I just ordered a sewing machine! yay! p.s. I don't recommend ordering over the Singer website. They are upgrading to a better shopping service as fast as they can, they tell me. I would phone your order in if you're going to buy a refurbished machine.

How to have the best dang barbecue over at Grand Royal featuring Layne Wooten, bbq-er for the stars and a multitude of tips on prep, sauce, tools, recipes and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective BBQ Artists. Also check out the guide to buying water toys.

I love this - Make-Your-Own-Opoly! also look at the balloon molding starter set. Flax has a number of neat-o craft kits that at the least give me ideas

A few box templates for you gleaned from the getcrafty boards - a take-out box and pyramid box and a bunch of cute interlocking stuff at Mirkwood Designs

Some more quilting links - Shannon points us to Quilthistory.com. It is an introductionto dating quilts, and works as an introduction to the history of quilting in the US. And Mena points us to Quilts and Quiltmaking in America: 1978-1996 at the Library of Congress.

slow food There is a something truly great going on - Slow Food. The movement began as a reaction to the spread of fast food, and the manifesto proclaims: "Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food". The wonderful Malika of Nobody's Fool: Food Notes and Stories offers these words:

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To me, the Slow Food movement is just logical, it just makes sense. We spend so much of our time rushing around that we've lost our connection with each other, with the seasons, with our communities, and even with ourselves. Cell phones, email, FedEx, faxes - everything is instant, we need everything NOW. Look at all the self-help books and glossy magazines that have come out in the last few years purporting to teach us how to simplify our lives. I believe that the best thing that any of us can do for ourselves is to sit down and eat dinner every night - a dinner that we cook ourselves, eaten with people that we enjoy. Not food that is full of chemicals and not a dinner that we eat in front of the television. The Slow Food movement is, in a large part, about pleasure, and in my opinion all you need to do to find pleasure is to pay attention. Go to the farmer's market and look at the colors of all the people and all the vegetables. Smell how fruit smells when it's ripe and fresh. Notice the textures of lettuce and kale, the different sizes of grapes and tomatoes, the fuzziness of peaches. Think about where the food you eat comes from and who grew it and what the land looks like. Pay attention to the way you prepare your food and pay attention to how it tastes.

Slow Food is also about local foods and wines and the people that produce them. It's about protecting those commodities and artisans from the homogenization of Target and Starbucks and McDonald's and and and. . . Look around and recognize the people and products that are made or grown near you. Here in Santa Cruz I have Corralitos Sausage Company, a lot of really wonderful farmers, the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company, among many other things. Look around and see what's in your own town, and then when you travel, look for the local food - whether that means restaurants, farms, wine, or beer. On a road trip, stop at farm stands, or eat street food. One of the leaders who revolutionized the way that Americans, especially Californians, eat is Alice Waters. If you have any money, eat at Chez Panisse. But alumni of Chez Panisse are everywhere. For a really nice (and more affordable) outing, take a drive up to Point Reyes and get a picnic from Tomales Bay Foods. Peggy Smith, the owner, used to work at Chez Panisse. Her partner, Sue Conley, shares the building. Her company is called Cowgirl Creamery and she makes delicious cheese from local organic (Strauss) milk. If you come down to Santa Cruz, eat at Carried Away. Tom & Mima, the owners, met while they were working at Chez Panisse.