My brother grew butternut squash this year, and I got one for my birthday.
He grew them on a trellis, and the result was a longer part of the neck of the squash, which is great because that’s the easiest part to cut up.
It was a good squash.
As you might guess by its appearance, this timer has hung out in the kitchen of 7611 for decades and decades. Even after it stopped keeping time.
Think of how many meals and baked goods it helped make over the years.
In yet another attempt to kindle some Christmas spirit, I attended the Low Bar Chorale’s small bar gathering at the Benson Hotel.
Kelly, Tara, and I had fun singing Christmas/December/Winter/Klezmer-themed songs along with the crowd.
I’ve lived in North Portland for 16 years and hadn’t yet attended the Portland Winter Light Festival at Portland International Raceway. 2023 was the year to check it out.
While most nights are reserved for cars driving through, they do provide at least one bike and one pedestrian night. They are always on weeknights, and always early in the season, which is one reason for my absence of this Portland Christmas (“Holiday”) tradition. I like to do my Christmasing in December, not November.
I chose a night for bikes, and biked the mile to the raceway, showed my ticket and headed off to the track.
There were a million lights, such as this Santa that was surfing the waves. Families and friends often had their bikes decorated and some were playing music as they rode. Early on, I glommed on to a couple with a fun selection of music and rode behind them for an entire loop, so that was festive.
While navigating bike situations with a lot of bikes and a lot of kids riding bikes can be fraught (I’m looking at you, Bridge Pedal) the racetrack is wide, and the fact that it was a weeknight in November made riding easy. I liked being on a bike more than driving a car. As a solo attendee, I would have had to do the driving and missed the nuances of the lights. I’m pretty sure you can’t just stop in the middle of the track on car nights like you can on bike nights.
The racetrack was big enough that we got visions of all the 12 days of Christmas. Here you can see that three of the six geese a-laying have been busy.
After my first round following the couple with fun music, I took another loop to take pictures and have another look. Then I rode home.
I’m glad to have experienced this fun tradition.
Peninsula Dog and Cat Clinic has some fun animal-centric art displayed throughout. Like this piece:
Here’s a bag of extra long grain rice. It doesn’t have rice in it anymore, though.
Instead, it has these tiny tartlet tins, which someone bought for $1.25 once upon a time.
I’ve fallen behind on the August Year of Stitch sampler, and I am throwing in the towel. Honestly, it was the four rows of block shading that killed my progress. Block shading is essentially satin stitch, a stitch I don’t love. I also wasn’t pleased as to how the colors were coming along. Though the top ones were great.
Before I quit, I did turkey rug stitch (the sun, and the stitch I would probably do last if doing this again), sorbello stitch (the sky), cloud filling (the mountains), block shading (the tiny bit below the mountains), and a combo of Chinese knots and figure eight knots because I didn’t like how the Chinese knots were filling the space.
This was a fun design. Had I continued, I would have done brick couching that would have fallen off the picture in a fun and dramatic way. But sometimes it’s just good to call it and move on.
If you are interested, you can find this pattern at Maydel, and the colors are already chosen. (Or you can choose your own.)
It was a small Thanksgiving, but we had turkey, stuffing, green beans with mushroom sauce and fried onions (note that the mushroom sauce and onions only cover part of the green beans due to preference), mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls.
It was a good feast!
I found this not so lovely University of Oregon sticker on the back of a truck on a lovely autumn morning.
Today I got to attend friend Ariel’s defense and see her become Dr. Matasar!
