SuperEggplant

I have to say that although I am a native Oregonian, I felt like a Californian today. It wasn’t even 70 degrees, but it was sunny and beautiful, and there were so many people in shorts! I even saw some shirtless guys (they were in the park, and I could see them because they were so pale they were glowing). I was dumbfounded. To me, sub70 degree weather is not shorts weather!
But on to the fun stuff. Insane brother and I walked down to the new REI (Peter was very impressed that we could WALK to REI) today then went to McMenamin’s to have lunch and visit Craig, cancer-fighting Megan’s brother. He’s been working at the pub for nearly a decade. Here he is proudly showing his creation–Craig’s Curried Chicken Peanut Soup:

The reason his hair is so short is because he shaved it in November at a benefit for Megan!
This evening I went to my friend Wendy’s house (Wendy is the mother of Dr. Croissant) for Crafty Christmas, their craft group. Apparently some of the members come for the wine and conversation, not for the crafts.

From left to right are Lisa, who brought some beading, Cara, who brought her WORK (but hey, she works for D. Sharp, who creates these amazing paper sculptures), and Marie, who does not craft and was thus recruited by Cara to fold paper. You can see my pumpkin fluff sweater in the foreground there. Not pictured are Wendy, Tracy (a non-crafter but a crafty storyteller), the girls–Dr. Croissant, the two Olivias, and baby Paulina, Rocky the dog, and Wendy’s husband Jay. We ate yummy pizza and laughed quite a lot!

Action Hero Melissa, Mrs. H, and I ventured out this morning to Woodland Woolworks. It is quite a haul to Carlton, where WW is located, but we braved the rain and the two-lane roads and made it. WW is basically a huge warehouse. We hit the “stash” room first, and though all the yarns, including various Rowan yarns, which I’ve been wanting to try (yes, I confess, I have never knit with Rowan yarns!), were 15 percent off, I didn’t buy any. We had fun sifting through the yarns even though the stash room was unheated. The “showroom” has samples of all their available yarns plus a lot of books and magazines and walls of needles. I must say that while it was all impressive, the most amazing part of that showroom was the swatches. They had the most incredible and intricate swatches I have ever seen!
We headed back to Portland and hit Lint, since it was the first day of their sale. A lot of the winter yarns were 30-40 percent off, and they also had a sale room (sorry about the blurry photos):

That’s Melissa there rooting through the boxes. She showed enormous restraint, though, and bought NOTHING! I got some GGH Sombrero, a tape/ribbon yarn:

Has anyone used this stuff before? It calls for a pretty large needle, but I don’t know if I want something all loose and drapey. They had 5 balls of GGH Samoa that I wanted, but I need 7 to make the top I want, so I resisted. Sigh. GGH is another yarn I want to try.
It was a fun day, and I wish I could go adventuring like that every day! I leave you with these goodies that Mrs. H brought. The ribbons are from Farmhouse Fabrics. They have the BEST ribbons!

As you can see, I sewed in the zipper, and Peppermint Candy, the 2x2x3x1 ribby by Bonne Marie, is complete! The pattern is great, but I did some weird stuff to it, so initially I was not thrilled with it. After wearing it for a few minutes, though, it began to grow on me. It is very toasty and comfy, so despite the monkey arms and the short body and the incredibly crappy underarm seaming, I like it okay. The photo was taken by the one-and-only Action Hero Melissa. We went to lunch today at clarklewis, a new restaurant in an industrial section of town. It was quite yummy, and as a bonus we got to watch them butcher some large animals (I wasn’t in FFA, so I could not identify the skinned animal).
On the way home, I stopped by Saint Honore Bakery, the fancy French bakery, for some treats. I had a hankering for a cookie, but there weren’t any (the horror!). I ended up getting a couple of outrageously priced eclairs:

As you can see, it is not a particularly large eclair. The price? $3.75 each. If it were hedonistically delicious, it’d be worth it. Sadly, the pastry was a bit on the soggy side, and the pastry cream was good but not great. Okay, so I wasn’t that sad, because I’m really NOT that picky about my treats, but you know, I was trying to be scientific about it all.
I also stopped by a party supply place that was around the corner from clarklewis and picked up a few things, including a little easter surprise for my crazy old father: