Portland, Oragin

I had a wonderful time visiting my family in Oregon (proper pronunciation provided above). Steven and I both got haircuts, visited multiple Powell’s locations, and of course attended my mother’s birthday party. And all of my siblings behaved!

Steven and I have discussed Portland’s predilection for quirky graffiti multiple times, and here is a primo example from the Pearl District:

Can’t you just imagine someone thinking to himself, “Damn, frenchbread is DELICIOUS–I should give it props on the streets!”

And in the bathroom at the Pagoda, the typical denigrating graffiti is replaced with valuable life advice.

What else would you expect of a place that has such glorious decor? I’m talking about the koi ponds in the entrance, complete with real fish and a floating preserved dead turtle. We had to closely examine it to determine that it is not alive, nor is it made of plastic.

And of course, the over-the-top red and gold glitter vinyl seating, paired with the bright patterned wallpaper, aren’t to be missed.

Also pictured is my good friend Eve (also known as Evil-E), who gave me the aforementioned haircut at Grace.

We did a little shopping on Hawthorne and stopped in at The Red Light, because who could resist a place with such an amazing window display? Me-ow!

We found that one of our favorite vintage stores, House, has (recently?) expanded to take over the space next door. Now it’s huge, with even more great treasures. Why couldn’t it have been like that when I lived there? I found myself having that reaction often as we visited old haunts that had improved or expanded since we’d been local. A bunch of cool places have gone in near our old apartment downtown, including a Red Light, a Goodwill, and Living Room Theaters. And I have a much greater appreciation for the lack of sales tax and cheaper prices in general. I suppose it’s a case of greener grass, because San Francisco certainly has plenty to offer.

After reading about the Ace Hotel in the ReadyMade Blog, we decided to stay there one night at the end of our trip. More on that in my next post. It was great!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

I’m in Oregon for the weekend, visiting my mother for her 50th birthday party. Her birthday isn’t actually until July 1, but she’s celebrating early with a friend of hers who is also turning 50. Her parents are here, as is my dad’s mother, and all of my siblings. Except for one, who isn’t allowed to stay at the house anymore. But she’ll be visiting for the party and I’ll definitely see enough of her. It’s like a reunion of sorts, though, especially since I haven’t seen my grandfather on my mom’s side in several years.

On the flight in I was excited to be able to see Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, and Mt. St. Helens. As the plane neared the airport it struck me just how much I missed the intense greenery of Oregon. Portland is such a lovely town, and I miss it very much. Hopefully I’ll take many pictures this weekend, which’ll help keep it fresh in my memory. And maybe bring some Voodoo donuts back to San Francisco

I went to visit Steven for his birthday, and we drove from where he lives (Sugar Land) to Austin for the weekend. Here we are at Lake Travis on his 25th birthday. I wore this cute Anthropologie dress for the first time since I bought it massively on sale. Many compliments on the dress ensued.

We bumbled around town, visiting shops and being silly. Austin sure has a ton of vintage shops! For all of the shops we hit up, I didn’t end up actually buying very much. One of my favorites was definitely the store to the left of Mom’s Tattoos in the photo below, Room Service. That is where I bought a deadstock acid-washed black denim cropped jacket, complete with the original Dirty Dancing movie tag and plastic gem buttons. Official movie merchandise, people! I had to cut the tag off to wear it, though.

This is my favorite photo from the weekend. It makes me smile

Austin is a lovely town, and it reminded both of us very much of Portland, from the geography to the demographics. We both enjoyed our visit, but then he had to return to Sugar Land and I to San Francisco. Sad

Skirt

I feel like I talk about what I want to make, but then forget to post photos of the finished project. Part of the problem is taking good pictures, but I hope to improve at that with practice. This weekend I bought a little gorillapod tripod, and it’s great, especially since my boyfriend is not around to take photos of me wearing my creations.

I sewed up this little skirt last week from a pattern I’ve made before (I’ll add the pattern number when I’m home to look at it). It’s such a simple, easy pattern, and I wear the other skirt all the time, so I figured I was due for another. I’m also hoping that, since it has a box pleat, I’ll be able to wear it on my scooter. I discovered this weekend that pencil skirts and scooters, sadly, do not mix.

The fabric is vintage, but reminds me of a newer fabric I’ve seen around lately.

I’ve been tipped off to the fact that next time I take pictures without a flash, I need to change the camera location so that I’m not backlit.

Close-up (with flash):

I haven’t worn it out yet, but I’m happy with out it turned out–other than the fact that the lovely invisible zipper I’d installed got stuck at the top (while I was trying it on!) and I had to tear it out and replace it with a regular zipper because that was all I had. And I didn’t do that great of a job putting it in. But no one except me would notice that. Hopefully.

Changes

My boyfriend of seven years (eight in August!) is leaving me on Friday for a video game level design job in Texas. It’s a great opportunity for him, but it means that I’ll be without my best friend for the next eight months or so. School will definitely be busy in the next several months, what with fellowship applications and the terrifying prospect of my qualifying exam this summer, but I’m afraid that I’ll turn into a lonely cat lady while he’s gone. Actually, I’m not really afraid of that–I’ve made some good friends in San Francisco who I know will help maintain my social life. But I imagine that I won’t go out as much, and so in trying to look at the bright side of the situation I’ve realized that I’ll have more time to make things. I’ve got a couple of dress patterns lined up, and I’m gestating ideas for other projects.

One of my goals this year is to craft more, and to blog the results. The problem is that my motivation comes and goes in waves–I’ll be super productive and crafty for a while, and then I won’t feel like making anything. I think that regardless of my creative motivation, I need to give myself a weekly posting quota, to help it become a habit. I’m considering a Friday or Saturday post of my inspirations for the week. I definitely bookmark and save a lot of images and ideas for future projects, so it would seem fairly easy to post them here.

Another goal for this year is to get rid of some of the extra stuff I’ve accumulated, and slow down the influx of new things. That includes craft supplies! I need to get organized, and purging will be an important part of that process.

Peacock picture and framing solutions

I bought this great vintage needlepoint piece when I was in Florida over the holidays (thrifted, of course). The only problem was that the frame it was in was damaged, so I took it, along with a couple of other things I wanted to frame, to Cheap Pete’s frame factory outlet. Were it not for Yelp, I would never have known about such a great framing shop. But I digress.

Since the piece was a non-standard size, one of the guys at the shop recommended that I buy a slightly larger frame and glue the needlepoint to a fabric-covered backing (just cardboard that came with the frame), which is exactly what I did. I happened to have blue corduroy that matched perfectly–having a large fabric stash does pay off sometimes. It was an inexpensive, fairly easy solution to an awkward framing situation, and I think it turned out quite cool.

Project Progress

From the looks of this blog, you wouldn’t think that I’ve been doing much craft-wise, but I really have. The projects, which I’ll try to photograph soon:

1. Last night I finally cut out the pieces for the Duro dress I mentioned in my very first post. When I’m using one-of-a-kind vintage fabric, cutting is kind of a traumatic step for me because it’s the point of no return. I put it off until the urge to create is overwhelming, and then just dive in.

When I was cutting last night though, the foremost concern in my mind was how to stop my pesky cats from crawling all over the fabric and under the pattern. They LOVE the crinkly sound of the pattern paper and insist on playing with it, so while cutting I had to work around Delicious (smaller pest) and Adventurous (I’ve never met a ruder pest). Their only redeeming quality is their collective cuteness. And sometimes I’ll end up with a funny picture of them. (I promise that this won’t degenerate into one of those “cute pictures of my cats” blogs, though I will admit to a large weakness for cute overload)

2. I combined a thrifted red and black men’s flannel with a long-sleeved black tee to create a cute fall top. I haven’t taken pictures of it yet, though.

3. Steven and I re-finished our coffee table. A leftover from our old roommate, it was a large beat-up wooden desk from which the legs had been removed. We took off the old finish, put on a new one (white), added short silver legs, and replaced the handles on the drawers with industrial silver ones. It turned out pretty good for our first furniture project, although there are some flaws that kind of bother me. It’s a great improvement, however, and I think that it’ll look cool with the new couch and chair we purchased last weekend (our first non-Ikea or thriftstore furniture!). Stay tuned for pictures.

4. Until we get our new furniture in about six weeks, almost everything in our living room is either thrifted or left by our former roommates. This includes a large, very comfy, but atrociously ugly denim sofa (old roommates’) and a thrifted office chair. Extremely unfashionable, but then so is our budget. The only reason the office chair is still in our apartment is that it used to be Steven’s desk chair, but he replaced it for something more comfortable and upon moving it to the main room discovered that our cats love to scratch and climb all over it. We figured that this was a much better outlet for their destructive tendencies than other furniture, so we kept it, but its days are now numbered. Knowing that removing a scratching device without replacing it with an enjoyable alternative was a bad idea, we built the cats a scratching post this weekend.

We scrounged wood of the perfect dimensions from the apartment’s parking garage (free), bought some nails and 200 feet of sisal rope (~$10), and built a structure that the cats couldn’t even wait until we were finished with to begin using. It’s always nice to get such enthusiastic and unequivocal reviews.