Continuing my series of posts about our trip to the Oregon Coast in late July to visit with our dear friends MJ and J.
(If you are just joining us you can catch the rest of the story in this series of posts (scroll down when you click the link to get to the 3 earlier stories from this trip) – Oregon Coast Adventures.)
On our way to meet up with our friends I had John stop at a “boutique” Goodwill Thrift Store. I’ve never been to one before. I chatted with the staff member who greeted me when I entered and she said they sold donated “luxury” and “upscale” items there.
It was unlike any Goodwill I’d been to before (if you are familiar with Goodwill thrift/charity shops then you know many of them are very cluttered and kind of run down looking).
Friends of our friends let us stay at their amazing vacation home in Newport. One of the owners is a quilter and the gorgeous vacation home was filled with quilts! (My kind of place to stay at!)
They even had a quilt in the master suite bathroom!
The house had a wonderful view out the back of the Newport Bridge and a lovely piece of stained glass in the entry way window:
It was nice to stay in a cozy home for a couple days on vacation with our friends as we were able to make delicious meals and have a movie night one evening. John of course made his famous “sausage and gravy” for breakfast one morning to the delight of our friends.
While in Newport we wandered around the Nye Beach area and I could not wait to get my toes in the sand and then the ocean!
The town next to the beach is charming (they have flowers everywhere!) and we had fun wandering about and of course I had to stop at the local independent bookstore!
John and my friends were very patient while I got my bookstore browsing on. They had a lovely new and used book collection.
I’ll close out this post with a couple more photos from our wandering around Newport to include some cool art made from recycled rubber tires in downtown Newport.
Oh I left out something from our visit to the Pearl Street shopping district thrift/vintage shop –Heady Bauer from the previous post. The shop had a really cool used instrument section where the staff encouraged you to pick up an instrument and play whether you knew how or not:
There was a father and son in the section enjoying the instruments.
John decided to pick up a used guitar and start strumming:
John used to play a lot of instruments when he was younger (the guitar, the piano, and even the saxophone) and at one point was even in a band. I encouraged him to think about getting a used guitar in the future and start playing again.
After an afternoon of wandering around the downtown Boulder shopping areaPearl Street, we headed over to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse for dinner. This tea house was a gift from Boulder’s sister city in the Soviet Union, Dushanbe. Here is a snippet of the history from the teahouse’s website:
In 1987, during his first visit to Boulder, Mayor Maksud Ikramov announced that Dushanbe planned to present our city with a Teahouse to celebrate the establishment of sister city ties. From 1987 -1990, more than 40 artisans in several cities of Tajikistan created the decorative elements our Teahouse, including its hand-carved and hand-painted ceiling, tables, stools, columns, and exterior ceramic panels. Often these skills are handed down from generation to generation within families. Lado Shanidze served as chief architect. In Central Asia, teahouses serve as gathering places where friends meet to talk or play chess over a cup of tea. Many teahouses are traditionally decorated with Persian art, characterized by the use of motifs from nature – stellar, solar, and floral, by the repetition of patterns, by form over representation and pattern over detail, and by lavish decoration and color. Our Teahouse accurately reflects this artistic tradition that dates back nearly 2,000 years. The master woodcarvers, including Manon Khaidarov and Mirpulat Mirakhmatov who helped reassemble the Teahouse here, have carved their names in the ceiling. The artisans who have painted it have written their names on a green painted area above the entry to the kitchen. A message carved in the ceiling reads “artisans of ancient Khojand whose works are magical”.
Here are some photos I took while we visited the teahouse, but there are much better photos on the teahouse’s website.
They have an extensive tea menu, hundreds of teas are available. As an obsessive tea drinker, I enjoyed browsing their menu book of teas!
I ended up gong with one of the “teas of the day” which was a rose and lavender infusion. I had a lovely pot of tea along with our lovely meal. (And my pot of tea came with an little hourglass so that I would know when to put the infuser basket out of my tea pot!)
This teahouse reminded us of how many hidden gems (well at least hidden to us) there are in Colorado. We plan to spend the Spring and Summer exploring more of Colorado and finding more of those “hidden gems”.
After the teahouse we continued on our thrifting/thrift store adventures and stopped at the awesome Goodwill in Boulder. There John found an amazing deal – a metal craft beer sign to join his collection of craft beer signs in our basement bar area, for 75% off the retail price!
The sign was in pristine/brand new condition and still had a plastic protective sheet over it (which was removed for the photo above).
I found some amazing used books – several of which were recent publication hardbacks – for only $2 each!
This particular Goodwill was recommended to me by someone I’ve followed for a while on Instagram – @boulderthrifter. She was kind enough to give me thrift shop recommendations for our trip to Boulder.
BEFORE HEADING HOME
The next day we had another Independent Bookstore adventure, this time at The Bookworm – Boulder’s largest used books bookstore (after a delicious breakfast at The Buff, a Boulder breakfast top spot).
I knew The Bookworm was my kind of place because when you first walk in you are greeted by the bookstore dog!
After petting the dog for a while, I went on to browse their HUGE used book selection.
John and I had a wonderful browse in this bookstore.
Right before we headed back to the Denver Metro area, we stopped at a cool used art supply shop, Art Parts: Creative Reuse Center. I love art supply reuse centers! I’ve written about them in the past in posts such as Who Gives a Scrap?.
I had a fun browsing at this shop and left with some free art quilting magazines.
John and I decided to play tourist in our own state and spend a couple days last week in Boulder, Colorado (if you click on the linked “Boulder, Colorado” you’ll see a lovely little video giving you a feel for Boulder, Colorado from the bouldercoloradousa.com website).
I couldn’t help myself, it is early Spring and the landscape is still pretty stark around Colorado so I just had to take the photos in Black & White!
The Lodge has a cool two-level lounging area and they also serve craft beers and have a daily “Happy Hour”. The accommodations were decent although sparse, but you couldn’t beat the $70 a night price.
Excellent value for the money; and if you are really looking to save money, they also have like a $22 a night hostel (you share a room with others). There were lots of young outdoorsy adventure seeking type dudes staying there, I am sure they were enjoying the low rates for the hostel area.
John and I spent some time in the lower level of the Lodge, sipping craft beers and reading (John) and crocheting (me with my travel granny squares making project).
I loved this cool piece of art in the Lodge:
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
So Boulder has a lot of independent bookstores and a lot of cool thrift shops, and visiting them was part of our plan while in Boulder!
We started our adventure with a trip to the downtown Boulder shopping areaPearl Streetand spent time wandering about the Boulder Book Store.
The bookstore was pretty amazing; and I could have spent a day there (but there was so much more to see in Boulder). The original building that houses the bookstore was built in 1899 and you can see the historical architecture throughout the building.
Here are a couple photos to give you a flavor of what it was like to wander about the bookstore:
I had my favorite (and now well worn) tote bag in tow; but I was well behaved and only filled it with one new book from the Boulder Book Store.
I also filled it with some new stickers for my water bottle, laptop and John’s tool chest (which he covers with stickers) as they had an amazing and reasonably priced sticker collection:
After the bookstore, we wandered around the Pearl Street shopping district and stumbled upon this very fun thrift/vintage shop –Heady Bauer. I was already having an awesome day so I appreciated the sign in front of their door: “Best Day Ever”:
When first entering the shop you see a huge wall display of crocheted blankets, including granny square blankets, mounted on the wall!
Seriously creative art and recycling!
I bought a used book there (I didn’t want the book from our first stop to be lonely!) – an original edition (complete with 1970s cover art) of one of my favorite science fiction books of all time: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.
It will be fun to re-read it in the version that it was originally published.
Oh we had a laugh when we stopped at the clothing store Free People to look around (I do like some of their clothes). Do you remember when I was endlessly working on drawstring bags? Well we came across a line of pants that to us looked like “drawstring bag pants”!
I feel like I could definitely learn to make those pants!
I’ll continue the rest of our Boulder adventures in my next post, and I want to close this post with some really cool embroidery art they had in the Free People store above their clothing displays: embroidered coffee and tea burlap sacks:
Sharing some updates and I am continuing to use “The Horizontal Diaries” as a blog post title (like I did in the recent posts The Horizontal Diaries and The Horizontal Diaries, Continued) because it semi describes my current reality.
I am doing much better as I recover from my left broken ankle and subsequent surgery to repair it (I got “screwed” and “plated”!) and all the swelling has gone down from my foot and lower leg as I behaved and spent a lot of time horizontal! My swelling went down so much (foot/leg returned to normal) that my splint/cast has gotten sort of loose. Good thing I have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow – looking forward to finding out what comes next…and when will I be ready to compete in the Olympic Gymnastic Trials?!??
I’ve been knitting non stop (just like you suggested @mariss/fabrications) and I am nearly done with the replacement hat for the one I lost during my trip to Ireland in October 2022. I am at the point of decreasing the stitches for the top of hat (soon it will be time for my favorite part of hat knitting – the double pointed needles). I think I will get it done today – yay!
Perhaps with the leftover yarn, that I harvested from the matching scarf I never wore, I can make a second hat…or perhaps a small (quite small) scarf – ha!
I mentioned in the previous “Horizontal Diaries” post that I was working on an irritating English Paper Piecing (EPP) Project. It’s the one I’ve been working on for years (feels like I’ve been working on it for decades). Here’s what inspired the project – the first issue of Quiltfolk magazine:
I need to make 99 hexie rosettes (each rosette is composed of 7 EPP hexies), and I am happy to report I now have 75 done (I’m going to actually “do math” now and report that I only have 24 more hexies to make)! I’ve been working on the rosettes while horizontal, they are a fabulous (if not tedious) hand sewing project:
I’ve made more in the past week than I’ve made in the past 6 months! 24 more and I can start to think about the fabrics to set the blocks in – each rosette is appliquéd to a square of fabric (but I will probably use my sewing machine to do that so it isn’t actually DECADES before I finish the quilt – ha!)
It’s interested to see how my EPP hexie assembly progressed from when I began the project is 2016 (gasp). My first EPP hexies were basted with thread to keep the piecing in place:
Then I learned from a friend that I could baste with fabric glue stick instead which saved a lot of time!
I think I’ve struggled with completing this project because the late “Terry the Quilting Husband” punched out many of the hexies for me as well did a lot of the glue basting of the hexies (he was like a master at it after a while!) for me. I would say he helped me make 60% or more of the hexies for this project. I’ve finished after he passed in December 2018 other projects he started such as The Last Baskets, The Last Quilt and The Ball of Yarn (which eventually became a hat) , but for some reason this one was dragging on.
But 2023 is a YEAR OF FINISHES (I might write a separate post about that later) and this project is on the list to be finished!
To get out of the house the other day, John took me on an errand with him and then took me (and my knee scooter) to the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Littleton, CO (near where his errand was). I love independent bookstores and I had a brief but wonderful wander is this old bookstore in knee scooter!
I wonder if they have a music night where someone plays the piano in the center of the bookstore. If I wasn’t injured and needing to return home to my “horizontalness”, I would have grabbed a stack of books and nestled in one of the chairs. This bookstore has a large collection of both new and used books.
I did pick up two cool new stickers for my older laptop (my newer laptop is fully covered with stickers now) at the Tattered Cover Bookstore:
Well that is this installment of “The Horizontal Diaries”, thanks for reading!
I so appreciate the blog posts some of you write where you share what you’ve been reading and your reviews. I read a lot (for me but likely not a lot in comparison to some of you who are voracious readers) in 2022, both fiction and non fiction, and I thought I’d share what I read and my book reviews.
Billy Summers by Stephen King
4.5 of 5 stars
It’s not a Stephen King horror novel but more of an action/thriller like his book 11.22.63. I listened to the excellently narrated audiobooks and read the actual hardback book (which I purchased as once I got into the book I knew I would read it again). The book is about a hired assassin’s assignment gone wrong…oh so wrong. It is one of my favorite Stephen King books of all time. It’s one of those cannot put down thrillers!
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montrell
3.5 of 5 stars
I wanted to really like this book which was very engaging when it began but it did not stay strong.This book defines what cults are, their common features, and discusses her research on various cults from religious cults to political, social and financial cults (like Multi-Level Marketing). The research was interesting but the whole book got tedious after a while.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
5 of 5 stars!
I’ve read a lot of science fiction books over the years, it is my favorite genre. I thought Andy Weir’s The Martian was one of the best science fiction books I’ve ever read, but it has been usurped by Project Hail Mary – what a masterpiece! The main story is that a junior high school science teacher is sent into space as one of the only people who can save the planet. How it got to that point is hysterical and amazing, and what happens after he’s in space will blow your mind and completely entertain you (and there’s lots of interesting science of course!). Exceptionally awesome ending and the kind of book the whole family can read together. It’s a tribute to junior high school science teachers everywhere!
The Immoralists by Chloe Benjamin
3 of 5 stars
This book started out great with an interesting premise: what if you could know when you were going to die, how would you live your life. It follows the lives of a group of siblings growing up in the late 1960s (I think, or early 70s) forward. But the author did not seem to know where to take the book and what to do with it. It did stay interesting 3/4 of the way through and then took a huge nose dive. Others give the book high reviews but didn’t work for me.
It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine
5 of 5 stars
Definitely the best non-fiction book I read in 2022. I dedicated a whole blog post to it – see my post from May 2022 – On Grief .
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow
4 of 5 stars
This book reminded me a tiny bit of one of my favorite fantasy books of all time – The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It is one of those “story within a story” and an engaging fantasy tale set in the early 1900s about “secret doors” that lead to other worlds and realities. It was very engaging and had the standard tropes of an innocent girl in a difficult situation surrounded by adults who do not have her best interests in mind. It is good entertainment but a little bit forgettable after you finish the book. This is why I gave it 4 stars.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
5+ of 5 stars
The main character in this book Tookie now lives rent free in my mind forever. What a book, one of the most memorable I’ve read.
“Small bookstores have the romance of doomed intimate spaces about to be erased by unfettered capitalism” – Louise Erdrich.
It is an ode to independent bookstores (my second favorite place to hang out after public libraries) and reading books; while exposing injustices done to Indigenous peoples and beauty and complexities of Indigenous cultures. It takes you through the early days of the recent pandemic and social injustice and how it impacted a local Minnesotan Indigenous culture. I listen to the glorious audiobooks narrated by the author (who is an excellent narrator). I feel this book was a gift from the author to the world.
Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins
3.5 of 5 stars
I borrowed this book from the library after listening to the author speak on a podcast. The book had useful information for people starting out in their artistic careers and I got a couple tips here and there, but it was mostly forgettable hence the 3.5 stars.
Circe by Madeline Miller
5 of 5 stars
You’ve head the term “Girl Power”, well this book was about “Goddess Power”! Another one of my favorite fiction reads of the year. The story is very unique and creative: the author takes a smaller story from Greek Mythology and fleshes out/expands it to an epic novel! The novel is about a banished lesser goddess who grows into her own. Just a freaking awesome novel!
Find Your Artistic Voice by Lisa Congdon
4 of 5 stars
The title of the book is what the book is about! I did find it engaging and inspirational but I was wanting more, hence the 4.0 rating. I listened to the audiobook and I recently came across a paperback copy of the book and did pick it up to re-read again. I think it is worth a read for any artist but it does repeat some concepts you’ve likely already heard.
Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan
4.5 of 5 stars
This book could definitely be turned into a movie. I hope it is! Sometimes you just need an enjoyable romantic comedy to read. This was an engaging and well written one. Some of the plot was predictable and surprisingly a lot of the plot was not. It is definitely one of those “beach reads” and lighthearted, very funny and heartwarming!
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
4.5 of 5 stars
I wanted this to be a 5 of 5 stars book as it is the third/final book in the amazing science fiction trilogy (The MaddAddam Trilogy) by Margaret Atwood. The trilogy is worth reading – I highly recommend the first two books Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood – mind blowing-ly excellent writing and story. The final book was great but some of it felt like the author didn’t put forth her best effort. The trilogy is set in a world wide pandemic – pre and post – and about genetic engineering gone crazy and the consequences. The stories of the different characters in the books are very layered and complex. I was amazing how Margaret Atwood creatively joined the stories of various characters she introduced throughout the 3 novels.
Breath by James Nestor
4.5 of 5 stars
Awesome nonfiction book about the science of breathing and why breathing correctly is important. I listened to the book and the end of the book also has breathing exercises you can try out. I learned so much!
The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer
2.5 of 5 stars
I was so disappointed in this book. It started out excellent and is by the same author that wrote one of my favorite “self-help” book The Untethered Soul. “The Surrender Experiment” was about the author just letting go of trying to control everything in his life and just letting things happen organically. The book was so engaging (part of the book was a 5 of 5 stars) but then it spent too much time about his career as a software mogul and got very boring. I think the author should have stopped the book 1/2 way through and just summarize the second half of the book and moved on to explore his insights more deeply.
Deep Storm by Lincoln Child
4 of 5 stars
A thriller set in an offshore drilling site. There was quite a bit of predictable plot but I enjoyed the non stop action and the twists in the book so much that I give if 4 of 5 stars. What is discovered below the surface of the offshore drilling site is quite fascinating (and very creative on the part of the author) I recommend it if you like Clive Cussler type of thrillers.
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
4.5 of 5 stars
As the book tagline states – it’s about “Why you can’t pay attention and how to think deeply again”. Excellently researched and presented, this book is much more than just telling you to turn off your social media accounts. It dives deep into the issues in our culture. I would have given it 5 of 5 stars but the ending of the book made me feel sort of hopeless and hopeless for the world. I still think the book is worth a read but you might get pretty upset about the algorithms that Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. use to “steal your focus” (you might want to watch the movie Social Dilemma on Netflix before you read this book, Johann Hari participated in it). This book dives quite a bit into ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and why it is a societal problem vs. an individual problem. It was fascinating how he contrast the childhoods of those growing up in the 1980s or earlier (where your parents let you do much more stuff on your own) compared to the current “helicopter” parent culture and the climate filled with fear that children will be abducted if you let them out of your sight. The author opens the book with an amazing experiment he did where he abstained from the internet and social media for an extended period of time and how he interacted with the world changed.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
5 of 5 stars
Now I want to go and read every book by Taylor Jenkins Reid (I have Malibu Rising sitting on my bookshelf). The book was not a literary masterpiece but it was highly engaging and binge-worthy reading (could not put it down at one point). It starts out in the 1950s and tells the story of a “rags to riches” rise of a fictional Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo, while addressing real life awful things that women in Hollywood had to deal with during that era. The book takes you from the 1950s to current date with the elderly Hollywood icon telling her story to a 30s something journalist. And what a story it is.
Upgrade by Blake Couch
4.5 of 5 stars
Excellent scientific thriller about genetic engineering gone awry! Set in the future where genetic engineering has advanced to unprecedented levels and then banned as the results of genetic engineering catastrophe, the author provides lots of in-depth background on genetics and genetic engineering so that the reader can enjoy the complex science behind the story. I gave the book 4.5 instead of 5 stars as it feels like some of the story is missing. I imagine the book’s editor telling the author he had to cut it down by 100 pages. It was still engaging non stop action but it seems like there was a huge opportunity for more background to be put into the book about the main characters’ relationships.
So those are my reads for 2022. I am currently reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan in paper book form; and listening to The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley on audiobook while I go on my walks.
December is a difficult month for me as it is the anniversary of my husband’s passing 4 years ago in 2018. But I am getting better at finding ways to distract myself. Sort of spur of the moment, I decided to meet up with my friend Laurie in Portland, Oregon for a day when my partner John was headed to a 1 day business trip to Oklahoma City.
Laurie was with me on the 2nd worse day of my life, when I had to go to the funeral home and make arrangements the day after my husband died. She works with horses trained for therapy for children with special needs, and before she drove me to the funeral home, we stopped at a ranch with some of the therapy horses she works with. She had me spend a little time with the horses and I had an amazing and kind of spiritual experience with one of the therapy horses. It was a very compassionate thing for her to do before I had to face the unfaceable.
Laurie lives in Central Oregon where I used to live before I moved to Denver to try and find a new life in 2019. She would love for me to come visit her in Central Oregon but although it’s been 4 years I still cannot bring myself to visit Central Oregon. I had quite the beautiful life there and it was gone in an instant.
Portland is about a 3 hour drive for Laurie, she used to live there and she knows it well. So a compromise was to meet up in a different part of Oregon. I could handle Portland, even if my late husband and I used to go there all the time and I had many fond memories of many trips Portland (here is a random memory from a blog post from May 2017 – The Beauty of Moss and Fungi).
So we had a wonderful 24+ hours in Portland together – I flew into Portland on Thursday late morning and Laurie took me back to the airport on Friday late morning. We stayed on Thursday night at the oldest and historic hotel in Portland – The Benson Hotel.
The Benson Hotel was beautiful decorated for the holiday season:
The architecture inside the hotel built in the early 20th century was amazing and we spent some time checking out the ornate ceilings:
Laurie and I also did the “historic stairwell tour” at the Benson where each level’s stair landing of 12 flights of stairs had a collection of historic photos and photos of famous people who stayed at the Benson, including many 20th and 21st century U.S. Presidents, here’s a section of one of the stairway gallery walls:
The Benson Hotel is in downtown Portland in an area known as the Pearl District. We spent Thursday wandering around the Pearl District and spent a couple hours at my favorite bookstore – Powell’s Books.
According to a web search, Powell’s is the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupying an entire city block and housing approximately one million books.
If you love books and independent bookstores I highly recommend a visit to Powell’s. You would easily spend an entire day there wandering the shelves.
And wander I did…and of course I found the craft book section…
It was fun to find one of the books that one of my art quilts are in:
We also had a wonderful lunch at the Portland location of Deschutes Brewery my beloved brewery that started in Bend, Oregon where I used to live. It was amazing to have one of their wonderful beers on tap again as well as one of their delicious burgers:
I didn’t stab my burger, ha, it came with a steak knife in the middle to cut it in half!
In addition to the bookstore and a delicious time at the brewery, we visited lots of fun shops in the Pearl. Then in the evening we went and visited the Columbia employee outlet store (Laurie has connections) and I got these wonderful slippers at quite the discount:
Then we went back to our hotel and watched movies and ate snacks! It was the perfect day with a friend!
The next day it was back to the airport for me but I had a nice time at PDX before my flight, stopping at the Tillamook Market in the airport for some yummy Tillamook cheese macaroni and cheese!
PDX has some amazing art on display and I was captivated by an exhibit “Open Entanglement” by the artist Jo Hamilton of her crochet art:
The trip was a wonderful distraction and I so appreciate that my friend Laurie could meet up with me in Portland!
Postscript
To give you a little taste of the Powell’s Books experience, here is a clip I found on YouTube from CBS Saturday Morning:
Finishing out my little series of posts on a recent trip to North Carolina when I joined my partner John on a business trip to Wilmington, NC. Here are the previous two posts in the series:
I’ve never visited Raleigh, North Carolina before, so we flew into Raleigh and spent an evening and 1/2 a day there before driving our rental car to Wilmington, NC. The two major airports to fly into when going to Wilmington are either Myrtle Beach or Raleigh.
We got a great deal on a hotel near Raleigh downtown and then randomly decided where to go eat (and later what to do after eating) in downtown.
I was in the mood for Dim Sum and we found online a restaurant that is both a brewery (we both love a good craft beer) and specializes in Dim Sum – Brewery Bhavana!
As an added bonus, it also had a bookstore next to and inside the dining area, so I got to browse books while we waited for a seat at the bar for our amazing meal!
Here are photos from our experience there.
Books, craft beer, and Dim Sum – YES PLEASE!
After a wonderful meal (and exceptional friendly service), we randomly decided to check out a place called – the Boxcar Bar + Arcade in downtown Raleigh. Yes, it was exactly what the name says – a bar and an arcade!
It was an arcade for adults (you had to be 21 to enter, which is legal drinking age in North Carolina). It was filled with vintage (and some newer) arcade games to include Pacman, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Galaga, air hockey, skee ball, and lots of pinball machines!
We got a roll of tokens for the arcade games and proceeded to lose track of time and play for several hours. We had so much fun! The vintage arcade games like Pacman we only 25 cents just like when I was a teen.
John was much better at the games than I was but I had an awesome time (even if I was absolutely terrible at pinball).
One of the very cool things is that the bar had TV screens in which they played vintage cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s including the one my brother was addicted to growing up: He–Man and the Masters of the Universe.
Watching it for a while at the bar reminded me of my younger brother being glued to the TV screen while that animated show played; and him wanting all the action figures!
Here are some photos from our time at the arcade bar (they are dark because it was rather dark in the bar-arcade).
What an evening! I look forward to flying into Raleigh again on our next trip to Wilmington, NC for John’s job and exploring more of Raleigh!
I’ve lived in Colorado for a little over 2 years now (moved here in April 2019) and the geologic beauty of this state never ceases to amaze.
A couple of weeks ago, between installments of out of town visitors (3 sets so far and more coming!), we visited Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
image credit: Visit Glenwood Springs
Glenwood Springs is famous for its natural mineral hot springs and this was the primary reason we visited – so I could experience a mineral hot springs for the first time, as well as see the beauty of this region.
The drive was gorgeous, especially when we got to Glenwood Canyon which is before you get to Glenwood Springs. We stopped at a park/rest stop in Glenwood Canyon along the river and wow:
I did not want to leave the park/rest stop area, just wanted to pitch a tent by the water and relax!
Here is a little video I took that I uploaded to YouTube (unfortunately I did not think to film it landscape):
Once we got into Glenwood Springs, we checked into the Hotel Colorado which is one of Colorado’s historic hotels (there is another historic hotel nearby, The Hotel Denver, and these are the famous hotels in Glenwood Springs).
I appreciated that there was a framed quilt inside the hotel!
There was a bridge from the Hotel Colorado side of the town to the shopping/downtown area, which provided a nice view of the area:
Do you see the train tracks in the image above? Well keeps those in mind for what I will mention at the end of this post.
Once we got into downtown, we wandered about – there are lots of shops, eateries and pubs. We stopped at a wonderful brewery tasting room and had pierogis for lunch from the food truck across the street.
After lunch we browed a used bookstore which also had a quilt:
We also visited the famous Glenwood Springs Hot Springs at the Glenwood Hot Springs Resort, and it was an interesting experience.
The hot springs mineral water felt great but it was like taking a bath with a hundred or so other people! We all had our bathing suits on but it still felt a little strange with all those people surrounding us while we soaked in the hot springs!
It was a very fun weekend and I appreciate all the post vaccine travel we are able to do now.
Okay, so I asked you to remember the image earlier in this post with the train tracks. Well in the near future I will be riding on those train tracks! My sister is coming to visit and I am taking her to Glenwood Springs for the weekend via the Amtrak train from Denver to Glenwood Springs.
I am hoping it is as scenic as it looked when we drove to Glenwood Springs and saw the train tracks along the way.
image credit Trainweb.org
I haven’t traveled by Amtrak train in many years and I am pretty excited about the 5+ hour train ride from Union Station in downtown Denver to Glenwood Springs. My sister and plan to bring a picnic to eat on the train, relax, read and of course catch up.
I am in my 8th year of blogging and I thought throughout this year I would occasionally and randomly share posts from my 7 years archives. Here are two posts combined into one for this post about attending the EE Schenck’s Trends show in Portland, Oregon in March 2018.
It is quite bittersweet to share this post (and any posts pre-December 2018) as my partner in life and crafting, Terry the Quilting Husband passed on December 2018. But we did not know that was going to happen and we were fully enjoying life together before his unexpected passing.
Trends Show Part I and II
Trends Show Part I: The Unexpected Roommate (originally posted March 21, 2018)
They Invited Me So I Went
Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and I attended EE Schenck’s Trends show this past weekend. This post is part one of my two-part series on my experience at the Spring 2018 Trends show.
I signed up for an EE Schenck wholesale account when I had the tierneycreates Etsy shop and for a brief time thought I would supplement my handmade items sales with some fabric sales.
My ‘adventures in retail” were challenging (see my old post from June 2015, Adventures in Retail) and I quickly discovered that I greatly disliked cutting yardage and making up fat quarter packs (I believe this is what you have to do all day in the “Underworld”, if you are bad in life and go there after you die; to me that is a big enough incentive to be good in life!).
I did however meet my lovely quilting friend Martha through one of my Etsy shop fabric sales so I figured that was the good thing that came out of that experience!
Additionally, as I discussed in previous posts, I did not want to compete against “brick & mortar” quilt shops (though absolutely no quilt shop could have been threatened by my meager attempts to sell fabric) and become part of the “online fabric sales world” that threatens our beloved community quilt shops.
I did eventually temporarily close my Etsy shop (it’s been over a year so it has been an extended “temporary” closure) to rethink my strategy and handmade offerings.
My Etsy shop is temporarily closed but EE Schenck still has me listed as a wholesaler and they continue invite me each year to their Spring and Fall Trends show for now.
I attended my first show in September 2016 (see the post Ladies Friendship Circle) and got to hang out with my friend Joan H. as well as the lovely Marie Bostwick (a mutual friend of my friend Joan) and Mary Fons (a friend of Marie’s).
Mary Fons and Marie Bostwick, Trends September 2016
So when I received the invite from EE Schenck to the Spring Trends show and saw what classes were offered, I asked TTQH if he would like to go to Portland, Oregon for the weekend (it is only a 4 hour drive from my house) and attend Trends.
image credit: eeschenck.com
Beside the opportunity for a nice weekend getaway to Portland, one of the reasons I attended the Trends show was for a very reasonable price I could take “Take n’ Teach” classes from wonderful authors/teachers/designers such as Latifah Saafir, Kathy Cardiff, and Jody Houghton.
I was especially excited to take Jody Houghton’s class, Fabric Art Panels, because her work holds a special place in my heart. As a matter of fact I gaze at one of her panels nearly everyday: my very dear friend Judy (who got me into quilting and I consider my “Quilt Momma”) made me this wall hanging a couple years ago from a Jody Houghton panel:
The Drive to Portland
There are generally two ways to get from Central Oregon to Portland: Santiam Pass or Mount Hood Pass. Until late April (or later) both are at mountain elevations, are ski areas, and both are usually covered in snow. Sometimes the snow is packed on the road and most times until late Spring, chains or traction tires can be required. You always see tractor trailers at the lowest part of the elevation pulled over and putting on their chains to make it through the pass in the late Fall, Winter and early-mid Spring.
We decided to take Santiam Pass to Portland and below are photos from our snowy drive (from inside the car with the windows rolled up). I was glad TTQH was driving! (Actually is wasn’t that bad, we only 30 minutes or so driving on pack snow, the rest of the drive was just wet/snow dusted highway).
The Unexpected Roommate
Arriving in Portland we first stopped at Powell’s Books, the mega independent bookstore and a mandatory stop so TTQH could load up on more military history books (his other hobby besides quilting).
Image credit: powells.com
After that we headed to our hotel and checked into our room.
It had been a long drive from Central Oregon to Portland and we had spent a long time in Powell’s books, and I was eager to get into comfy clothes and relax. TTQH was in the bathroom and I was getting undressed and suddenly the door opened to our hotel room and a woman was backing into our room with her suitcase!
I exclaimed: “Hello there!” and startled her as I quickly pulled my pants back up. She was a well dressed congenial woman who graciously stated: “Oops, the woman at the front desk was new and I think she assigned me the wrong room.” We briefly laughed about it (though I was in utter shock and yelled to TTQH not to come out of the bathroom unless he was fully dressed) and she said she would go downstairs and sort it out. She also said she was there for the Trends show so I knew she was likely a quilter/crafter and therefore a wonderful person (in general, crafters are wonderful people – smile)!
Shaken (and feeling rather vulnerable as they obviously we handing out card keys to our room to others!) I immediately called the front desk and told them what happened. I then went down to the front desk in person and requested to have a new card key made up. The front desk staff apologized profusely and got everything fixed. The nice woman who had backed into our room was also there getting things sorted out and we laughed about it again.
When I got back to the room, I had calmed down and TTQH were able to have a laugh about it. I said to TTQH, “Well she seemed nice and I guess she could have slept between us if the hotel is completely out of rooms, ha!”
I figured I would run into the “unexpected roommate” at some point at the Trends show on Saturday and we would have a more relaxed laugh about it.
The Unexpected Teacher
Saturday, September 17th, after the Trends keynote speaker’s, Amy Barickman of Indigo Junction, I headed to the “Take n’ Teach” series of classes, my first class being with Jody Houghton.
And guess who was Jody Houghton? My Unexpected Roommate!!!!
We had quite the laugh about it when I first arrived at her booth for the class! Jody and I also shared the story with the other class participants who got a laugh out of it too!
Her class was wonderful and we learned how to make quick tote bags using her panels. Here are photos from the class and photos of some of the cool samples she had on display:
Jody is an absolutely lovely woman and a very talented designer and teacher.
Check out her panels and notions on her Etsy Shop: Sisterhood of Quilters by Jody Houghton Designs. I hope you will support her shop (or convince your local quilt shop to carry her items) as in my opinion she really captures the heart of the friendships and bonds that come from quilting together. I hope I get to connect with her again the future (but perhaps not as an unexpected roommate…ha!).
It is sort of like the Universe brought us together – how random that the woman who created the panel in the wallhanging that means so much to me, “broke” into my room!
Next post I will continue with more stories from the Trends show (though none involving potential roommates!)
Postscript
Our first time to Trends in September 2016 we took Mike and Sassy (who passed in December 2017). TTQH only briefly attend Trends (leaving the dogs in the car outside for 1/2 hour) as he was in charge of the dogs (who did not like to be left in a hotel room alone).
We decided to leave Mike with some fellow schnauzer people and be “child-free” in Portland this time so we could enjoy the weekend together. TTQH was not interested in taking any classes but he had fun wandering around EE Schenck looking for dog themed fabrics and talking to other husbands (usually the husbands of quilt shop owners, etc.) at the show.
Here is a photo of Mike with his schnauzer buddies Chopper and Frieda, taken by their people and texted to us during the weekend so we knew Mike was having a good time. They labeled this photo “The Three Amigos”.
Trends Show Part II: More Class (originally posted March 24, 2018)
Happy Saturday and here is part two of my two part posts on attending the EE Schenck’s Trends show last weekend in Portland, Oregon.
She demonstrated her brilliant method for piecing curves using pieces cut from The Clammy, her giant clamshell maker template. Below are photos from the class (including some yummy fabric she used for her demo):
Later that day I was fortunate enough to share a shuttle bus ride (EE Schencks provided a free shuttle to and from the hotel to the Trends show) with Latifah and hear more about her transition from scientist to quilting guru!
Kathy Cardiff: Wool Appliqué
Kathy Cardiff is a Washington state based designer, author and teacher who specializes in wool appliqué. Check out her website – The Cottage at Cardiff Farms.
She taught a hands on wool appliqué class in which she prepped our little wool appliqué pieces with fusible backed paper, we just needed to cut the little pieces out to make this (her sample):
She also prepared templates for us to use to press the pieces together onto freezer paper before peeling them off to place the fabric for the little pillow:
Her work is amazing, here are so additional photos from the class and her booth:
She definitely took the fear out of wool appliqué for me like Latifah Saafir took the fear out of curved piecing for me!
Here is my wool appliqué piece currently in progress from the class:
The funny thing is I’ve had a The Cottage at Cardiff Farms sunflower wool appliqué pillow pattern and supplies for many years but I was too intimidated to get started on it. It no longer seems scary – especially now that I have learned a quick way to put the appliqué pieces together and fuse them!
I told Kathy about the pattern I’ve had for years (purchased at the Stitchin’ Post in Sisters, OR); she knew which one I referenced and gave me tips after class on how to complete it!
There’s No Place Like Home
We had fun in Portland but I was also happy to return home again. My heart always soars when we drive from the Mount Hood pass area into Central Oregon. It is so interesting how the climate and the landscapes change from Portland to Mount Hood to Central Oregon.
The moment I saw my beloved “high desert” landscape, blue skies and Cascade Mountains everywhere – I knew I was home!
View from inside the car window before Madras Oregon (still too cold to roll the window down!)
Postscript
Recently I read an article online (oops I do not remember the website) that strongly recommended you do not store your thread out in the open because of dust, etc. In a previous post,Aurifilia, I discussed my beloved collection of AURIfil thread (actually obsession).
Well I decided to take down my mounted thread racks and store my thread collection instead in bins to protect the thread.
So I went from this:
To this:
Note the AURIfil is neatly stored in the top 4 containers and the “non-AURIfil” thread is casually strew about in the bottom container – ha!
I also decided to put up more quilted art/gifts from my Quilting Sisters in my Studio.
Here is a quilt made for me a couple years ago by my Quilting Sister Kathy when our group did a quilt exchange:
Before I dive into this post I’d like to ask you to revisit my previous post if you’d like to: Liebster Award Nomination. I decided not to make it a two part post (because originally I was falling asleep towards the end of writing it) and to just go back and edit the post and finish it up. You will see towards the bottom of the post a header: “Update 05/12/2020”; and under that header you will find “Eleven (11) Facts About Myself”, my nominations of 7 blogs and the corresponding questions I’ve posed for the nominees to answer. I did go ahead and notify the 7 nominees in the comment section of their blogs. So if you’d like to read the rest of my ramblings related to Anna at Homeschool Guru nominating me for a blogging award head on over there (smile).
And now onto the previous Friday’s frolicking adventure…
Indie Bookstore and Antique Shop Browsing!
I am off work on Fridays (I work Monday – Thursday) and my partner John and I decided to have a little adventure. We heard last week that the town of Castle Rock, Colorado was relaxing their business closure rules during the pandemic and would allow some businesses to open.
Masked and gloved we headed out to Castle Rock as we checked and their independent bookstore Sudden Fiction Bookswas open! It feels like its been eons since I’ve been able to wander through a bookstore or a public library so I was so excited to browse.
We had an exquisite browse at Sudden Fiction in downtown Castle Rock, which sells both new and used books and we left with quite the stack of new and used books (mainly science fiction). Here are photos from that visit.
In case you cannot read this through the hand sanitizer, it says: “Don’t make us move all our post-apocalyptic fiction to the non-fiction. Wash your hands.”
Here is my partner John all masked and gloved while browsing.
I had a lovely chat with the shopkeeper while maintaining social distancing and trying to talk through our masks. We occasionally we did have to repeat ourselves as some words do not enunciate very clearly through a mask!
On our way out of the bookstore we noticed there we other shops open in downtown Castle Rock to include an antique shop!
The only shopping I’ve done in the past couple of months was at grocery stores or “box stores” (Costco, Target, Home Depot) and what a pleasure it was to actually wander/browse through an independent retail shop.
Here are photos from our inside and outside wander (they have an outdoor garden kitsch section) at The Barnin downtown Castle Rock. We bought some new yard art there to support the business.
In the garden section out back I was particularly fascinated by their huge collection of large rusted letters. We photographed them in both color and black & white.
But alas, I could not figure out why I needed them so we did not leave the shop with any large letters!
We also ate lunch in Castle Rock at a new place called Cuba Cuba. We were allowed to walk in and order at the bar (maintaining social distance of course) and then we had to wait outside on the patio for our food. Inside the restaurant was lovely and we look forward to the day we can go inside and dine (or even sit outside on their nice patio and dine). But we happily ate our Cuban sandwiches in the car.
All the things I used to kind of take for granted pre-pandemic. What a treat it was to be able to browse in downtown Castle Rock on Friday!
Postscript
Speaking of Castle Rock, we were excited that Castle Rock had loosened some restrictions but unfortunately not all Castle Rock business behaved as the Colorado governor had mandated when the restrictions were loosened as you will see in this online news article:
After a moderately successful trip to the public library, I figured the tierneycreates Beastie (see Beastie Adventures) and her dog Mikelet were ready to a day trip to Sisters, Oregon.
The annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show is approaching (July 14, 2018) and I needed to drop off a Sponsor Quilt for the show.
Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) thought we might as well make a day trip out of it and bring Mike our miniature schnauzer. I thought we might as well also bring the tierneycreates Beastie and her miniature schnauzer Mikelet!
(I will have two quilts in the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this year and I will share more about that in another post.)
The Drive to Sisters
TTQH recently got a new (well, a new used, 2016) car so we got to ride in “air conditioned luxury” to Sisters. No TTQH did not get a luxury car, it is just that his previous car was a 2005 Ford Focus with no air conditioning. We only had manually rolled down windows if we wanted to attempt to cool down in heat!
It got a little crowded in the passenger seat as tierneycreates, Mikelet and Mike all wanted to be in the front passenger area with me. At one point tierneycreates and Mikelet moved to the dashboard for a better view of the road:
Dashboard Beasties
Mike and Mikelet got along well when supervised and Mike shared his view out the window with Mikelet:
Mikelet is to the left of Mike, he sort of blends in with all that gray fur together
The drive to Sisters was beautiful, punctuated by the Three Sisters Mountains:
When you get into Sisters, the mountains are visible everywhere, as shown in the photo below of a Farmstand/Nursery we stopped at for a wander:
And pretty much everywhere you drive/look in the area such as in this neighborhood next to downtown Sisters:
An independent woman, tierneycreates tried to walk Mikelet around Sisters on her own, but at times she agreed to be carried as with her tiny legs she is a bit slow:
Big Mike asking tierneycreates and Mikelet to hurry up
The Stitchin’ Post
I’ve been to the amazing Stitchin’ Post quilt shop a zillion times and since the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show drop off location for quilts was in another building, I was going to skip a visit to the Stitchin’ Post this time.
However I caught tierneycreates peeking into the shop when we walked by it:
So I agreed to take her in and show her around.
Of course, as a Beastie, she couldn’t help being mischievous and before I knew it I was trying to keep up with her and all her wanderings.
I tried to show her around the fabric, such as this beautiful Kaffe Fassett fabric display:
But soon of course I found her in the yarn/knitting section the moment I was not watching her:
When we took this photo, I noticed one of her boots were missing!
I had to backtrack to all the places I’d seen her hanging out and finally we found her boot in the back of this display of yarn:
We talked about her being more careful in the future with her boots!
As we left the Stitchin’ Post, tierneycreates insisted on a photo with the iconic sign:
Paulina Springs Books
After the Stitchin’ Post we wandered over to Paulina Springs Books, a wonderful little indie bookstore (I love Independent Bookstore – check out my 12/23/16 post on Independent Bookstores) off of the main downtown street in Sisters.
Mike and Mikelet checked out the Dog Book Section:
In case you do not see him in the photo, Mikelet is next to the book Unconditional: Older Dogs, Deeper Love by Jane Sobel Klonsky
There were several authors at the bookstore for book signing (I think it was a special event) and tierneycreates and I stopped and visited with writer Julie O’Neil, author of the book Living Without Walls: One Woman’s Journey from Fear to Wonder in the High Sierras.
Julie is a world traveler and on her way next to Honduras to work with children. I got a signed copy of her book for a world traveler friend.
Julie was gracious enough to let tierneycreates be in the photo, though my Beastie friend forgot to look at the camera, I think she was checking out a shelf in the distance to browse.
Sure enough, the moment I turned my head, she headed over to a shelf that caught her attention – books about Oregon.
I understand her curiosity about Oregon. It is her new home after all as she recently moved here from Ireland!
The Biscuit Scam
It was at Paulina Springs Books that Mike learned a very neat trick: be cute inside of shops and you will get dog biscuits. Even though Mike can be a little grumpy (he is territorial with anyone coming near his beloved TTQH) he still charmed the staff at Paulina Spring Books and next thing we knew they were feeding him dog biscuits.
This happened at several more shops, to the point that Mike started pulling TTQH towards the front door of every shop we passed hoping we would go inside and he could score another biscuit.
In Mike’s defense, he is very cute and who would not want to give him a biscuit?
Time for a Break!
After a late morning/early afternoon of wandering around Sisters, it was time to stop for lunch. We found this place:
The staff was very nice and brought water out for Mike and Mikelet while we were waiting for our pizza to be ready.
Mikelet however was a little challenged accessing the water bowl:
But he was absolutely fascinated by the pizza:
A tiny schnauzer vs a giant pizza
We were not too sure about tierneycreates and “adult beverages”. I gave her a little sip of my local microbrew and she started to kick her boots off…
We decided Beasties and alcohol are not the best mix and we had her stick with water.
After lunch, and a stop at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show quilt drop off warehouse, we headed back home (in glorious air conditioning!)
Postscript
Had to add this one – a random photo of the tierneycreates Beastie on a glass horse outside an art gallery in Sisters, Oregon.
Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and I attended EE Schenck’s Trends show this past weekend. This post is part one of my two-part series on my experience at the Spring 2018 Trends show.
I signed up for an EE Schenck wholesale account when I had the tierneycreates Etsy shop and for a brief time thought I would supplement my handmade items sales with some fabric sales.
My ‘adventures in retail” were challenging (see my old post from June 2015, Adventures inRetail) and I quickly discovered that I greatly disliked cutting yardage and making up fat quarter packs (I believe this is what you have to do all day in the “Underworld”, if you are bad in life and go there after you die; to me that is a big enough incentive to be good in life!).
I did however meet my lovely quilting friend Martha through one of my Etsy shop fabric sales so I figured that was the good thing that came out of that experience!
Additionally, as I discussed in previous posts, I did not want to compete against “brick & mortar” quilt shops (though absolutely no quilt shop could have been threatened by my meager attempts to sell fabric) and become part of the “online fabric sales world” that threatens our beloved community quilt shops.
I did eventually temporarily close my Etsy shop (it’s been over a year so it has been an extended “temporary” closure) to rethink my strategy and handmade offerings.
My Etsy shop is temporarily closed but EE Schenck still has me listed as a wholesaler and they continue invite me each year to their Spring and Fall Trends show for now.
I attended my first show in September 2016 (see the post Ladies FriendshipCircle) and got to hang out with my friend Joan H. as well as the lovely MarieBostwick (a mutual friend of my friend Joan) and Mary Fons (a friend of Marie’s).
Mary Fons and Marie Bostwick, Trends September 2016
So when I received the invite from EE Schenck to the Spring Trends show and saw what classes were offered, I asked TTQH if he would like to go to Portland, Oregon for the weekend (it is only a 4 hour drive from my house) and attend Trends.
image credit: eeschenck.com
Beside the opportunity for a nice weekend getaway to Portland, one of the reasons I attended the Trends show was for a very reasonable price I could take “Take n’ Teach” classes from wonderful authors/teachers/designers such as Latifah Saafir, Kathy Cardiff, and Jody Houghton.
I was especially excited to take Jody Houghton’s class, Fabric Art Panels, because her work holds a special place in my heart. As a matter of fact I gaze at one of her panels nearly everyday: my very dear friend Judy (who got me into quilting and I consider my “Quilt Momma”) made me this wall hanging a couple years ago from a Jody Houghton panel:
The Drive to Portland
There are generally two ways to get from Central Oregon to Portland: SantiamPassor MountHood Pass. Until late April (or later) both are at mountain elevations, are ski areas, and both are usually covered in snow. Sometimes the snow is packed on the road and most times until late Spring, chains or traction tires can be required. You always see tractor trailers at the lowest part of the elevation pulled over and putting on their chains to make it through the pass in the late Fall, Winter and early-mid Spring.
We decided to take Santiam Pass to Portland and below are photos from our snowy drive (from inside the car with the windows rolled up). I was glad TTQH was driving! (Actually is wasn’t that bad, we only 30 minutes or so driving on pack snow, the rest of the drive was just wet/snow dusted highway).
The Unexpected Roommate
Arriving in Portland we first stopped at Powell’s Books, the mega independent bookstore and a mandatory stop so TTQH could load up on more military history books (his other hobby besides quilting).
Image credit: powells.com
After that we headed to our hotel and checked into our room.
It had been a long drive from Central Oregon to Portland and we had spent a long time in Powell’s books, and I was eager to get into comfy clothes and relax. TTQH was in the bathroom and I was getting undressed and suddenly the door opened to our hotel room and a woman was backing into our room with her suitcase!
I exclaimed: “Hello there!” and startled her as I quickly pulled my pants back up. She was a well dressed congenial woman who graciously stated: “Oops, the woman at the front desk was new and I think she assigned me the wrong room.” We briefly laughed about it (though I was in utter shock and yelled to TTQH not to come out of the bathroom unless he was fully dressed) and she said she would go downstairs and sort it out. She also said she was there for the Trends show so I knew she was likely a quilter/crafter and therefore a wonderful person (in general, crafters are wonderful people – smile)!
Shaken (and feeling rather vulnerable as they obviously we handing out card keys to our room to others!) I immediately called the front desk and told them what happened. I then went down to the front desk in person and requested to have a new card key made up. The front desk staff apologized profusely and got everything fixed. The nice woman who had backed into our room was also there getting things sorted out and we laughed about it again.
When I got back to the room, I had calmed down and TTQH were able to have a laugh about it. I said to TTQH, “Well she seemed nice and I guess she could have slept between us if the hotel is completely out of rooms, ha!”
I figured I would run into the “unexpected roommate” at some point at the Trends show on Saturday and we would have a more relaxed laugh about it.
The Unexpected Teacher
Saturday, September 17th, after the Trends keynote speaker’s, Amy Barickman of Indigo Junction, I headed to the “Take n’ Teach” series of classes, my first class being with Jody Houghton.
And guess who was Jody Houghton? My Unexpected Roommate!!!!
We had quite the laugh about it when I first arrived at her booth for the class! Jody and I also shared the story with the other class participants who got a laugh out of it too!
Her class was wonderful and we learned how to make quick tote bags using her panels. Here are photos from the class and photos of some of the cool samples she had on display:
Jody is an absolutely lovely woman and a very talented designer and teacher.
Check out her panels and notions on her Etsy Shop: Sisterhood of Quilters by Jody Houghton Designs. I hope you will support her shop (or convince your local quilt shop to carry her items) as in my opinion she really captures the heart of the friendships and bonds that come from quilting together. I hope I get to connect with her again the future (but perhaps not as an unexpected roommate…ha!).
It is sort of like the Universe brought us together – how random that the woman who created the panel in the wallhanging that means so much to me, “broke” into my room!
Next post I will continue with more stories from the Trends show (though none involving potential roommates!)
Postscript
Our first time to Trends in September 2016 we took Mike and Sassy (who passed in December 2017). TTQH only briefly attend Trends (leaving the dogs in the car outside for 1/2 hour) as he was in charge of the dogs (who did not like to be left in a hotel room alone).
We decided to leave Mike with some fellow schnauzer people and be “child-free” in Portland this time so we could enjoy the weekend together. TTQH was not interested in taking any classes but he had fun wandering around EE Schenck looking for dog themed fabrics and talking to other husbands (usually the husbands of quilt shop owners, etc.) at the show.
Here is a photo of Mike with his schnauzer buddies Chopper and Frieda, taken by their people and texted to us during the weekend so we knew Mike was having a good time. They labeled this photo “The Three Amigos”.
We have a break in our Winter weather and I went on a beautiful hike at Shevlin Park this past Monday with my friend and her Bernese Mountain Dog.
I thought I’d share photos from my hike as part ongoing series of posts on my sources of CreativeInspiration. My blogging buddy Mary @ZippyQuilts had a recent post about Inspiration from Nature, and her post inspired this post!
I think several of the photos above would make awesome art quilt compositions! Especially the one of Luna the Bernese Mountain Dog!
Postscript
After our hike we went to a lovely bakery for lunch (salad and sandwiches, not pastries for lunch!) and then wandered a well curated small indie bookstore nearby, Roundabout Books.
I have an old post about the joy of spending time in an Indie bookstore Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe –IndependentBookstores; Wonderful & Magical Places, and I also enjoyed wandering around Roundabout Books.
Here are a couple photos from my visit:
Like Dudley’s, Roundabout Books has an antique typewriter on display:
They have a wreath made from recycled book pages:
The entire shop is peppered with Staff Suggestions of great books to read (I did purchase the science fiction book The Fifth Season to read after discussing with one of the staff):
Their counter was made from books (I did not want to bother the patron to move so I could take the photo):
Terry the Quilting Husband and I were scheduled to meet friends in downtown Bend, OR for lunch today at 11:30 am, however the Bend Christmas parade was scheduled to begin at 12 noon downtown today.
So to avoid the impending parking challenges, we headed to downtown an hour early and wandered around until it was time to meet friends for lunch. Most of our wandering time was spent in the wonderful downtown indie bookstore – Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe.
Armed with steaming mug of cocoa I browsed Dudley’s well curated collection; ran into a fellow art quilter from my SAQA group and had a lovely chat; and remembered a post I wrote about Dudley’s in December 2016.
I won’t pretend I do not shop on Amazon.com for book deals or that I do not go to our local Barnes & Noble bookstore, but today I was reminded just how wonderful and magical Independent Bookstoresare to have in one’s community. I plan to spend more time at indie bookshops!
Today we went for a wander around and hot beverage at downtown Bend’s Dudley’sBookshop Cafe.
As the sign upstairs at Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe reads:
Independent Bookstores are wonderful & magical places because each book will have been hand selected, you know all of them are jewels just waiting to be discovered…
After the friendly shopkeepers filled darling ceramic mugs with our hot cocoa (for me) and mocha (for Terry the Quilting Husband), we had a leisurely and delicious wander about the shop browsing and their well curated selections.
Come wander the shop with us for a moment…
Downstairs, where you enter Dudley’s bookshop and immediately think – “well this would be a fine place to nest for awhile”:
People were nesting – they have WiFi and some were on their laptops and some were sipping their hot beverages and reading a book (or previewing a book!).
Among the shelves of books are fun things and objects to look at, including this wickedly funny sign:
Now head upstairs (carefully carry your mug of hot beverage with you!) and check out the painted stairs celebrating books:
(I love the step that reads: “Fifty Shades of Dudley’s)
At the top of the landing you will find a shelf of books (in case it was too long a journey to go without being able to browse any books from the bottom of the stairs to the top).
Now, turn the corner…and…WOW: Here is the cozy reading nook you might have searched for while browsing any bookstore (and maybe dreamed about in your own home):
The secret OCD person inside of me wanted to go and fix the left side of the curtain, but I was here to browse books, not adjust decor so I left it alone – ha!
After walking by the cozy reading nook, you come upon the upstairs room with more books to browse – how about a Art/Film/Music book to add to your collection?
Even the bathroom was delightful and had this great poster called A Plotting of Fiction Genres:
If you would like to know more about this poster, I did find it online at Pop Chart Lab. I did not want to spend too long in the bathroom reading it, but I was very impressed with it in my brief time with it! Here is a better overall photo from the seller’s website.
I could not leave Dudley’s Bookshop without a little something. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know I love our local public library and lately I get most of my reading through borrowing from the library (as I have been very naughty at bookshops in the past and have a huge book collection). I am trying not to add more books permanently to my home but I did want a little something from the indie bookstore, so I bought a cool set of greeting cards that you color yourself!
Two of my many favorite authors, Neil Gaiman and Ann Patchett are huge advocated for preserving independent bookstores (Ann Patchett even owns her own indie bookstore, Parnassus Books) and have lauded the value of preserving these shops in their writing.
I will close this post with a Neil Gaiman quote, which is also on the Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe website, from his wonderful and magical bookAmerican Gods:
What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore it knows it’s not fooling a soul. – Neil Gaiman
Postscript (12/02/17)
Dudley’s has a wonderful addition to the front of their shop – an antique typewriter! I had to take a photo to share!
For this year’s post on the 2017 Sister’s Outdoor Quilt Show (SOQS) I am going share my 2017 SOQS experience in one post instead of breaking it into a series of posts like I did last year. Warning: There are a lot of photos in this post!
For more background on the SOQS and for photos and stories from previous shows, see my blog category Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.
It was very hot yesterday (imagine the witch in the Wizard of Oz: “I’m melting, melting”)
in Central Oregon and this year I decided to go to the show in the afternoon instead of the early morning as previous years. I had plans to meet friends for dinner after the show and I thought I would be completely melted by the end of the day if I went early!
Pathways Exhibit
I shared the progress on my art quilt for the annual Central Oregon SAQA exhibit, Pathways, in several previous posts (most recent Artist Statements, PartII). It debuted on Saturday July 8, 2017 at the SOQS.
Below are photos from the exhibit which featured the works of some majorly talented art quilters in the SAQA group I belong:
My SOQS Wandering Partner
My friend the NY Times Bestselling Author, Marie Bostwick, was in town for a book signing at Paulina Books (a wonderful indie bookstore, please support your local indie bookstore!).
I retrieved her after the book signing to extract her from the comfort of an air conditioned bookstore so she could experience the sweltering heat and wander around and look at quilts!
Inside Sisters City Hall: Respite from the Heat
Here is a secret to SOQS: If it is sweltering hot, you can take break from the heat inside of Sisters City Hall and look at quilts (or pretend like you are looking at quilts and just sit inside and relax!)
Inside City Hall, when you first enter, they had an incredible quilt on display by Jean Wells Keenan that is a tribute to the town of Sisters Oregon:
Walking into the City Council meeting hall, there was an incredible display of art quilts, the Quilt for TwoRivers project, inspired by the Whychus Creek in Sisters:
It was very empty in City Hall towards the end of the SOQS and Marie and I spent a leisurely 30 – 45 minutes or so sitting in the comfortable chairs of City Hall, in air conditioning, visiting. Finally the SOQS volunteers came in and kicked us out as they had to lock up City Hall.
More Around SOQS Photos
I did not take the volume of the photos I have taken in previous years attending SOQS. I hope I do not sound too jaded but it is a very nice show with a lot of very nice quilts, but I no longer think I need photos of every spectacular quilt.
Instead I took photos of a sampling of sights to give a mini experience of attending this mind-blowing show. The entire downtown of Sisters, Oregon is closed to traffic and the entire downtown, every building (and seemingly every nook and cranny) is covered with quilts!
Here is a glimpse inside the Stitchin’ Postquilt shop (Jean Wells Keenan of the Stitchin’ Post started the show in 1975):
During SOQS it is pure madness inside this quilt shop as compared to the rest of the year for us locals. I do not attempt to shop there during SOQS (as I can shop there anytime the rest of the year) but I do like peeking in to see the craziness as quilters from all over the world try to take home a little of the magic.
One thing I have to say about the Stitchin’ Post, besides having a fantastic staff (which includes many talented fiber artists), is that it has a fantastically curated selection of fabrics and yarn. If you are an art or modern quilter this is definitely the place to buy unique and hard to find fabrics.
At the show I ran into Donna R., an extremely talented art quilter and long time SOQS volunteer. She had on a handmade and dyed dress created from previous SOQS volunteer T-shirts:
The SOQS volunteers are quite an amazing group. I volunteered once in 2007 when I had my first quilt ever in quilt show at 2007 SOQS, but I have not been able to volunteer again since that time. Maybe in the future.
Speaking on volunteers, Jan T. another incredible art quilt and head of our Central Oregon SAQA group, presented a quilt story book in which each page of a giant book had a story on the right and a quilt on the left inspired by that story:
How often do you get to see something like that? Only at the SOQS!
While at the show I ran into the wonderful teacher and incredible person, Janet Shorten the head of Sisters of the Heart Foundation which brings medical teams and community enrichment teams to struggling villages in Uganda. Janet teaches women in Uganda to do crafts, including quilting, then helps them sell those crafts to raise money for their communities. Here she is with one of the quilts the women she works with in Uganda made:
They focus on community empowerment and if you are looking for an organization to support with your donation, I recommend this wonderful organization!
So that is my reporting from the 2017 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. Check out the other blogs I mentioned early in this post for additional photos.
Postscript
While at the show, I did stop at the Sisters Habitat for Humanity Thrift shop and found this lovely sunflower fabric for $2:
I do love sunflowers and if you have followed my blog for awhile you might remember my obsession with sunflowers, like in this July 2016 post Waiting for the Sunflowers.
It is July again and I am once again waiting…so I just had to buy this fabric!
Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and I just returned from an “Oregon Roadtrip”. I took this week off from work for a part “staycation” and a part explore a little more of the state of Oregon. We did a quick jaunt to Portland, Oregon and then went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest in Woodburn, Oregon.
On the Road
TTQH did the driving and I got to sightsee on the road trip and work on my English Paper Piecing (EPP). I am still working on my first series/stash of hexagons (hexies) last discussed in my 02/05/17 post, Adventures in English Paper Piecing (Part II).
I am so glad I got into EPP, it is a great traveling project and very addicting. In a future post I will reveal just how many little hexies I have completed. Here is my lap during the road trip:
I have my coat on my lap. Why? Because of what you will see in the two images below: driving through the mountain passes (Mt. Hood area and Santiam Pass) there was snow. The photos below are from our drive back to Central Oregon, encountering snow in the Santiam Pass:
This is the price you pay when you live in the Cascade Mountain range region. Central Oregon itself is at 3500 – 3600+ feet, and when you drive through the mountain range areas to get out of Central Oregon, you are going to see some snow in the higher elevations even into late May and possibly June (Santiam Pass is at 4800 feet elevation). In the late Fall and Winter there is major snow and I will not drive to Portland from November to March. But if you like Winter sports, this place is a dream.
When we got out of the mountain passes, the weather was fine.
An interesting fact: According to Wikipedia, there are 318 mountain passes in the state of Oregon (List of mountain passes in Oregon). Some passes are above 7000 feet elevation! When you drive around Central Oregon, all you can see is mountains, mountains, mountains!
Craft Book Heaven (and Overload)
While in Portland, Oregon we spent an afternoon in Powell’s Books: The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore. Their book inventory exceeds 2 million volumes and I cannot begin to describe how large a bookstore it is – there are many levels and sections, assigned different colors. There is a map to the store and you can definitely lose someone in the store if you are not browsing together (thank goodness for cellphones!)
Their craft book section is mind-blowing and I spent an hour in there browsing while TTQH spent who knows how long in the Military History book section.
I could have spent days in this section, ha!
After my browsing, I took at stack of books to the coffee shop inside the bookstore and nested there with my cup of tea until TTQH joined me. I did not buy the all the books in my stack (because I did not need them, but they were fun to look at).
I did buy one book:
Photo credit: Amazon.com
TTQH left Powell’s with a military history book that had been on his radar for a while.
Tulip Festival & Tasty Meal
After our Portland visit, we headed to Woodburn, Oregon to stop at an outlet shopping area that TTQH likes to buy his favorite sneakers (Converse). While at the outlet mall, someone handed us a flyer on the Wooden Shoe Tulip Fest in Woodburn, Oregon. We decided, spur of the moment, to head there next.
This was my first tulip festival. I took a ridiculous amount of photos and here are some of my favorites:
The photo above, which I also used as a feature photo for this post, is my absolute favorite. This tulip variety was also my favorite of all the spectacular tulips we saw at the fest. I have many photos of individual tulips – I went a little overboard in taking photos, caught up in the moment of visual splendor overload!
While at the Tulip Fest, we went on a hayride around the festival and walked all the tulip fields (to be honest, after a couple hours we were burned out on tulips – ha!)
After the tulip festival, we went to eat at the Glockenspiel Restaurant in Mt. Angel, Oregon. It was mentioned in the Tulip Fest flyer and I had recently heard of it in the latest edition of Via Magazine (the AAA Travel Magazine for auto club members).
The Glockenspiel Restaurant is a German food eatery, which has a working glockenspiel mounted on it’s exterior which performs at various times during the day. We missed the most recent performance but I did find a YouTube video of what it looks like:
The plan was not to do a post until I finished my Happy Ending quilt discussed in previous posts. I am plugging away at it and have moved it from the “design wall” to the “design bed” (a concept I borrowed from Claire @ knitNkwilt) so hopefully in the near future I will post the completed quilt top.
I took a vacation day from work today and went to lunch with my friend Jenny and a wander about downtown Bend, Oregon. After lunch we stopped at Dudley’s Bookshop Cafefor a Chai tea and bookstore browse. Dudley’s in the indie bookstore featured in my 12/23/16 post and had an upstairs curtain which was askew. After grabbing my tea, I rushed upstairs to see if the curtain was still askew as this time I planned to fix it (a little OCD humor discussed in the comments in the 12/23/16 post).
Well! The curtain was already fixed!
The owner of Dudley’s had promised to leave the curtain askew for me after reading my 12/23/16 post but I guess some other patron fixed it before I could return!
After leaving Dudley’s we wandered around a couple other downtown shops. In one of the shops I saw this wonderful quote by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet (I had to google that to find his proper title) that gave me a moment of pause and reflection:
I transposed the quote on a photo I snapped of a cloudy day in Central Oregon this past Fall. If you like it, feel free to copy the image and share it. I used PicMonkey’s Photo Editor.
I won’t pretend I do not shop on Amazon.com for book deals or that I do not go to our local Barnes & Noble bookstore, but today I was reminded just how wonderful and magical Independent Bookstores are to have in one’s community. I plan to spend more time at indie bookshops!
Today we went for a wander around and hot beverage at downtown Bend’s Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe.
As the sign upstairs at Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe reads:
Independent Bookstores are wonderful & magical places because each book will have been hand selected, you know all of them are jewels just waiting to be discovered…
After the friendly shopkeepers filled darling ceramic mugs with our hot cocoa (for me) and mocha (for Terry the Quilting Husband), we had a leisurely and delicious wander about the shop browsing and their well curated selections.
Come wander the shop with us for a moment…
Downstairs, where you enter Dudley’s bookshop and immediately think – “well this would be a fine place to nest for awhile”:
People were nesting – they have WiFi and some were on their laptops and some were sipping their hot beverages and reading a book (or previewing a book!).
Among the shelves of books are fun things and objects to look at, including this wickedly funny sign:
Now head upstairs (carefully carry your mug of hot beverage with you!) and check out the painted stairs celebrating books:
(I love the step that reads: “Fifty Shades of Dudley’s)
At the top of the landing you will find a shelf of books (in case it was too long a journey to go without being able to browse any books from the bottom of the stairs to the top).
Now, turn the corner…and…WOW: Here is the cozy reading nook you might have searched for while browsing any bookstore (and maybe dreamed about in your own home):
The secret OCD person inside of me wanted to go and fix the left side of the curtain, but I was here to browse books, not adjust decor so I left it alone – ha!
After walking by the cozy reading nook, you come upon the upstairs room with more books to browse – how about a Art/Film/Music book to add to your collection?
Even the bathroom was delightful and had this great poster called A Plotting of Fiction Genres:
If you would like to know more about this poster, I did find it online at Pop Chart Lab. I did not want to spend too long in the bathroom reading it, but I was very impressed with it in my brief time with it! Here is a better overall photo from the seller’s website.
I could not leave Dudley’s Bookshop without a little something. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know I love our local public library and lately I get most of my reading through borrowing from the library (as I have been very naughty at bookshops in the past and have a huge book collection). I am trying not to add more books permanently to my home but I did want a little something from the indie bookstore, so I bought a cool set of greeting cards that you color yourself!
Two of my many favorite authors, Neil Gaiman and Ann Patchett are huge advocated for preserving independent bookstores (Ann Patchett even owns her own indie bookstore, Parnassus Books) and have lauded the value of preserving these shops in their writing.
I will close this post with a Neil Gaiman quote, which is also on the Dudley’s Bookshop Cafe website, from his wonderful and magical bookAmerican Gods:
What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore it knows it’s not fooling a soul. – Neil Gaiman
The Immoralists by Chloe Benjamin
Here is my partner John all masked and gloved while browsing.
In the garden section out back I was particularly fascinated by their huge collection of large rusted letters. We photographed them in both color and black & white.
But alas, I could not figure out why I needed them so we did not leave the shop with any large letters!
All the things I used to kind of take for granted pre-pandemic. What a treat it was to be able to browse in downtown Castle Rock on Friday!
So I agreed to take her in and show her around.
tierneycreates 