Tag: fun

Zoolights

Deborah and I visited Zoolights to see the choir she is usually a member of perform.  They sang Christmas songs and songs from their repertoire.

Then we walked around and took in the lights.  (And the animals.  We saw the baby elephant! He was, predictably, quite cute.)

This is a river with alligators and hippopotamus and other animals.

I grabbed a photo of this kid because he looked too young to have a Letterman jacket.  He struck me as maybe a freshman, maybe.  I looked a little closer and guessed from the early 1990’s dates on the patches on the jacket that it was perhaps first his father’s jacket.
(Letterman jacket side note.  I was checking the spelling and found this Portland Oregon store that made me want to get my own Letterman jacket. I want the all-wool with the sailor collar.)

Self portrait with Deborah. (And lights)

We sat and people watched and chatted under this great dragon.
It was a fun night.

Pictures from my “snow” day.

It started as a two-hour delay.  Here are the three ways I’m informed of school delays and closures:  via text message, via the app FlashAlert and via email.
The two hour delay turned into a full day off because of worsening conditions.

Fine by me.  I used the time to cut out the Lined Swedish Shade I’m working on for my bedroom.  You can see I had a good helper.
Here is the back part of the shade.  It might be familiar to you as it was material left over from my uniform shirt/dress.  I have blackout curtain fabric on top of the blue.
Here is what it will look like when I get it all sewed together, though right now I’ve just folded the blue over the top of the bird fabric.  I love this fabric. It’s from Ikea.  My favorite two birds are the blue and the orange.  I like to think Matt is the blue one (his favorite color) and I’m the orange one (my favorite color.)  Aren’t we cute, sitting there talking?

I met Tiffany downtown for a drink–plans we had for “after school” on Thursday.  We just shifted them to “after snow day” instead.  
On the way back I took this picture of drippy ice.  The roads were fine, though.

Some finds at Fabric Depot…

…that stayed at Fabric Depot.
You have no idea how much the matchy-matchy part of me wanted to buy every single color and make 14 of all the same thing.  Fourteen!

I adored this turquoise and purple print.  I think it would make a fantastic shirt. Julie and her friend Olwin found it revolting, which means it’s perfect for me.

All three of us adored this coat, which was on display.

It meets all of my coat requirements which are:  thigh length, hood, hourglass, easy, can do autumn and winter.
Julie bought the pattern.  Now I only have to speed through my oh-so-many-projects so I can make this twice:  Once in heavy material for winter, once in something light for fall/spring.  Don’t hold your breath.
We also bought material for my shrug. It’s boring, but warm.  And I got buttons for my apron as well as the bias tape I need to finish that project.

The fourth summer of my summer reading volunteering.

This year’s t-shirt is my favorite so far.  It’s the first one I haven’t immediately donated to Goodwill upon completion of my service.  If you want to volunteer for Summer Reading contact the library volunteer program early next year.  Summer Reading volunteers help children keep track of where they are in the summer reading game.  They also distribute prizes and answer questions.  The two hour per week shifts are fun.  Volunteer today.
(Note that my summer reading volunteer service ended in August. I just forgot to take the picture of the shirt until the end of September.)

Buckman Wonder Wander

Khris Soden, an artist living in the Buckman neighborhood, gave three walking tours of the neighborhood.  They were called Wonder Wanders and each was about an hour long.  On the Wonder Wanders we looked at details of the neighborhood, heard historical facts, and told our own stories. I was only able to attend the first one, alas, but here it is.

We started our wander at Crema.  Emily, the woman with the dog in the above photo, talked about how the building’s construction made use of inexpensive materials like cinder blocks.

The builder also installed art on the exterior of the building.

Emily lives in an apartment above Crema, so she took us to her apartment.

It’s a loft-type studio with a lot of light due to the garage-door-as-window in the unit.

The builder purposely left each unit very sparse in design because he wanted the tenants to add their own touches.  Emily makes bicycle bags in her apartment.  

We then walked across the street to get a better vantage point for Emily’s neighbor Thom Ross, who is a woodworker.  He and two other people bought this building to use as work space.  Thom still has a work space, but he also has built a house in his portion of the building.  You can see how it has risen up out of the one-story building.

This is Thom, and Khris.

Thom let us go into his house.  The entry door preserves the exterior of the building.  

There’s a small growing space that Thom is still working on.

Before you enter the house proper, you can look up and see the house rising out of the building.

This is the first floor which has the kitchen, dining room and a breakfast nook. Also, a really nice garden.

The kitchen, which Thom has designed so it can be shut off from the rest of the house so the smells don’t permeate all levels of the living space.

A view into the kitchen from the dining room.  I’m guessing he made that bread as he mentioned he likes to cook.

The incredible garden with plant wall.

And eco roof.  Thom said the wall was hard to figure out how to get the right ratio of water.  There were a lot of dead plants and getting out the ladder before he figured out that the plants needed to be saturated with water regularly.

A look through the dining room at the staircase.

You can see where the picture can be lowered, cutting off the kitchen from the rest of the house.  You can also peek into the second floor.

Orchid in window.

Thom said it was important to have the eco roof  because the upper floors look right on onto the roof.  At this point Thom asked us if we wanted to see the other levels.  Did we ever!

This is the living room on the second floor.  Thom said that it turned out to be a summer and winter living room.  This is the summer living room.

And here’s the view of the eco roof.

Bar area.

Winter living room.

Stairs.  This house has a lot of stairs.  It also has an elevator.

The third level has the bedroom, bathroom, an office and a deck onto the other eco roof.

Thom located the trees on the building’s structural beams, because they can take the weight of the heavier planters.  He also planted the roof so there is color year round.
More roof views.  Thom has installed gardening boxes so he can grow vegetables.
We are now on the fourth floor.  This is a flexible space good for guests to stay or to use for projects.  There’s a full bathroom on this level too.
The view from the fourth floor.
Nice contrast between the eco roof and the regular roof next door.
And we’ve made it to the fifth story, where the cats love to hang out on the deck.
More view (and big picture)
Peeking over into downtown.  We think this hole will become a four-story apartment complex.
The fifth floor sitting room.
And exercise area.
Peeking over Ankeny Street.
This tree is visible in the first picture from the street.
More street views.
Then we took the stairs around (and around and around and around) until we came to the street level and Thom’s sign on his door.  From there, we commenced wandering.
Incoming apartments/condos.
A lot of detail on this porch.
Wandering by Central Catholic and learning the nickname of their playing field.

A peek at the Central Catholic playing field, nicknamed the Boneyard, because there was a cemetery on this plot.  The graves were moved to Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
Khris tells us his own story about the Central Catholic sign.
Learning about the Ghost Bikes.
Here is Nick Bucher’s information on the Ghost Bikes site.
Ghost bikes are often decorated.

We walked by Lone Fir, and I noted it has a very fancy new sign.
I took a picture of this for future note.
Khris tells us about the Dawg Terrace, which is a renovated apartment building designed for dog owners.
It includes fire hydrants in the yard.
And these great bike parking spaces.

Khris explained how Portland once had a goodly number of gullies, which were evened out by sluicing out the roads.  Here he is pointing out that the original level was at the top of this wall (the ground was even with the graves in Lone Fir Cemetery) and the road was dug out and used to fill a gully down the road.
Trolly tracks.
Another view of the cut down street.
Brightly colored house.
Mural of Africa on the garage door.
The signature.
Learning about the grisly box of human remains discovered  in the 1960s on the former trash heap that was on this lot. The house from that time period has been replaced, but the killer is still alive and living in the Oregon State Penitentiary. 
Learning about how the many jogs in the road came about.  It seems that when there is no central planning agency, as was the case in Portland until the 1920s, developers can make their own decisions.
Nice detail on this door.
Our last stop was a Food Cart Pod next to Crema. 
Thus ended the Buckman Wonder Wander that I attended.  Thanks Khris, for the great tour.

Literary Arts 30th anniversary.

Kelly and I attended this lovely evening which included two songs performed by Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists).  It also included a talk by Calvin Trillin, a poem by Zach Schomburg, and a poem by Bella Trent, who had an amazing voice.  Also Liz Gilbert* spoke on creativity.  AND because we were among the first 700 to purchase tickets we each got a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s** Signature of All Things.  It was even autographed. It was a good evening.
ps.  Authors (at least the ones from out of town that spoke) really like to come to Portland.  Do you think they were just humoring us?
*That’s what the program says:  Liz Gilbert.
**That’s what the book says:  Elizabeth Gilbert

Book reading: Lloyd Kahn, Tiny Homes on the Move.

I didn’t realize until he started talking, that this guy was one of the people involved with the publishing of the book Stretching, which I’ve used for years.  If I had picked up on that fact, I would have brought my very used copy.  He even had the Stretching software installed on his computer, which I have used in the past.  
In Tiny Homes on the Move, we got a slide show of exactly that.  Many people in the audience were tiny homes enthusiasts and so it was amusing when people asked specific questions about tiny home construction, only to hear the author himself wasn’t a tiny home enthusiast himself.
I enjoyed that two people in the audience both wore hot pink and also sat near each other.