 Thank you for joining us today, and this is part of our Filipino American History Month celebration. So we appreciate you joining us on a beautiful afternoon in San Francisco. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the raw Mutu Sholoni people, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homelands. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the raw Mutush community. And in that link that I put in the chat box, you will see a link to resources and a reading list all about Indigenous culture, particularly in the Bay Area. All right, now I want to give some announcements about upcoming. We have so much happening in October, so please come around. This Saturday, this is going to be our, these first events will be all about Filipino American History Month. We have a film screening and filmmaker discussion, sci-fi alum, amazing female protagonist too, so we'll watch the film and then we'll have a discussion. In person on October 24th, 21st, sorry, in our Latinx community room, the lower level of the main library, book launch, 6 p.m., let's gather, come on down. October 23rd, our historian, our librarian from the Filipino Center, Abe Ignacio will be in conversation with the historian from, I want to say, I can't remember, so I apologize for that, but a historian from a Filipino organization here in San Francisco and I'll get it, I'll get it in the chat box. And they're going to be talking about how the war affected San Francisco and all of the ramifications in the Filipino community. On the 26th, we have the amazing author, Carla Cornejo Villavincencio. This is our on the same page campaign where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. And the book is the undocumented Americans, which you can pick up at all locations right now. It's really an interesting book and where she combines like almost journalism essayist, but with her own personal spin and memoir includes like mental health. It's very heavy, but great book. So please check it out. And we are celebrating the amazing work of Lydia Ortiz, who did this gorgeous poster for us. She is so great work, great work. It's so vivid and colorful and amazing. And she'll be talking about her work and her journey to becoming an artist and how she got to where she is. And that's happening October 28, 7 p.m. in zoom land. Tonight we have demons, creatures and monsters all my and that's going to be a docent led presentation by the Asian Art Museum, talking about all their scary collections. So come on one night only. It's only on zoom. You have to register and it's not recorded. So come on by tonight, 7 p.m. On Saturday, we have our African American Center and a panel talking about trauma, tresses and truth and tangling our hair through personal narrative, featuring writers and poets. And this is a partner event with Moad. And total SF on November 17 in the corrett auditorium also streaming. But come join us. We are looking for some companionship and live, live gathering again. And it's in the credits so we can space out and be social, social gathered social distance. So get your book why we swim also going to be hitting every library shelf by tomorrow. So go check that out. And all right, lots more events and I will put links into the chat box. And now I'm going to turn it over to our small business librarian, Kirsty, who is going to tell you about today's presentation. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Kirsty. I'm the Small Business Center Librarian here at the main library. I want to introduce DOS of Looms. DOS of Looms is a Philippinex flower and plant shop and family business in San Francisco's Mission District located at the corner of 22nd Street and Cat. Each member of the family plays an integral role in creating the sex, success and liveliness of DOS of Looms. They're proud of their Filipino heritage and also strive to support communities of color by working with local artists and collaborating with grassroots organizations and nonprofits. DOS of Looms is also dedicated to creating a more sustainable floral industry by engaging in environmentally aware business practices. They let the seasons guide their designs and source most of their flowers from local vendors throughout the Bay Area. DOSA means goddess in both Tagalog and in Spanish. Please join me in welcoming Prisha from DOS of Looms. Thank you so much for the introduction. I really appreciate it. Once again, everyone, my name is Krisha and I am one of the owners of DOS of Looms and we are a sister family owned operated flower shop in the Mission District in San Francisco. I'd like to give a big shout out to Kirsty for inviting us to be a part of this. This is absolutely amazing. So thank you so much for having us here. It's very exciting. So today I'm going to be showing you all how we create one of our signature flower designs that we call the shrimp chip bouquet. And the shrimp chip bouquet is really just a flower arrangement that we put together inspired by probably shrimp chips. So this kind of came about while my sister Kailin was working on a just a regular flower arrangement and she was actually just munching on these on the shrimp chips and was like, wow, I'm going to make this arrangement based off the shrimp chip bouquet. So what we're going to be focusing on is actually going to be like the colors of the wrapping of this bouquet. For us, as florists, colors for an arrangement is really important. Like obviously we focus on different parts of the bouquet, but color is definitely one of the main things that we like to really perfect because having a good combination of colors really sets the mood of the arrangement. And so sometimes like arranging flowers could be kind of repetitive and we actually repeat color palettes and it becomes kind of boring doing this though usual same old same old. So drawing inspiration from different things makes the create like the arranging part of it fun and creative again. So in this case, we definitely were just drawing inspiration from this. So yeah, I'm going to get started by showing you all the types of flowers that we'll be using. So when you look at this, just the wrapping, you definitely get kind of pink reddish hues. So we're definitely going to be working with with flowers that have that same kind of color palette, more the pinkish reddish tones. We like to use fillers, which are like the tinier little flowers like this one here. This is called wax flower. It is part of the filler. Then we like to use accent flowers, which are something like this your carnation. And then we also like to use focal flowers. The focal flowers kind of like your are the flowers with the big, big bloom. They're like the big flowers that really put the bouquet together. These are your focal flowers. So I'm going to be showing y'all how we put these together to create the shirt chip bouquet. So I usually like to start with the filler, just something kind of bushy like this. It's a really good base to start with. So we like to use these wax flower. Sorry, a little tingle there. And when we build a bouquet, you want to have a loose hand, whatever hand you like to work with. I'm right handed. So my loose hand is usually the opposite, which is my left. So you want to have a nice loose hand, grab your filler flowers as your base. And then I actually then grab the bigger flowers next. So my bigger flower in this case, the focal flower, this is a protea. I'll just place the protea in the middle of the bouquet. That way it kind of sets the direction of where this bouquet is going. So I only have three stems in my hand right now. And it's pretty big right now. And after I grab these flowers, I'll grab my Lizzie Anthos. And when as much as possible, when you're arranging a bouquet, a hantai bouquet, you want to maintain a crisscross motion with the stems. So if this stem here is going to be placed in the front, the next stem has to be placed in a way where it crisscrosses. Because you always want to have a crisscross motion. So if you could see my stems are kind of crisscrossing each other. And when you do this, the flowers tend to move around. And that's okay. Because once you get closer to the end, it'll start to make more sense. I like to work with threes. It's a lot easier when you're arranging. So for this, I'm going to add three of these Lizzie Anthos. This is what we've got so far. Not quite there yet, but we're getting there. And then I'm going to next add the carnations. I like these carnations just because it gives us a little pop of color, like how this shrimp chip here is kind of that yellow hue. So I'm going to add these. Once again, keeping up with that crisscross motion. So we've got so far. And then I'm going to add my roses next. I like to use this kind of orangey rose color. I know there's no orange in the shrimp chip film, but it just it gives it a good composition and pop of color right there. So we're going to add our roses. So we're getting somewhere right now. You could see that we've got three roses, three Lizzie Anthos, which are these pink ones, three carnations, which are these. The only thing that I didn't add three of is this big protea here. And that's just because this is a really big tropical flower. You don't really need three of these. One is enough one equals three for this tropical flower anyways. So the next one I'm going to add is going to be this antherium. This antherium is actually the main inspiration of the entire bouquet. And I'm going to show you, I'm going to flip this down real quick. Because of this antherium flower looking like a shrimp chip, that was actually the thing that inspired the entire bouquet. My sister was eating shrimp chip bouquet. She was so hungry. And she noticed that this chip looked like the center of this flower. You know, if you could see the comparison, but they kind of look the same. Well, because of that, it kind of just inspired the whole thing. And so when we when we put it together, we're like, oh my gosh, we not only love the flower choices, but also the colors of it really, really inspired us. And when we were making this arrangement, we were also in the process of creating signature products that we wanted to feature on our website. And we definitely wanted to incorporate our Filipino heritage into our website. So when this came about, and we were like, oh my god, Filipino childhood snack, into a bouquet, it kind of just like, it clicked for us and it worked for us. So like Christy said, we definitely like to work with seasonality. So not all of these flowers are always going to be the same. But we like to always make sure that the colors are the same as much as possible, as close to this shrimp chip wrapping. But in addition to that, the one thing that we'll always, always have, no matter what season it is, is this pink antherium. This pink antherium really ties in the bouquet for us, because I don't think we could really call it a shrimp chip bouquet without it being there. It just, it looks like the shrimp chip so much. So I added two. When you're, when I put my flowers together, I like to have them kind of loose and far apart. I don't usually like them all tucked together like this. I kind of want to loose. And that's why I say having a loose hand is best. And then at this point, you could actually just add as many flowers as you want to fill. So I'm going to add the rest of my other flowers in here to give a little bit more volume. We like to play with different heights also. Like I never want the flowers to be all one height. That has to be kind of like one down, one up, one down, one up. That way it just has like a better composition. And then I like to add like my accent flowers like this. This is actually just a dyed, dried grass. It's just so cute. And it gives it like that bit of texture that I like in bouquets. So if it was, I don't like it all being one height because it kind of looks like one ear. So if I'm going to add two, I'm going to lower one, one lower than the other. So that looks more artistic as opposed. Krisha, someone is asking if all the stems should be the same height? Or do you take care of that later? I actually do take care of that later. Like right now when I'm arranging, like they're all different heights because I like, like I said, like I like, well, one flower down, one up, one down, one up. Like because I wanted to not look too uniform, I like to look different, different heights. So right now they're all different heights. But when we're done putting the bouquet together, that's the point where I do trim the stems even. But right now keeping them different heights is totally fine because we're just putting bouquet together. So this is almost done. At this point, you just want to rearrange your flowers, make sure that it's all at the height that you wanted. And then because we are a Filipino business, we wanted to make sure that it has a little bit of a tropical feel. So we wanted to add a tropical leaf in the back to give it that feel. And this tropical leaf really makes a difference. And you'll see it as soon as I add it. It just really puts the bouquet together. And I have two here because I want one here and one down here. So this is this is the final outcome before I cut the stems together. I know you're not really getting shrimp chip yet, but it does get there. And once we wrap it all together, you'll kind of get the overall vision. The main thing we like to focus on now are these antherioms. So at this point, I like to just grab my slippers. And the way we like to cut things is by arm length. So I kind of like measure it by my arm. Of course, we all have different arm lengths, but it's just a good guide. I like to put my arm next to it wherever my elbow ends is actually where I'm going to cut it. So somewhere around here is where my elbow ended. So that's where I'm going to cut. You just cut it like that. So at this point, the stems are now even. And yeah, we'll just actually wrap it up at this point. So I do wrap it up. Well, when we're wrapping it up, because we wanted to match this, this is the star of a bouquet, we like to match this. We wanted to choose a wrapping paper that we thought would complement it. So when we wrap it together, it will look like this. And this is how a person will receive the bouquet if they ordered it with the shrimp chip bouquet. So you know, they get the idea that the colors and the bouquet was inspired by this. All I've got so far. Was there any questions? All right, let's see. How about... Oh, there's a lot of questions. Sorry about that. No worries. Do you sell single flowers? Like could a person come in and buy the flowers they wanted to create their own bouquet? Oh, absolutely. We sell all of these by the stem. Like you could definitely order it as a whole thing. But if you wanted to walk in and just make something up yourself, we definitely sell them by the stem. And because like you mentioned, the seasons are always changing. So the availability of flowers are always different. So anytime these flowers could be changing. But we like to at least make sure that the colors are the same. What kind of pruning shears do we use? We like to use just regular garden shears. Those work great. But in terms of like just being at home, if you're building something at home, there's actually no problem with just using regular scissors. Regular scissors work just fine. The only issue that you might have with regular scissors is if you're using, if you're working with something that has a very thick woody stem, it might be hard for the scissors to cut. But usually scissors still cut through just fine. So yeah, regular scissors would work just fine if you're just working at home. Any other questions? What tips do you have for making bouquets last inside? Longevity, I guess. Okay, so longevity is really huge, because I love to enjoy my flowers as long as I can. So definitely the first tip I will let people know is to keep your flowers away from the sun. I know it looks so cute when you have your flowers next to a window and the sun's shining on it, but that harsh heat is going to burn your flower, not from the bottom of it, but the head itself. It's going to burn the petals and the petals will just droop and die. So you want to keep your flowers away from the sun. And that also works for, it also happens with heater. If you have your flowers next to a heater, basically any heat source, like even if you're cooking in the smoke from when you're cooking, like hits the flowers, that's damaging your flowers. So as much as possible, you want to keep your flowers away from the sun or any heat source. The second tip I have for keeping flowers last longer is definitely having like a good amount of water. Like when you have, so here I'm going to just drop it into this bouquet or this vase here. Right now, you'll see that this much of the stems is covered. This is actually not a really good amount of water. You kind of want the water to be almost full. Like this much water. Just because there's a lot of flowers in this bouquet, they need a lot of water to all drink properly. So you want to make sure that there's a good amount of water. And we also like to use warm water, almost hot sometimes. Like warm to hot water, in our experience, works better. Just because like the warm water kind of opens up the flower pores, so they're able to drink the water more properly. Like the water actually hits their stem all the way to the bloom. And that's what you want. You want the water to come from the bottom of the stem and travel all the way up so that the bloom is hydrated. And that's always a goal. You want to have the blooms hydrated that way they last longer. So using warm water is really important in that way, especially if your flowers like I know like a lot of people will order flowers from us and they're out all day with those flowers. So like those flowers might be out of water for almost 10 hours sometimes. And if that is your case, then you definitely, definitely want to use hot water. Like enough for you to see the steam coming out of the water. That is perfect. Because that hot water is going to force their flowers to drink it. And that's what we want. Another thing that we do to keep them lasting longer is changing out the water every two days. Keeping clean water is really important because the bacteria in the water will actually kill your flowers. So as much as possible you want to have clean water, clean warm water. These are such great tips. I've already like just in that little question I have learned so much. I've done so many trial and error experiments with it and warm water definitely works. Like you could you will literally revive flowers that have been out of water for a whole day with just using warm water. Excellent. I have lots of YouTube viewers that are saying thank you for this and it's really wonderful to see you. Also a question. I love your Instagram. You have a 70s aesthetic, a very 70s aesthetic. Oh do me. I didn't notice. Oh see. So that kind of answers the question. Is this planned or does it just naturally flow? So I think it just naturally flows. You know there's like you mentioned like we are a family business so there's a lot of ideas always popping up from each one of our family members and sometimes my sister will just go for it. And I'll like look at the Instagram. I'm like oh that's interesting. And they just but you know they just go with it and we just kind of agree with it. And if it's really bad then we'll let them know. Let's see. How about the big leaf that you put in that plant? What is that called? Oh this is actually sorry this is a Calathea leaf. It's a really popular house plant. I personally would never cut my house plant leaves but these are available for sale at the flower market or you could even you know stop by D'Elsa Blooms here and we'll get you a leaf. But you could actually just use any tropical leaf. We like to just add the tropical leaf just to give it that tropical feel to it and it connects back to you know it kind of being more on the Filipino side of the arrangement. Love it. This is my sister Katelyn by the way. I guess she just finished her work but she grabbed y'all the Calathea plant. So this is the house plant version and this is the ginormous cut stem version. There's a big difference. House plant versus cut stem. And the cut stem is just because our farmers have a big plant that they're willing to cut. Well they grow them commercially but this is also a different variety of Calathea. Let's see a couple more questions. Should you spray your flowers with water to keep them fresh? We do not. We did. We tried it and what happens is um wait can I share this? Okay she wants to share with us. The one time um I'm pretty new to this but um this one day I was like taking care of the shop by myself and I like missed it all the flowers um because I thought it was like plants where you would water them like so and then Krisha walked into the store and was like why is there water all over the flowers and I think within the next hour or so they were slowly rotting um water doesn't um do uh like it doesn't do the flower good um it actually just starts to rot the petals instead. So you want to keep them away from like misting sources um as much as possible so yeah don't don't um don't water your don't mist to your flowers please um if you want them to stay hydrated um again what Krisha said warm water is great um removing any old flowers is like a really important key to keeping the the base water clean too and that will help your flowers last longer you know because not every flower dies at the same rate so you just need to make sure to take the ones that are rotting out otherwise it'll um slowly degrade all the other flowers that are um still alive. This is great info great info thank you. I will add that if you are all trying to figure out what what's the best way to keep flowers lasting longer even more I will add that you know a mixed flower arrangement like this like something that has different types of flowers the each stem has like produces bacteria in the water that is different to that it's other flower I don't know if that makes sense but all the stems they all create like different types of bacteria for the water so actually having different types of flowers doesn't um it actually kills the flowers faster you know if that makes sense when you if you want like a more long lasting longer lasting arrangement you want to just stick to one flower so having a base arrangement of just roses or just carnations just one type of flower will you'll you'll notice that it lasts a lot longer than a mixed arrangement because there's not so much cross bacteria in here. Got it interesting okay and then we have this one that my mom always used to do is put an aspirin in the water. I hear people do that all the time um as like aspirin and I've even heard of bleach those are just tips to keep the water clean. Gotcha. Those are things that kind of like just like cleans the water and kills the bacteria in the water for you without you having to replace the water. Oh yeah but you know like we have we don't use any anything any food flour food or anything to our flowers we actually just we just make sure that we use warm clean water every two days which is kind of tedious but you'll you'll definitely notice the the turnout. Excellent um is there a rule to how many leaves on a stem should be allowed? No no rules you want to we don't have any rules with this if anything we might have like a max um of stems just because we like to arrange towards a budget but if you're just arranging for yourself then I think they mean like like the like the leaves on the bottoms of the stems. Huh? What was the question? Sorry and is there a rule to how many leaves on the stem should be allowed? Oh sorry like like this here okay sorry I didn't misunderstand that yes um we like to make sure that there are no leaves touching the water so right now I mean that's not an actual rule but we just like to peel off any leaves um as much as possible until it's like clean because the leaves touching the water makes the the stems kind of grimy and rock faster the the leaves actually like if you we were to have leaves in this in this water like that here that one leaf is going to contaminate this entire vase of water and it's going to kill the rest of the flowers. Uh huh you want to make sure you do clean these leaves and I'm sorry that was a really good question I shouldn't mention that because I'm so used to having our leaves cleaned already I forget. Oh yeah that's what that's what the um Ruby thank you for clarifying yes sometimes those zoom questions get a little weak we can't decipher um I was just gonna ask like tell us like how you how long have you been in business and you know did you want to own your own business and what is it like are you enjoying this? Oh yeah so I I actually started the business in 2018 and when I started it was actually just just me um didn't have my sisters on board yet and I was working for a different flower company as their lead designer full time and they were so great so good to me I have nothing bad to say about them at all so good to me um and then after a year of working with this as my side and being their lead designer it kind of just became overwhelming and like really stressful trying to you know balance two jobs so at that point um I then was talking to my sister Kaylin who was who you guys just met and she was like dude I could help you like I want to help you she was like I want to help you I want to be a part of this so she started to help me with some some work and we she kind of realized like um you have no idea what you're doing do you? I was like I don't I'm just a floral designer I have no business background or any idea of how to really you know run a business so not that she had that experience either but she was definitely willing to be part of the process with me to figure it out so we started working more closely together in 2019 and we were like working in the back of our trunk like outside in the cold like for a whole last year and then after this one day my sister was working like in uh in the back of her trunk somewhere by the marina in the city and this guy kind of harassed her while she was working and that kind of like set her off and was like I can't do this I can't work in the middle of the street in our trunk anymore like I want to have a space so that that moment kind of initiated us like okay like we we should have a space and so ever since then um she uh my sister was like she was always very encouraging she was like we could do this like if you just really commit to this like I think you could do this so I think it was like 2019 I quit my full-time job and I was like okay I'm gonna really commit to this and we we started off in a small studio um it was really small it was like the size of this room that I'm in and it didn't really work out because I have a family of six so it was really small for a big family and so um just last year 2020 was when we actually opened this bigger storefront and then we invited some other family members like my cousin and my brother's girlfriend to join us with this business and it kind of just like slowly kind of like improved and got better and worked still really new at it but it's a lot better than what it was before when we started that's so amazing I love it I love the family connection too and um you know I hear lots lots of people start their businesses from the trunk of their car right yeah it's actually like a um uh independent florist thing to just like work at home but um you know it just it wasn't working for for us to just my apartment looked messy and everything was all over the place and I think we came to a realization like okay like we should really focus on where we want this business to go like which direction do we want it to grow so we kind of like had to make some decisions like after I quit my full-time job my sister she actually quit her full-time job and we just kind of like committed to this we're like okay we both just quit our job and we both don't really know what we're doing but we're gonna do it together and and just kind of hope for the best that's a great story it's a great story but you know it's really really great and I will say like um the a huge part of our success right now is really really connecting with our peoples like I can't tell you how many times like a person will walk in and they'll be like we just wanted to come in and support your business because we found out that you're Filipino and you're a Filipino family business and that alone has just given us so much support and confidence in our business so thank you thank you to all our Filipinos that's wonderful that's fantastic um Debbie wants to know how uh the the pandemic affected your business so I feel like the pandemic um because we opened our business in the midst of the pandemic and we're still in the pandemic I'm not entirely sure what it's like being without the pandemic if that makes sense but but um when we first opened our business uh last year in July there was this weird not weird but there was a big trend where people wanted to be at home with their plants so because of that trend um we were really busy with plants and now that plants are like everyone has their plants like the plant hype is kind of more calm down um we don't really see a lot of people coming in for plants and they're actually just coming in now for for flowers which is great because flowers is what we really wanted our focus our business on anyways um and uh with the pandemic kind of like calming down there and events are being are opening up again we're actually getting a lot of inquiries for events whether it's birthday parties baby showers and a big part of it is our wedding so that's definitely keeping us stay afloat right now that's fantastic okay I'm putting putting the website in again I'm also adding in your Instagram which is really gorgeous I love thank you Christy who was on earlier our small business librarian highlights all of the small businesses on her Instagram and it's just always harvesting to see what she's up to um I'm gonna come back on screen Christy you can come back on screen too if you want thank you so much SFPL really thanks you so much for sharing your your business with us and sharing what you do and we're so I love the no rules even though it wasn't the right question but it was the right answer no rules and I I feel like you're doing that and thank you thank you see you succeed and see your sister succeed and and doing what you're doing in our in our bay area and and threat thank you so much for having us this was very exciting I was a little nervous in the beginning but you know you guys definitely make me feel comfortable and I really enjoy seeing all the comments here that's very reassuring so thank you so much y'all yeah we appreciate you sharing your work with the library community how about Christy you want to close this out I just wanted to thank Christy again for an amazing presentation and continued success and growth for Deos of Looms I'm just like blown away by your small business and I can't wait to go to the store um I think I'm going to go this weekend but thank you so much Christia thank you so much um if you do stop by this weekend uh because it is uh Filipino American History Month um we're highlighting different Filipino artists in the Bay Area by allowing them to um take some of our space here and feature their art so a lot of we're I think we're having two artists this Sunday and you could come see their work this Sunday so definitely I definitely recommend stopping by on a Sunday it'll be my one yes I will thank you well thank you everyone for joining us thanks everyone really appreciate it