Matt, his mother Linda and I are on our way to a Forktown Food Tour of N. Mississippi Street. I wanted to update you on the ch-ch-ch-changes on N. Williams Avenue first. This sign was photographed in January.
Across the street, this building has undergone a huge transformation. I even have compare/contrast photos for you. Now:
Here’s what it looked like on 1/28:
And here’s just one picture from our food tour. That is a huge shelf of bitters. Read more about it here.
Sentinel looked up and ruined the photo I had planned, which was of him with his head stretched out over the book looking very much like a long worm. But this is cute too.
Only people who have put duvet covers on would get this, but it’s totally spot on. I have a method to keep me sane, but even my method involves a lot of deep breathing.
Here you see the bones of the Florence, which is one of the patterns that came with the subscription to February’s Seamwork Issue. I ordered all the materials to make the bralette (sort of a lightweight bra) and for the Geneva, which is the companion underwear pattern. Here, you can see that I did not need two full yards of lace. This makes me rather grumpy.
Also, the total yardage for both patterns called for 1.25 yards of stretch satin. But here, with some creative laying out, I can get four pairs of underwear and material for two bras. Had I known that, I would have ordered a bit more lace.
See how nicely this pattern piece fits into the bits of space for the underwear?
At that point, I had to leave, so this project went on hold.
The catio was up most of the day today and I had the door wide open. It was just that nice outside. Windy though. Most of the leaves I hadn’t cleared from the back porch ended up in my bedroom. If you squint, you can see the flowering quince doing its flowering thing in the background.
February.
When we last saw the camisole, I was waiting for the arrival of the stretch lace. It arrived, and last weekend, I attempted to sew it together as was called for in the instructions. The machine kept jamming and I decided I was not in the space for sewing, and put away the project for the week.
My brain kept things on the back burner though, and I remembered reading that backing the lace/unstable item with tissue paper might help. I did this and voila! It worked!
I then sewed the lace to the camisole. Note. This was not the right way to do this. We’ll talk more about this later.
Straps were attached (wrong, ripped out and reattached) and I noticed the lace sagged instead of standing up and meeting the strap. So tacked them.
When I tried on the camisole, I found some problems. First of all, the lace folded up together. That wasn’t right.
Also, by the time I had adjusted everything to proper height, the sliders on the straps were all the way to the front of the camisole. So I ripped out the straps again, shortened them and reattached.
I tacked down the lace on the bottom to encourage it not to roll together and that sort of worked. But the top stuff flopped over. So that wasn’t good.
Overall, neither of the camisoles turned out to work for me. The gapped a bit at the underarms and my bra is so full coverage, I had to wear them really high. And my bra straps still showed, which I have a problem with. So they’ve been reassigned to the role of pajama tops when the weather gets warmer. Rather disappointing, but all part of the game.
I hung up the instructions with the camisoles and a few hours later noticed that I put the lace on wrong. I attached at the mid-point of the lace, but I should have attached at the bottom of the lace. Sigh.
I did have success in my quest to use up bigger “bits” of leftover material. I now have three pattern weights.
And two napkins. So there’s that.
It’s sunny, it’s warm, it’s February. Whereas my former roommate in Somerville, Massachusetts spent this weekend getting walloped by yet another snow storm, I took a lovely bike ride. Go Portland! (Although I’m worried about the lack of snow pack and am hoping for a wallop of our own–rain here, snow in mountains–to begin soon.)
Cuts in the hill for a new house going in.
My guess is that it will look like these ones.
This is Columbia Boulevard, which on weekdays is chock full of cars and trucks doing their industry thing. But on weekends is lightly traveled. And we have a dedicated bike/walk path, which makes traveling alongside it quite pleasant.
I was going to ride out to Kelly Point Park to see if the Willamette was still flowing into the Columbia, but I got sidetracked by Smith and Bybee Lake. They had a bike rack, so I locked up and set off on foot.
Smith & Bybee lake is a “wetlands natural area” which means that while it is surrounded by the heavy industry of North Portland, it is an area to see all sorts of wildlife including birds. This picture is my stealth shot of the woman who was not only on her cell phone, but had her dog with her, clearly ignoring the many signs explaining why dogs weren’t allowed.
This looks like a quiet and peaceful scene, but it was actually a croak-feast with seemingly hundreds of frogs chattering away. When I walked by they quieted down, but I had a seat and they were soon chatting it up again. I used the zoom on my camera to try and see one, but no dice. They blended too well.
When I first moved to Portland it was a wetter than usual winter. We nearly broke the record of consecutive days of rain, stalling out at 38–three short of the previous record. I was still emailing with a friend from Massachusetts at the time and he asked what it was like there.
Green. Green was my reply. Not just the evergreen trees or the grass watered by the endless amount of rain, but the moss growing on every static surface painted the entire city green. I thought of that conversation when I saw this informational sign, completely covered by moss along the upper lentil.
First budding. Here comes the green on the bushes.
See that moss? Everywhere. Green.
Here is the shelter that overlooks Smith Lake. I had it to myself and it was very peaceful.
Broken tree.
A robin among the moss.
Another picture that looks silent. But the wind rustling through the dead grasses made quite a lot of noise. This is Bybee Lake.
And here’s Bybee Lake from the Bybee Lake Shelter.
Waterfowl.
Red among the brown.
This plaque once upon a time said something. But we will not know what, thanks to (I’m guessing) some meth-head who pried it off to sell. I was interested in how the UPC code and some other information were still viable in the glue.
I’ve always loved these snag/art pieces. It’s not the first time I’ve taken a picture.
Just in case this was Kitzhaber’s last day as Governor, I took a picture of the front page. And indeed, by 12:15pm he had announced his resignation, though it won’t take effect for a few days.
Though I think the Oregonian spent an excessive amount of time covering the things that were being uncovered, I place the blame fully on Kitzhaber. For the past few weeks, whenever I unfurled or logged on to the paper and saw the day’s new headline a line from the song “I wanna get better” by the Bleachers would pop into my head:
…I was losing my mind,
because the love,
the love,
the love,
the love,
the love
that I gave.
Wasted. On a nice face…
In his resignation letter Kitzhauber wrote: “I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved. But even more troubling — and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of public service to Oregon — is that so many of my former allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value.”
And that struck me as a the biggest F-you to the media and his colleagues I’ve seen in years. But the fact of the matter remains that John Kitzhaber has been in politics for 35 years. He is (or should be) familiar with the ethics guidelines that govern representatives of our state. He chose to be in a relationship with a woman who seems to have not followed those guidelines, he chose to refer to her as first lady, and he decided that what she was doing was okay.
It’s never good for a politician to be investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, the State Attorney General, and a Federal grand jury investigation. And with every question asked of Cylvia Hayes’ role Kitzhaber has minimized evidence that has been presented.
This scandal put me, a single working female professional woman in a long-term unmarried relationship, (Cyliva Hayes is all of those things too) in the uncomfortable position of thinking things like “why doesn’t he just marry her already?” and various other ridiculous thoughts that left me feeling like I was betraying the sisterhood. But the governor can’t have it both ways. Is she the first lady, doing deals and making contacts as the first lady? Fine. Is she a professional woman, head of her own company that benefits from her knowledge of and access too political contacts? Fine. But they needed to be very clear which hat she was wearing at which time. And they weren’t.
Is she a member of his household, even if they are not married? Fine. But to say that the first lady is just a ceremonial role when questions come up about contracts and other dealings with Hayes’ company is false. And, frankly, ridiculous. If there was a firm line drawn by either the governor or Cyliva Hayes then we wouldn’t be swearing in a new governor next week. But there weren’t and while Kitzhaber seems to have acted above board for his 35+ year career, the woman he has associated himself with for the last ten has raised an incredible amount of red flags.
And just because they aren’t married doesn’t mean we don’t get to say, “Not good choices, Governor Kitzhaber. Please go.”
I sat through four wasted years of a neutered Sam Adams as mayor of Portland after his scandal. I don’t need to sit through four years of an ineffective governor. The state’s got too much to do.
I wish Kitzhaber a good life, with or without Cylvia Hayes by his side. I personally would suggest without, but I guess he knows her better than I do.
I’m sorry, but this headline made me laugh.
It’s a class full of Pondexters! I love it. Though I wouldn’t mind if they were happier.
Don’t worry kid. When I was called Patty, I couldn’t spell Patricia either.
As you can see, we did not have the best encounter during the previous day’s recess. Things have improved since then.
