hawaii wedding trip

Somehow I didn't manage a single post in November. The highlight for us was a trip to Oahu for the wedding of one of my baby cousins. Because my mom was the eldest in a family with a large age spread, most of our cousins were born when we were already grown and I still think of them all as babies—even though they are now in their 20s and 30s.

The trip was notable for being the first time in 10 years we've gone to Hawaii for something other than a funeral. And my own baby, S, turned 14 while there.

So it was a different, and memorable, trip for us. We started with a day canoeing.

photo by Karen Soon

That night there was a pre-wedding dinner for some of the family.

The wedding was outdoors and beautiful, poignant for the absence of my cousin's dad.

photo by Karen Soon

Here are my boys at the reception wearing their kukui nut leis.

photo by Stephanie Lee

DH wasn't able to make the trip with us and C had to leave after the weekend to get back to classes, so S and I went alone the North Shore for a few days.

Waimea Valley

Aoki's Shave Ice in Haleiwa

We spent the time hiking, snorkeling, watching a surf competition, and eating ono food. But for us, Hawaii always comes down to family, the reason behind every trip we make. We have a large family, so I'm only mentioning a few here.

My cousin Karen and her husband Randy took fantastic care of us from beginning to end, arranging the aforementioned canoeing trip, driving us to the fish market for lunch, meeting us for a last dinner, and giving us photos to remember the visit by.

Randy, Karen, Jason, Kanani

This auntie is special to S. He loves her cheerful, easygoing personality.

And then there is my grandma, 97 years young, grandmother of the bride, and the one who has taken care of so many of us there that day. I absolutely love this photo taken by Karen. Looking at it will always remind me of the joy around this wedding and how lucky we are to have the family we don't get to see nearly often enough.

photo by Karen Soon

keith builds an ukulele

C and I went back to Keith's workshop over the weekend. He and C talked about C's lap steel guitar project, specifically about setting up the homemade bandsaw Keith gave him to use for it.

Keith was in the middle of an ukulele commission for a Canadian client. He was about to start the bracing, which he planned to model on the unbuilt Martin he had acquired years ago. The Martin stamp is faintly visible above one of the braces.

We also got quick demonstrations on neck shaping:

and wood bending:

The last time we visited, Keith showed us a chunk of black walnut. Now it is quickly taking shape:

And maybe I'll get to show you the finished instrument someday. Or perhaps Keith will put it up on his own website.

January 2013 update: The finished ukulele can be seen here.

keith's workshop

Lisa recently wrote a post about the value of networking, and I can tell you that she lives this. Last fall when I was visiting and noticed her ukuleles, I asked if she'd ever thought about learning to play—the idea had just recently begun to take shape in my own head.

Lisa instantly said yes, mentioned her musician/luthier friend Keith, and picked up the phone to call him right then and there. After Keith had patched up the Gaspar uke, he gave us a couple of introductory lessons.

Fast forward 9 months and now I'm happy to call Keith a friend of my own (thank you, Lisa). He has taught us many more things since that day, met my music-obsessed son C and invited him to play trumpet—an instrument C was not at all comfortable on but willing to do with Keith's encouragement—in his Friends of the Library band, and has of late taken time out of his always-busy schedule to guide C in building a lap steel guitar.

C and I went to visit this week when I asked Keith to set up the new concert ukulele DH gave me for my birthday. His barn workshop is a fun place, because you never know what you will see upon entering.

cases & necks

tools, bundles of horsehair, vintage radio equipment

banjos, bandsaw, molds

chair seat made from a drum head

baritone ukulele parts

an assortment hanging from the stairs

3-string MJB coffee "canjo"

Next to it, an 8-string ??? made from...

...a Dutch oven lid

custom guitar stenciled with a design by Keith's friend, Bob Armstrong

And these pictures barely scratch the surface. There are rows of violins, a sousaphone modified with parts from the hardware store, a gigantic harmonica, and lots of wood. There was a pot of beeswax left over after Keith had spun off his honey; he also keeps bees.

Outside, he had rigged up a solar wax warmer to melt this down into candle wax.

I've loaded this post with photos even though they're not the best, because it's the only way to convey how rich and amazing Keith's workshop is. Maybe you can understand why C and I love to visit. It looks like somewhere you could discover anything at all, doesn't it?

Be sure to visit Keith's website, particularly his instructions for making instruments with kids: keithcary.com

riding segways

As the boys get older, we continue to look for ways to spend time together as a family. It's a continually changing gig, always dependent on their ages and interests; but day trips are usually a good bet. Seems everyone likes to go and see something new.

Last year I purchased what I thought would be a fun way to get us out of town: a Living Social deal for a Segway tour of San Francisco. Busy weekends and bad weather prevented us from booking it until last Friday, a day that was forecast first for rain, then for clouds—but which turned out to be as clear and lovely as any day in the city can be.

Learning to ride is surprisingly easy. It's the most intuitive machine I've ever been on. Lean forward, and you roll. Lean back, and you stop. Keep leaning back, and your machine goes backwards. The Segway almost feels like an extension of your body after awhile.

But let's face it: there's no way to ride these things and not look like a big dork, as the writers of Arrested Development well know.

Still, it was great fun. We rode around the north end of the city: Municipal Pier, Cow Hollow, the Marina District, the Palace of Fine Arts.

Near the St. Francis Yacht Club we had a beautiful, fogless view of the Golden Gate Bridge:

Along the way, as with any good tour, we saw and learned things that were new to all of us: The Heritage, a retirement home designed by Julia Morgan; the origin of the term "sugar daddy" in Alma Spreckels' pet name for her much older sugar heir husband; and many stories about the San Francisco World's Fair of 1915, for which much of the land in the Marina was reclaimed. (Side note: it was at the Hawaii Pavilion at this fair where the ukulele was introduced to Americans at large, setting off the first great ukulele craze.)

After the 3-hour tour (cue theme to Gilligan's Island), we turned around to get C to his band's gig that evening. But we all agreed that we would try to take another segway tour as soon as possible.

Do you have any favorite day trips?

monterey bay aquarium

The reason we go to Monterey each year is for Homeschool Day. The aquarium generously sets aside several Mondays each fall to allow homeschooling families free entry. This is a huge, huge gift and we have used it for nine years now.

This year our time was shortened by C's evening midterm, which meant we could only stop by our favorite exhibits before starting the drive home.

sardines in Open Sea

rockfish in the Kelp Forest

purple-striped jellyfish

moon jellies

sea turtle

white-spotted rose anemone in Rocky Shore

The aquarium is built over the site of the old Hovden sardine cannery and retains a few boilers, along with an exhibit explaining Doc Ricketts' contribution to the fields of marine biology and tidal ecology.

Just outside of the aquarium is Cannery Row, made famous in Steinbeck's novel of the same name. If you look up, you'll see that the trinket shop is actually the original model for Lee Chong's general store.

Science, history and literature: I love how the Monterey Bay Aquarium integrates it all. This was likely our last year to attend Homeschool Aquarium Day, but we still plan to come and visit whenever we can.

P.S. My friend Jen and her family have been longtime traveling companions to Monterey, and she also went down again this year. Please read her take on the aquarium sea horses at her blog post here.

a day in carmel

"If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:

Perhaps of my planted forest a few

May stand yet..."

                      ~"Tor House," Robinson Jeffers

Image via Wikipedia

Hawk Tower at Tor House, Carmel, California

Our annual trip to Monterey changes up a little every year. This year we spent a full day in nearby Carmel, precipitated by the fact that S was now 12 and could finally join a tour of Tor House. Tor House is poet Robinson Jeffers' handbuilt home on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. We have been waiting years to be able to do this and were not disappointed. Unfortunately, cameras (and even handbags) are not allowed on the tour, so I only have a few outside shots to share.

It's quite amazing to think of Jeffers writing all morning in his Hawk Tower, a place S deemed "Harry Potter-ish" for its turrets and hidden staircase, then spending the remainder of the day hauling and setting huge pieces of granite as he extended the house from one tiny cottage to a walled compound with multiple additions. He also planted over 2000 trees (alluded to in the poem above) along the property's edges. This was a busy man.

The grounds also incorporate pool table slate, ship ballast, and discarded marble from a remodeled bank; as well as old statuary, a portion of the Great Wall of China, and other exotica from the Jeffers' and their friends' travels. These occasional insets of random material give the house a sense of surprise and wonder on top of its gorgeous natural beauty and cozy simplicity.

More surprises can be found in the town of Carmel itself, where Hugh Comstock's twee little cottages are sprinkled throughout the downtown neighborhoods. In fact, many of Carmel's homes are similarly designed to be quaint and original (and...expensive).

"Hansel"

We ended the day walking around Point Lobos, home to Monterey Cyprus trees and orange algae.

I'd miscalculated my knitting time on this trip and stopped by a yarn shop thinking I could start a new project. The store's ball winder was broken, so this did not happen; but I couldn't resist a skein of custom-dyed yarn the owner had commissioned to reflect the colors of the beach.

Why don't all local yarn shops do this? I'm thinking the colors here would be tomato red along with other agricultural colors like green, gold and deep brown. What are the dye colors of your area?

where we've been (ashland, for one)

This blog has been idle for most of the summer and while there are all sorts of reasons for this, the main one has been pneumonia. It has sapped me of energy, both physical and mental; and though I'm definitely recovering, it's been hard to get back on track. The summer plans I had for cleaning out the garage, tidying up the yard, and putting up a bike shed are postponed for now; it's enough to get through the ordinary day of feeding and watering, cleaning, laundry and errands. And don't get me wrong—I'm grateful to be able to do that much.

Another thing I was glad to be able to do was take the kids back to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I considered not going, but C offered to help drive if necessary, and I knew I had the option of sending the boys to a play by themselves if I needed to rest.

And everything turned out just fine. We rested plenty, but also walked down each evening to the Elizabethan Stage for 3 different plays. Here is the set for Loves Labour's Lost, as stitched together on my aging iPhone:

There is nothing like sitting outdoors with 1000 other people on a balmy Ashland evening, all cheering together as the flag signaling the start of the play is raised, and then becoming so immersed in the show that there's no memory of when the sun sets and the stars rise overhead.

It was only our second year in Ashland, but we already found ourselves returning to some favorite places. There was Lithia Park, which starts just behind the Festival square and has miles of wooded hiking trail.

Bloomsbury Books, an independent bookseller on Main Street, with a thoughtful selection of titles that we can't pass by.

And our favorite eatery, Dragonfly, which calls itself Latin-Asian fusion food. C made a special request for lunch in the garden here on our last day.

Oops, I have no idea how this picture got in here! Dagoba...? Is that some sort of Star Wars place?

Okay, okay, yes, we went here! Twice, if you must know. (And if you go in summer, remember to take a cooler to pack everything in for the drive home. Not that we filled a cooler, of course—just offering a friendly tip, ahem.)

Where have you been this summer? Does your family have a favorite destination with places you look forward to returning to, or do you aim for ever-new experiences?