As we were driving over the Yaquina Bay Bridge, I noticed a very long dock. What might it be? It turned out to be the Newport Municipal Crabbing Dock and it provided us a long walk out into the bay, plus a close up view of crabbing.
There were also seagulls lying in wait for any crabbing spoils they could grab. They perched along the railing, and as we walked along the dock they flew off in succession, reminding me of a Broadway chorus line.
As you can see it was cold and windy, but it was also a fun find on our trip.
*The Littlest Drop by Sascha Alper, Jerry Pinkney and Brian Pinkney *Sundust by Zeke Peña *The History of We by Nikkolas Smith *A Place for Us by James Ransome *This Year, a Witch! by Zoey Abbott *Don’t Trust Fish by Neil Sharpson and Dan Santat *Dancing With Water by Gwendolyn Wallace and Tonya Engel *The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio *In the World of Whales by Michelle Cusolito and Jessica Lanan
Middle Grade
*A Hero’s Guide to Summer Vacation by Pablo Cartaya *The Winter of the Dollhouse by Laura Amy Schlitz
Grownup Fiction
The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand
One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon
Turns out that Yoon doesn’t only write great YA fiction, she also writes incredibly readable thrillers.
Young Nonfiction
*The Black Mambas: The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit by Kelly Crull
Grownup Nonfiction
[Turns out that this book was so nice, I reviewed it twice. There’s an August review, too.] SEW . . . The Garment-Making Book of Knowledge: Real-Life Lessons from a Serial Sewist by Barbara Emodi
I’ve read or paged through a lot of sewing books this year. They are mostly all the same. This one is different. It gives an overview of how to make garments and it also includes practical tips about various things you didn’t know you need to know.
I was hoping this book was one sewing book of many by Emodi, but she seems to have switched over to writing fiction. Too bad.
We had an open window of about an hour with no rain forecast, so we rented fat-tire bikes at Bike Newport and had a very fun ride on the beach.
The riding was great because all the sand was very wet from the torrential rain the day before. It was my first time riding a fat tire bike, and I had a blast.
It was also significantly harder than riding on paved streets. I got very sweaty.
From there, we went to check out the sea lions, who were living their best sea lion life on the Newport docks. You can see them for yourself on the livecam.
They were incredibly fun to watch.
So much so that we ate at the Clearwater Restaurants so that we could continue watching them.
I got fish and chips, my favorite thing to get at the beach. Both fish and chips were delightfully hot and seasoned and I felt I had made a good choice.
After lunch, we stopped by the exterior of Ripley’s Believe it or Not so Matt could get a picture with the Hulk.
From there, we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where it wasn’t very cold, but it was raining. I made the unfortunate choice to not wear my rain jacket. It’s a mostly outside aquarium.
We did, however, time it perfectly, fun-wise. We first watched the birds get fed, then continued on to the seals and sea lions’ feeding, and then finished up with the sea otters’ feeding.
While most people said, “You will have amazing weather!” when I told them about our trip to South Beach State Park outside of Newport, Oregon, planned for late September, it poured rain all the way from Portland to South Beach.
We stopped at the park near the Pronto Pup in Rockaway Beach to do a short walk (in the rain) to see a big tree.
Along the way, we encountered some upper elementary students who wove a tall tale of a creepy monster they encountered. They were amusing, though their tale telling could use some work.
The tree was big, as advertised.
Here’s a Matt-person for scale.
Thankfully, it had rained itself out by the time we got to our yurt, so we didn’t have to unload while the rain continued.
We took a walk to the beach, and then settled in with an Exit escape room game. This time, it was the Catacombs of Horror.
The game was a challenge, as usual. We took 189 minutes and needed ten help cards. That gave us a score of five (out of ten) in the assessment.
We thought our favorite riddle was the last one, and the last one was the trickiest. Our score sheet answers the question “The player who solved the trickiest riddle was…” and we answered “The help card.”
Exit games have been a fun addition to our vacations.
I kicked of my vacation with a trip to Portland Playhouse to see their latest production.
It’s 1940s gentrifying Detroit, and will the Paradise Club survive? Netta McKenzie, Mikell Sapp, Lester Purry, and Cycerli Ash put us through the paces of this engaging show. It required a few of the actors to act like they were playing instruments in parts, and they did a good job with that tricky task.
I also enjoyed the set design. There’s a hidden room that appears later on.
When we sold my aunt’s house, we moved all her photo albums over to my mom’s house. My mom and I took my aunt out to lunch today, and I brought along one of the photo albums to look at.
But what’s this thing sticking out of the top of the album?
It’s a note! That might as well be addressed to me.
The picture in question:
My aunt and I are in agreement; and I’m glad I found this note before it was time to write her obituary.
After successfully wallpapering my closet, I put a hoped-for plan into action by wallpapering the back of my Billy bookcases. Look how fun!
Much like the wallpaper in the closet, this one of those bedroom renovation things that is just for me, which makes it quite enjoyable, and also fun to show off.
Despite my sewing-underwear adventure, mending/fixing things comes before sewing. I’ve had a pair of jeans I bought from Goodwill (using only measurements because they took away the dressing rooms during the pandemic and never put them back) that were too long. This is par for the course for pants because I’m very short-legged.
I have been taking all my pants to the tailor to hem them, but my sewing machines are handy, so I thought I would do the job myself. I watched a tutorial for making a Hollywood hem, which is where the original hem is retained, the excess length is cut away, and then the hem is reattached.
Success! Thanks to the very helpful step-by step video from WeAllSew, I now have a good looking hem and my jeans are the right length! In the picture you can see the fold where the new seam is at the top of the picture, but looking at it from a distance further away, it looks like the original hem.
I’m very pleased, and big thanks goes to Alison Freer, the author of How to Get Dressed for alerting me to the existence of the Hollywood hem.
Sara sent me a postcard from Arcata that traveled home with her from Scotland.
She reports that she brought home more traditional stationary from the place where they stayed while in Scotland for her cousin’s wedding but thought a quick “hi!” might be nice.
Fun fact about me: panties is a word I loathe and avoid saying in the normal course of events. But it’s appropriate in this case.
I sewed some underwear!
Now that my sewing machines are accessible, I’ve been casting about for what to make first. I cycled through a lot of fun things (dress! pants! top!) before coming to the conclusion that what I really needed was new underwear. And while I know that bras are not something I want to integrate into my sewing wheelhouse, knickers seemed to be in my skillset.
I took a class from Sincere Studio, a new-to-me sewing studio. The class was great, walking us through what kind of elastic to purchase, what kind of material works the best, and then taking us step by step through the sewing process. I’d not worked with fold over elastic before, so that part was very helpful.
The instructor let us know that the first pair of underwear we make will probably not be quite right. But by the third pair, we will have locked in the skills and will love our underwear.
When cutting out the pattern, I went for a higher waist because my current underwear slides down in the front. I almost went for the highest waist, but the instructor said the high waist was really high, so I knocked it back to a medium-high waist.
The pattern (Iris Knickers, by Tilly and the Buttons) was easy to follow and had a little trick for joining everything up that was helpful. When finished sewing them, I tried them on and found that, my goodness, that underwear was high waisted! The legs are the slightest bit tight, but not terribly so.
I’ve been wearing my very large pair of underwear with dresses and such, and one thing I do like about them is that they don’t crawl up. I put them on, and they stay in place for the day.
So I do have some iterating to do, and I wish I hadn’t bought quite so much of bright white organic cotton, but I’m looking forward to my homemade underwear future.
