Today I dragged my 19-year-old Sherpa and guided him down the highway to Kings Mountain Art Fair, one of the best art and craft fairs in California. You go up the mountain and then along the crest of it, with breaks in the trees showing you the fog and the ocean way below you to one side, and the reservoir and then Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay to the other. From up there, it looks like you’re perched on the spine of the state.
Half an hour, I told the kid, I’m just asking for a half hour to visit with Kris and Mel. Which is why we chatted for–well, I tell you, it wasn’t just a half hour, definitely, and it was way too much sun, but sometimes, as I once told a friend a little more passionately than I had intended to say it, when it comes to taking risks re the UV, you just have to live!
Mel and Kris are potters; their website is mkwares.net, and I wish they did mail order, but last time I asked, they didn’t. Gorgeous work. Just gorgeous. I’ve been adding pieces gradually for several years, and now I finally have enough plates to serve dinner when everybody’s home.
But more than that: they are friends. I knitted Kris a scarf a year ago that helped keep her warm when she flew into Oakland airport; she stepped out into the foggy weather there and was shiveringly cold and wrapped it around her. My knitting… They were afraid to ask…and then thrilled to find out my book was not only out, but doing well. Yeah, well. So, guess who now has an inscribed copy?
And guess who gave me some pottery as a thank you?
If you live in the Bay Area, Kings Mountain runs through Monday. They rent old San Francisco cable cars converted into buses for ferrying people to parking points further out from the park. Go see! And tell the Kunihiros hi for me.