It's Valentines Day and I decided to bake cookies for my husband, Arthur. Linzer cookies are everywhere right now. The cafes and grocery stores in town are full of heart-shaped, jelly-filled, red and white cookies. Now, that's sweet, but my honey likes maple. It's his favorite form of sugar. So for him, I made a twist on the usual Linzer cookies, and made
Maple Linzer Cookies…

Maple Cookies
3c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 c butter
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 c maple syrup

Maple Filling
Maple cream blended with a little red food coloring.

Chill dough. Roll and cut. Re-chill. Bake ~15min at 325. Cool to room temp. Layer with filling.

Santa Cruz, CA 2/14/13

This is what I saw on my flight today from San Francisco to Raleigh on my way to ScienceOnline. (ScienceOnline.com)

On an airplane, 1/30/13

I had the honor of giving a talk recently at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. I was asked to come by the Landsat Team (http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/). Landsat is a satellite that takes pictures of Earth that are used for, amongst other things, environmental and agricultural monitoring. What I was trying to communicate with the talk was the importance of the cultural integration of science, and how visual storytelling is a useful tool for accomplishing that. So as the punchline for my presentation I turned Landsat data, an image of Washington DC, into a fabric print, sewed a dress out of it and wore it to the talk.

Here's a link to the fabric if anyone else wants to play with it:  http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1664227
I printed it on the organic cotton knit, and it made a very comfortable work dress. 🙂

Santa Cruz, CA 1/25/13

We watched birds and fish in Neary Lagoon.

We sang some Zombie carols (like x-mas carols, but about zombies eating people) baked Saffron snickerdoodles, and then sent Ben on his way.

Happy Travels Ben!

We bicycled up the coast and found cliffs covered in Ice Plant.

Then we went hiking in the UC Santa Cruz Natural Reserve, and Ben hugged a Sequoia.

My friend Ben is visiting from Australia. He's a childrens book illustator ( http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/Zoobots/).

I'm showing him around Central California. On our first stop after a beach bonfire for New Years was the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Ben's favorite exhibit was the jellyfish.

I received my proofs of my first experiments on Spoonflower.com. They look fabulous! I plan on using them as quilting panels, but they could be used for just about anything… 
If you want to print them and play around yourself, here they are: http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1624052

Happy Crafting!

I'm still having fun designing textiles. I'm planning to make a doona cover for my guest bed, after I finish a few more of the baby quilts. It'll be a comb jelly themed bedding set. I did these ctenophora drawings up today. I was bored with the Ernst Haeckel style of jellyfish drawings, so I did these up in watercolor and sharpie. They are meant to be panels set into the larger design. Instead of painting them directly onto fabric, I've uploaded them to Spoonflower, so that anyone who wants them can print them out for craft projects. I'm waiting for the proofs to arrive, when they do I'll make them public.