silk and it must be dry-cleaned...price: $198.00

Here's my dress listed on etsy! 
Hey, that looks pretty close...but funkomavintage's is way cuter because mine has fabric roses and perma-pleats...and it can be gently machine washed saving you tons of $$$$ on cleaning bills.


Yeah! for Vintage!

and while we're talking 'bout a 70s  cami dress....

maybe pair it with these.....

Am I blue....

when the long hot days of summer are upon us......
blue....and white are the colors I turn to for some psychological coooollling off....
Blue, being the color of the sky, reflecting on the big water...well, we humans know that water is Life.

I always long to go for a swim in a lake, a pond or a crispy river. On Yountville Cross Road is a stone bridge ....and running under is it is a small trickling part of the Napa River. This is one of the cold lanquid swimmin' holes I jumped in and splashed around in my young days.
Across the street, just before the bridge, as you are leaving Yountville and heading towards Silverado Trail, is an Ecological Reserve. It wasn't there then, but it's there now and when I go for my next visit home, I will surely make the drive out there.

I remember one blistering hot August day so clearly......I was living on Monroe St, my 16th summer....a group of my friends dropped by and picked me up in an old truck and crammed about 6 of us in the open back.
The pretty girl, Adrian, I think her name was....got to sit in the front cab with the driver....She was so busty and so tan and so pretty with her dark curly hair and pearly white teeth. She smelled clean and fresh and seemed so much more mature than us. I knew somewhere there was another world...cold, clear and stunning.

That day at the River, I swam in my Levis cut offs (I still have them) and a tshirt...I layed on my back on the rocky beach and smelled the dark moss, the water and looked up at the wide blue sky through black branches of a tall oak. Soon, the cheap wine was passed around and the breeze was cooler. When it was time to go, Adrian sat in the back with us and different girl sat up front.
Fame is fleeting, but memories last a long long time.

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Some beachy things from etsy sellers.......
I want to smell like this! Salty Mariner Perfume from solsticescents.



Sea glass necklace from lalucita.



Octopus t-shirt from Caustic Tee.





In my etsy shop, if you search 'blue'...you'll come up with quite a few blue things...
A psychedelic waterfull vintage Hawaiian dress...




If you're gonna get pushed in the pool, be wearing this!



Cool cotton and fresh soft florals in an easy fitting dress....




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Now, of course the Napa Valley is packed full of pretentious douchebags...and real people like me are in short supply. The native trout runs have been reduced because of "diversions"...ie:Wineries are sucking the water out of the Napa River,& its creeks and streams. I suppose wine is more important than the natives.

From a report in 2005, titled Historical distribution and current status of steelhead/rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in streams of the San Francisco Estuary, California---
"Assessment: In 1962, DFG called the Napa River “the most important steelhead stream in the counties bordering San Francisco Bay” (CDFG 1962, p. 1).
Steelhead historically reproduced in most of the tributary and headwater drainages of the Napa River,although they now are reduced substantially in abundance. We are not aware of recent estimates of the size of the Napa River steelhead run. However, previous estimates place the historical run in the range of 6,000 to 8,000 individuals (Anderson 1972;
USFWS and CDFG 1968)......

Water diversions from the basin that affect over-summering habitat in quality or extent, therefore, would be expected to directly impact the Napa River system O. mykiss population. In 1963, DFG noted, “With the increasing water development in the
drainage, nursery areas are disappearing fast” (Robinson 1963, p. 1)."

Pretty, Prague, vintage European car, flowers and his blue Eyes

It will be better...even better than it feels right now.........

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once...

In the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade my foster parents, Don & Shirley, took the lot of us on a long drive to Oklahoma...to the town of Muskogee that is.
Lots of typical vacation things happened...sweat, boredom and swimming in Albuquerque.
I had a paper sack of books to read for the long long trip.
Don had a paperback he packed for himself to read and when he was driving, I got to read it. It was a story about a little girl who was just about my age at the time....seven or so.
It was the summer of 1962, and I didn't know it but I was on my last vacation with Don & Shirley. At the end of the summer I was to go back home to live with my mom, Lomita and my stepdad, Norman, in Yountville.

This book, To Kill A Mockingbird, changed my life forever. This is true of many peoples lives. This is a book that has a powerful and mesmerizing effect on people who actually read it. Some love it as if it is food and water and the air to breathe......Others see it as the Devil's Words.

It made me realize that I wasn't the only person in the world that was a bit too smart. It made me want to become a lawyer. I almost made it to law school. But I changed my mind. It made me a better thinker, this book did. I had proof that things were not always what they seemed at first glance. And that things are exactly what they are at first glance.

There's plenty to read about Harper Lee, so I won't bore you with details. It remains to this day the best book I've ever read.



Every time I wear tennis shoes I think of Scout.
Our lives were very different and also very much the same. We both had very odd families to grow up in. We both grew up in odd little old-fashioned towns. We both had parents who were town leaders and were loved and hated for that.
We both were missing a parent.
Like Scout, I too had an older brother that I adored.
Like Scout I had an interesting and complex friendship with a family of retarded boys that lived in Yountville. Boo Radley and his family are strange in much of the same ways as the Jones boys were.



I have a knife I think that is like one Scout might have. I keep little things like pen nibs, old pocket watches, marbles, and bits of pencils and crayons that she keeps in her cigar box at the beginning of the film. I have my old paperback copy from years past.I am still a tomboy like Scout.



I have a books-on-CD I listen to as often as I can.....it's read by Sissy Spacek, and it is perfect.



I have a copy of the movie poster.



I still have a newspaper clipping of Harper Lee taken at one of her very rare public appearances about 15 years ago. It's faded from being tacked to my refrigerator for a very long time and now I keep it tucked away.



I have another thing that I have only because I love the book so much. It's an old chair I found at a thrift store about 15 years ago. I've drug it from house to house as I've moved 5 times in the last 15 years.
It's rickety. I sit in it almost every day. It's my sewing chair, and my desk chair. There's nothing special about it except for one simple thing.
A long time ago, someone, a child I'm sure, took a brush and some white paint, and wrote in printed letters a name.
That child wrote Scout on the back of this chair. I'm pretty darn sure Harper Lee had something to do with it.

Waterlogged......

Arrrgh...
My dream of becoming a pirate, er, um ...a Sailor..... is coming True!

Tall ships with square sails

The other day Mark and I visited The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle on Lake union. Boats and boats and boats. Some canoes, rowboats, power boats, Cris Craft, and sailboats....all of wood construction!
Boats with motors ...boats without motors. Big boats...small boats.



The water is so wide and my boat is so small.......
I still can't yet comprehend how boats float and sails catch wind...and don't sink, and sail around as easily as I get up and walk down the block. It will come to me ...I'll get the pieces in my mind to fit together......



The Chieftain and the Lady Washington were docked down there also and we toured them both!
yes the very ship in Pirates of the Caribbean !
All that hemp rigging!
It is really tiny. You'd expect it to be the size of a small cruise ship, eh?
But No!
I stood on the deck, and walked from stem to stern, port to starboard....down to the galley, held on to the helm.......
and tried to imagine a full crew of 12 and tons of cargo...sailing around the Cape and up and down the West Coast and off to Hawaii for trade.....
It just seemed small.
Fine, big enough for a sweet sailboat, but ....small!



from The Historical Seaport website:The new Lady Washington is a full-scale reproduction of the original Lady Washington. Built in the British Colony of Massachusetts in the 1750s, the original vessel carried freight between colonial ports until the American Revolutionary War, when she became an American privateer. In 1787, after the war, she was given a major refit to prepare her for a unprecedented trading voyage around Cape Horn. In 1788, she became the first American vessel to make landfall on the west coast of North America.

A pioneer in Pan-Pacific trade, she was the first American ship to visit Honolulu, Hong Kong and Japan. Lady Washington opened the black pearl and sandalwood trade between Hawaii and the Orient when King Kamehameha became a partner in the ship.

The modern Lady Washington was thoroughly researched by historians and constructed by skilled shipwrights. She was launched as part of the 1989 Washington State Centennial celebration. The new Lady Washington meets all of the U.S. Coast Guard safety requirements for a 21stcentury ship.

Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: My favorite vintage dress......

isn't a fancy expensive designer name like Ceil Chapman, Pucci, or Vionnet.......
This is a simple cotton 50s/60s dress.

It's a pale olive cotton, which is one of my favorite colors...it has snippets of the Declaration of Independence, eagles, drums and the Liberty Bell. It's pretty cheesy, and I love it.



I'm very fond of dresses, tops and shorts and capri with prints like this...especially ones with writing, and with botanical images of flowers and insects.




I love that a designer said to herself ."Yeah, the Declaration of Independence....that's graphically interesting! " Was she a law nerd like me? Was she an artist by default since law schools and politics was hostile to women? Was she a he? I don't have a clue.
I just love it, and I wear it every 4th of July since I bought it a few years ago from And Vintage on ebay. One short cuffed sleeve had a big rip in it so I removed them and made a big pocket out of one of them. I have the rest in my sewing pile of fabrics.
I wear it with a 70s olive leather belt...It all just makes me happy.

Pretty Damn Inspiring Words !!

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

some nifty facts about the Declaration of Independence....
most impressive...."If you were a member of the Second Continental Congress in 1776, you were a rebel and considered a traitor by the King of England. You knew that a reward had been posted for the capture of certain prominent rebel leaders and signing your name to the Declaration meant that you pledged your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor to the cause of freedom."

I won't go into all the reasons why America is not living up to the Promise of Liberty...I do think the EU does a better job for many of its citizens ....and I think Canada is great, and Costa Rica is quite amazing.....
But America is my home and we can make it better.......

Summertime and the Living is Easy....

I don't know about you, but I wait to eat some foods in season......they just taste better...I don't mind the wait....

My frig is full of local cherries from Eastern Washington, & a big box of ripe organic strawberries up from southern California....Is there anything better than the first tender basil leaves of summer?

I won't have my own great big garden this year....I just moved into my new house, so I rely on the Farmer's Markets here in Tacoma.....all 4 of them....
Yup, one on Sunday, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and on Saturday morning...all within a mile or 2 of my home.....& I think there's more if I want to venture even just a little further!

Summer is here, I've been having fun ...finally wearing tank tops and short skirts..yes...Finally! Sandals, and moccasins and sunglasses!
I listed some sunny-weather-only.....vintage sunglasses, a few vintage summer dresses and a sweet tunic top in the etsy shop today.

From the top:
1. Serengeti Drivers are the best. They aren't your average sunglasses....This pair, the classic, aviator style is a cool copper color all the way.
2. Fab I Ski cobalt blue with a shaded ombre purple.....
Quality plastic vintage frames and glass shaded lenses.
3. Vintage Cool Ray Polaroid awesome translucent tortoise frames, chunky rectangle shape frames for the 60s Mod groove. You won't be a big square when you wear these!

When it's hot, I love a sweet simple shift.....Cool and calm in colors of lime green and marina blue and dreamscape lavender, on a white background.

Silky cotton satin is a simple shape with a eye-catching impressionist floral print.


This cute dress has a wide stripe of woodland meadow ferns and flowers....so pretty!
Sweet 70s dress with lots of earth tones in flowers, butterflies and mushrooms, with a blue daisy print.

Puffy sleeves, and a blouson top, with elastic at the top of the skirt.



Soft creamy cotton muslin, rainbow cotton embroidery threads and a comfy classic style...
Mexican dresses like this are a summer classic.




Another great shift dress......Stunning big orange poppies pop up over a flower bed of white and green and yellow daisies!

Teal cotton, 60s vintage dress is a comfy shift style. Straight style with bust darts, it goes on over the head.



Long red 50s vintage scarf is the perfect final touch for that charming outfit!
So versatile...
Cool watercolor rose garden, sheer cotton tunic top is the loveliest for a hot day.

Made of a sheer light printed voile cotton, it's in shades of peach, gray and gold, with halting black lines.






Mark and I bought some big basil plants...we love basil! The herb garden won't wait...We just brought home some lavender, thyme and rosemary.
The tomatoes and pepper plants will go in the fresh new garden bed tomorrow...
Once the garden gets established....it'll get bigger and bigger as I add in bean seeds, and whatever strikes my fancy this summer. Right now, I have to plant vegetable seeds that have a 60 day grow season...but late in August I'll plant lettuce, radish, peas, and other traditional spring crops....which will ripen in the early fall.

I have a huge collection of summer sandals and tennies too. I guess I'll always be a California Girl.....up here you can only wear such silly footwear about 3 months of the year, unless you like cold wet feet. 9 months of the year my feet are in boots and wool socks.
But when the warm weather happens, be it April in a weird warm streak, or into October with sultry Indian summer days...you will see my feet and my painted toes....
showing off in my multitudes of summer shoes that spend their lives in dark cardboard boxes like debutantes without dates, waiting for the sunshine phone to ring......