POD: Portland, Oregon - Part 1

We're in Portland, Oregon for the MQX Quilt Festival Pacific Northwest. Here's some photos from our day.

The pendulum at the Portland Convention Center.

I have no idea what this sign is supposed to be communicating!

Crescent moon and Portland Convention Center towers.

Rim Country

This weekend the annual Rim Country Quilt Roundup was held in Payson, Arizona. This is always a fun show with a large number of quilts, and inspiration.

There are always quilts at this show from Debbie Stanton. We find Debbie's quilting inspiring and look forward to seeing it each year. This "cathedral window" curved cross-hatching is an example of how she divides and enhances the open space in a quilt.

We also love seeing Debbie's choice of motif's. Some of them are small and almost go unnoticed, but others become the theme of the quilt because they are large and complement the piecing so well.

The end result is a stunning quilt which won the "Best Professional Machine Quilting" award for the show.

Arizona is divided by a geological feature known as the Mogollon Rim, which rises about 3,000 feet in about 10 miles. The "Rim Country", as this area is known, provides fun twisty roads and wonderful vistas. The 125-mile trip from Flagstaff to Payson is always interesting because it takes us through this area.

Today the scenery had some almost magical elements to is due to a winter storm that was passing through the area. Here are a couple of shots from today's trip.

   

Portland, Oregon - Part One

Portland, Oregon is becoming our favorite U.S. city to visit. We were there last year in October for the first Machine Quilters Expo West, and returned again this year. The focus at the conference was learning about the Intelliquilter system, but we had plenty of time to wander around town, visit yarn shops, and eat far more yummy food than is good for us!

This is probably my favorite photo of our visit. We were headed into downtown for dinner and caught the Max train at dusk. The combination of the sky, train, architecture of the station, and the convention center towers really amazed me when I saw it in the camera. Another 30 seconds later and I don't think the sky would have had any detail at all.

Dinner at Bridgeport Brew Pub. Mussels for Linda with a rasberry infused vodka. Cottage Pie for Ernie with a pint of Porter. When the waitress asked if we knew what we wanted to order, we replied that we'd known for a year what we wanted to order!

Our Max pass meant that we could go anywhere that was on the Max train streetcar routes. That meant we were able to visit 5 different yarn shops. I think Portland may have the highest ratio of knitters in the population of anywhere we've visited (at least it felt that way). We met one knitter as we were heading for downtown on the train and she was headed for the same shop. In the photo, Linda is wearing the new sweater that she had finished the day before the trip. We found some wonderful Madelintosh yarn for Linda's next sweater project as well as some Opal "Starry Night" that Linda had been seeking for socks.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this year and we heard lots of comments about how wonderful it had been, but this sign at twisted shows that Portlanders have a certain fondness for rain (last year we learned a new weather forecasting term - "sun breaks"). The staff explained that the fall usually brings rainy weather, which is just the perfect thing for knitting.

Portland has quite a food-cart culture. At least one full block in downtown is surrounded by carts, and there are pockets like this throughout the city.

Portland has a very old-fashioned feel to it that I really like. This auto-parts store is not only in an old building, but this guy was in the back patiently rebuilding an engine. You won't find that kind of thing in your local AutoZone and you just sense that if you needed an engine, this was the kind of guy you wanted to be building it for you.

The converging lines of the train and streetcar lines really captured my imagination.

Of course, you can't visit Portland without spending time at Powell's City of Books.

Imagine and entire city block, 3 floors high, that all looks like this! Oh, and the technical books are in yet another building across the street. So many books, so little time...

I guess I just had a thing for converging lines on this trip. We wandered into this kitchen supply store as we walked between a yarn shop and the streetcar.

More from Portland next time...

Quilts & Camping

This past weekend was the annual Strawberry Festival in Stawberry/Pine, AZ and the annual Strawberry Patchers Quilt Show. It's a weekend that we always look forward to because it's a whole craft fair event with great food vendors and we get to see quilting friends that we don't see the rest of the year.

Overall, the show seemed to be a bit "off" this year, with lot's of edge-edge quilting and fewer custom quilting examples than usual. We go to shows like this because they provide inspiration and ideas so this was a bit underwhelming. Still, there's no such thing as a bad quilt show so it was worth going.

Here's some samples from the show. (I thought I had more, but it turns out that I've only got these two. I don't know how I managed that.)

Debbie Stanton's quilting really brings out the notion of a fish swimming in a streambed.

An interesting take on a log-cabin block.

After the quilt show we picked up a couple of grilled brats and a big bag of some great kettle-corn, then headed back up the rim for camping at Kehl Springs. This is a primitive camp on Forest Road 300 that is free (since it is primitive) and always seems to have a spot available (again, because it's primitive - we think.)

Kehl Spring seems to be more of a "seep" than a spring, but we are in the dry season right now.

It's a nice quiet place for lots of reading and relaxing.

Wild Columbines along the road.

I'm not sure what these are, but they'r pretty and plentiful.

This butterfly decided that Linda's hand lotion was pretty tasty.

We had to work pretty diligently to get it to leave her finger and fly away.

We took a hike up to the top of the ridge. It's a wonderful view of the Mogollon Rim.

We took the phone along to use the GPS so we could figure out just what we were seeing.

That's Payson, almost due south. We figure the straight line on the left must be the highway north of town.

Last day in NL

It's been a very busy 3 weeks. We're not ready to leave, but the plane is scheduled for tomorrow morning so I suppose we need to be on it as scheduled. Besides, if we stay we'll have to go grocery shopping because we've emptied the refrigerator! Wait... grocery shopping is one of our favorite things to do, so that won't work.

This was the view out of our north window this morning.

This was a day to stay "home", organize things, take our bottles back to the store, and pack our bags. I'm sure the car is lonely because it never moved today.

The weather turned darker and windier as the morning progressed, but it was dry so we took the bikes out for one last ride into "downtown" Zevenhuizen. We got back the deposit for our bottles, then spent it on a soda. A walk across the street to the bakery got us raisin buns, and goodies for afternoon snack & evening dessert. We did some window shopping for Dutch bikes. About €500 we could have just the kind of bikes we want, but I'm not sure we could get them shipped to the U.S.

I love the deep, dark blue that is used on so many Dutch houses. It's not just the color, the paint looks inches thick because of the gloss and evenness of the paint. I want it on my house!

Linda brought along this quilt as a gift for our hosts to grace the dining room table. It looks right at home.

 Hanging around home today meant that I could get out and grab some shots of some of the other residents.

 The cat, in its usual spot, reigning over all it can see.

 

Our usual view of the cat, looking from our upstairs window.

 Here we are with our hosts, Jan and Jannie Visser (and their dog Boef). What a wonderful couple. We've truly enjoyed our time here at their home.

The day came to a close with a dinner of split-pea soup accompanied by raisin buns with butter and Beemster cheese. During dinner we were blessed to see a complete rainbow out of our windows.

Last Beer Report for this trip: Leffe Blonde, 6.6% alcohol content. Normally, I don't care for light-colored beers, but Linda's cousin Harm Hubbeling recommended this one and it has turned out to be a great recommendation. This one is Belgian, and it shows in how smooth it is. No sharp, hoppy edge - just wonderfully smooth flavor. Highly recommended.