Tag Archives: Portland

The great Northwest coast yarn haul

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Pacific Coast Yarn Haul

Northwest Coast yarn haul

As I mentioned in my overview of my trip to Portland and Seattle, I made off with some serious deals at the LYS’s. Considering we spent only three days in each city, and only a couple hours in Cannon Beach in between, I think I did rather well. My Visa statement may claim otherwise.

Pictured clockwise from the left are: Colinette Cadenza in ‘Velvet Plum’ (30% off at Coastal Yarns in Cannon Beach!), Curious Creek Fibers Wasonga in ‘Birches in Norway’ and ‘Mysterious Night’, from Close Knit in Portland’s Alberta Street strip, Pagewood Farm Yukon in ‘Mocha’ and Dream in Color Classy in ‘Cloud Jungle’, both for 30% off at Seattle’s So Much Yarn, from their big inventory clear out sale which Chris just so happened to stumble upon. Good boy!

Curious Creek Fibers Wasonga in Birches in Norway

Curious Creek Fiber Wasonga in 'Birches in Norway'

Curious Creek Fibers Wasonga in Mysterious Night

Curious Creek Fiber Wasonga in 'Mysterious Night'

I’m especially enamoured with the Wasonga – it is incredibly soft and luxurious, and I just could not choose between these colourways. There were other amazing colourways too, and since this yarn is hand created by San Diego fibre artist Kristine Brooks, it’s hard to say whether I’d ever come across it again. Needless to say I will have to think of something extra special for these yummy skeins to ‘become’.

And you can bet the farm I did NOT pack these lovelies in my checked luggage, thank you very much Air Canada.

Portland: top picks

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I’m working my way through about 6Gs of photos from our trip to Portland and Seattle. Looking at them helps me forget about the travel woes and think back on what I really loved about both cities.

Downtown Portland at Night

Downtown Portland, at night, New Year's Eve

Favourites:

  • McMenamin’s Kennedy School: a historic, converted elementary school that opened in 1915 and held classes until 1975. The McMenamin’s brewery chain presented a proposal to convert the school, preventing its demolition, and began renovating it in 1997. Definitely one of the coolest places to stay, with several different bars, a brewery, restaurants, a pool and even a theatre built in. The place has the most fabulously funky artwork throughout its halls, and many of the rooms are dedicated to the schools most notable teachers of the past. While it’s not in the city’s core, it’s only about a 15 minute walk from Alberta Street, one of the city’s best funkiest ‘hoods.
  • Ace Hotel / Clyde Common: we didn’t see a lot of the hotel but we had lunch at Clyde Common, downtown. This is definitely where the hipsters hang out. The lunch menu was fabulous, fresh and healthy, and affordable. But what really warmed me up was the Meyer Lemon Buttermilk Pudding with Huckleberry Sorbet and Pistachios. The pudding was warm and soft like custard on top, but crispy like freshly baked cake on the bottom. YUM!
  • Super Friendly Warm People: whatever your attitudes might be towards Americans, the people of Portland were incredibly friendly and warm. Maybe its that mild climate but I suspect its the awesome availability of excellent craft beer. Even the homeless people were happy and friendly!
  • Awesome bike-friendliness: what Toronto could use a lot more of.
  • Por Que No? taqueria: if I could have eaten here daily I would have. You can order tacos one-by-one and make your own combo. I had the Carnitas and the Porque Tinga as well, but the Pollo Asado was the best. Be warned though, they kind of close early, or at least they did when we were there.
Ace Hotel / Clyde Common

Meyer Lemon Buttermilk Pudding with Huckleberry Sorbet and Pistachios

  • Lucky Labrador Brew Pub: probably just cause I love labs, and dogs in general. The Brew Pub had a nice atmosphere, and the building was built in a typical Portland giant-timber style construction which is so warm and rustic. I had their Super Puppy (ale I think), which isn’t on their site but they said it was slightly less hoppy than the Super Dog – also not on their website. Anyway, it was still super hoppy for my tastes, but super all the same.
  • Alberta Street district and Close Knit LYS: a funky arts district not far from The Kennedy School. The area was perfect for an afternoon stroll, with lots of great independent clothing designer shops, fun little galleries, beer and wine retailers, chocolate shops and more. It was quiet because it was totally off season but many of the shops had great sales on. Sally at Close Knit was super sweet and remembered me from my email inquiry about their holiday hours. I found some stunning handspun and handpainted sock yarn called Wasonga by fibre artist Kristine Brooks from San Diego who runs Curious Creek Fibers (pictures to come later).
  • Deschutes Brewery: while it reminded me a bit of Toronto’s Esplanade Bier Markt, in terms of scale and the obvious cash behind it, it was a gorgeous place with fabulously carved timbers and a beautiful fireplace. And I got the sense that the place is something of an institution amongst the locals. Ribs – awesome. Chocolate Hazelnut Cream Pie: avoid at all costs.
  • The chalkboard tables at Green Dragon Bistro and Brewpub.
Ace Hotel / Clyde Common

Cass and Youngja, at Clyde Common

Por Que No? taqueria

Por Que No? taqueria

Green Dragon Brew Pub

Green Dragon Bistro and Brewpub

Close Knit

Close Knit, LYS, Portland

Ahhh Portland

Funky fence, Alberta Street, Portland

  • The trees: okay so I’m a bit sheltered and haven’t travelled a lot and this was my first time to the Northwest. But the trees. They are so beautiful and majestic! In Portland especially, everything was so lush and green, even at the end of December. There is green moss and drippy sage-coloured moss on everything – many of the trees look half decayed. Many of them have ferns growing up in them. There is a poster I saw in a closed shop window that I want to get my hands on, which charts out the different conifers of the Northwest, I’m going to have to try to find it.
  • Powell’s Books and Powell’s Technical Books: a ginormous new and used independent book store, Powell’s is legendary. I thought I wouldn’t find the Technical Books store of interest but I found some cool vintage farm equipment stuff for my Dad, and some great books on preserving food, country-wisdom and know-how, living off the land, building a chicken coop (I so want to have chickens), building a horse barn, and more. My luggage was full of books!
  • Dog-friendliness: Portland loves its dogs. Everyone seems to have one, and everywhere welcomes them. Hotel Monaco Portland’s Manager of Operations is Art, a yellow-lab!
  • A complete lack of sales tax: imagine that. It costs what it says it costs. How novel!
Ahhh Portland

Fountain, in North Park, Portland

Not-so-favourites:

  • So for the tourist, the city is a bit spread out. There are many neighbourhoods where different attractions are and the city has very few cabs. We used transit when we could figure it out, which helped. I guess this is a byproduct of the fact that they’re so bike-friendly there. I’m sure its great when you get the hang of it but we only had three days there. I think a lot of people stay in the downtown core, which is nice, but there are gems all over, so its worth the effort to get out of the core.
  • Industrial architecture: because we were able to see a fair bit of the city, it was a bit disappointing to see how industrial the city appears to be, all over the place. I guess the city isn’t so notable for its architecture.
  • Rain: obviously this is why it’s so lush there so I can’t fault it too much, and some would argue its better than snow, but the rain kind of put a damper on a lot of my photography.
  • Missed attractions: I really wanted to see the Japanese Gardens but they were closed due to ice and snow. Also, a lot of the other museums and places I wanted to see were closed for the holidays. I guess that’s what you get when you visit over the holidays.
  • Poor planning for New Year’s: I blame myself for this as much as anyone else, but we didn’t really have our act together for New Year’s Eve. Everywhere we went had a two hour wait or was sold out. We ended up ringing in the new year at a small bar called East Burn, where everyone was really nice but it was obviously a neighborhoody place, and everyone there knew each other. It felt like we were a few years older than the crowd there, and I felt like a bit of an outsider, but champagne was provided and the music was fun so that helped. And I can’t fault the folks there, everyone was so friendly it was almost shocking (I do live in Toronto after all, where they say we’re not a friendly city).

To see my Portland photos, visit my set on Flickr. Cannon Beach and Seattle photos to come!

Air Canada and YVR, YOU SUCK.

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I’m finally home from the great expedition to Portland and Seattle, via Vancouver, and feeling partially human again after being up nearly 33 hours straight, surviving a 10 hour flight delay and losing my luggage.

Gate 50-51, YVR, around midnight, Jan 4

Gate 50-51 at YVR, around midnight on January 4

I apologize first for the crappy quality photos but all I had to document the insanity was my Blackberry, because I sent the DSLR off to Whistler with Chris. Who did recover his luggage by the way, today, at 5 a.m. PT, and probably only because I found it sitting in a pile of “RUSH, PRIORITY” luggage in Toronto yesterday when I arrived and raised holy hell to have it shipped back to him in Vancouver, where they were supposed to hold it but didn’t. I walked it personally to the conveyor belt to the next available flight BACK to Vancouver (yes by the way, it did travel to Japan, as we suspected). In the end he has only missed one day of good skiing. What part of “hold my luggage in Vancouver” they didn’t understand, I will never know, but I’m guessing it has to do with the outsourced call centre in India that butchered his file.

So… after sitting in the airport all day Sunday waiting for my 5:40 pm flight, it started to snow about 15 minutes before we boarded. Which resulted in sitting on a plane for four hours, beside a gentleman who desperately needed to shower and use some deodorant. This snowfall would have been all in a day’s work for the folks at Pearson, but Vancouver is beside itself with the wintry weather its had lately, and is not equipped to deal with it. One plane slipped off the end of a runway and effectively blocked it for the night, leaving only one runway available, with priority going to inbound planes. They eventually canceled my flight and sent us and several hundred other passengers from other flights to a single gate to await our fate (pictured above).  We were told we’d be moved to a new flight to depart at 11:45 pm, which soon became 2 am, which eventually actualized at 3:30 am.

YYZ Domestic Baggage Claim

Only a fraction of the unclaimed luggage in YYZ domestic arrivals.

My original flight and another one were combined onto a Boeing 777 and we were told so too was our luggage, which supposedly accounted for the delay in take off. Not so, I soon discovered (after dealing with Chris’s luggage, I had to get in line again for an hour, to file my own lost luggage claim – the look on the baggage claim rep’s face was priceless when I stepped up to his computer, again). So I got home yesterday afternoon around 2:30 ET, a complete sketch case. I slept for a couple hours and got up to drive (two hours) to my parent’s place to get Zeus, stopping at the airport again on my way out hoping to find my luggage. I only found it this morning, on my way back. Life is returning to a form of normal and I have a day and a half to recover at home before I go back to work on Thursday.

As for the trip, it was heavily tainted with stress because of Chris’s lost ski gear, and his head nearly exploded about a half hour before we arrived at YVR to drop me off, when he got the call from Air Canada to say “oh sir, we’ve found your luggage and it’s on it’s way to Toronto!” There’s lots of fun stuff to report too and now that I’m at home, with my luggage, and laundry on the go, I can reflect on it and enjoy. I’ve also got my photos here to go through so that will help bring back the positive memories, so stay tuned.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, Air Canada will only compensate Chris for $100 towards “essentials” like undies, socks, a few clothing items and personal care products that he needed to buy while we were in the US, and equipment rentals at Whistler, which as I’ve explained before is nearly impossible for him because most of his gear is custom sized. I will get nothing – not even my short-term parking coverage. I didn’t even get a call to say my luggage was there. It was just my own (returning?) luck that I found it when I stopped in to look, again.

Hello from Portland! Land of Great Beer!

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Lucky Labrador Brew Pub on Hawthorne in Portland

Lucky Labrador Brew Pub on Hawthorne in Portland

After several fairly minor flight delays we arrived in Portland, minus one piece of luggage and seriously pissed off at YVR airport and Air Canada. Apparently Vancouver’s airport is the worst in the world for losing luggage. Not only did Chris lose nearly all his clothes, he’s also missing his ski boots and all his ski clothes, including his new helmet, which he’ll need for his trip to Whistler at the end of this week. For an ordinary person this might not seem so bad. You can after all rent this kind of gear if you have to. But Chris is not ordinary. He has extra extra wide feet and a giant head – all his gear is either nearly custom or impossible to find in most places. We’re still holding out hope but tomorrow we move on to Seattle for a couple days and as the clock ticks, it doesn’t look good for his luggage. It could be in Japan. It could still be in Toronto. It could be sitting in the unclaimed baggage in Vancouver. Oh and did I mention they had NO WATER in YVR while we were there, and all the washrooms were out of order? Hello? Aren’t they getting the Olympics in just over a year???

On to fun times in Portland. We’re staying at the McMenamin’s Kennedy School,  an old elementary school that’s been converted into a brewery/hotel. All the bedrooms are old classrooms (ours has chalkboards and a cloakroom) and the place is gorgeous. There are several bars, a large restaurant, soaking pools and even a movie theatre filled with couches and small tables. You can get your beer and go where ever you like, take it back to your room, check out a flick. It’s a fabulously funky place. Apparently classes were held here until about 1975 and then in around 1995 the school was purchased by McMenamin’s, a brewing chain that has many locations in Oregon and Washington, and they began converting it into the hotel it is now.

Yesterday we went to Powell’s Books – a huge new and used bookstore that takes up a whole city block. After picking up friends who joined us from their holidays in Kelowna we checked out Alberta Street in NE Portland, a funky strip with lots of shopping, independent clothing designers, art and design galleries and shops. There I checked out Close Knit and bought some fabulous hand spun, hand painted yarn by a woman from San Diego (more to come later). We checked out the Tin Shed, and then made our way to the Lucky Labrador Brew Pub on Hawthorn. We hiked it over to the Green Dragon Brew Pub for a pint, and then over to Por Que No taqueria for some of the best tacos I’ve ever had (I highly recommend the pollo asado – fantastico!). We’re definitely planning on going back for lunch today!

Today we move downtown for NYE!

Wish I may, wish I might

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Stary night

Star effects

Got my new 6-point star-effect filter in the mail today (from Hong Kong! I ordered it on eBay on December 15… ironically I’m still waiting for a package of photos which are part of a Christmas present that I ordered on December 12, from a 20 minute drive away. Screw you Canada Post).

I was hoping this would come before the holidays – not just to play with over Christmas, but because we’re going to Portland to pickle ourselves silly with America’s biggest selection of craft beer per capita! I was admiring bnzai9′s fantastic Portland set on Flickr and thought gee, I should get me one-o-those!

Stary night

Bokeh stary-ness

I’ve been madly making maps today of all the wonderful places we’re going to check out (we’re three days in Portland, including New Year’s, and three days in Seattle), only to discover that many of the LYS’s are going to be CLOSED!! Or at least open only a limited time while I’m there. Sigh. I guess this might make things a little easier on my life savings though (and Chris will appreciate that!). I need more yarn like I need a hole in my head, but still.

I have yet to figure out what will be my travel knitting. I need something relatively light, not too complex and not too bulky (obviously). I have several projects on the go but none of them feels like travel knitting. Or maybe I should pick up the lacy soy-silk scarf I started this summer and haven’t touched much since. I dunno. I’m feeling a bit uninspired now that 90% of my holiday knitting is done. I’ve still got a few days to figure it out.

And… I’m definitely feeling melancholy. I know this will pass but I’ve had the last two days at home to myself and I’ve been incredibly unproductive. Yes, yesterday I had to get the car fixed and today, I got shoes for the trip, but other than that, nothin’. Loosing Spud was such a shocker, and then we had both cars break down over the weekend which was such a pisser. I think now that I’ve been home alone, I can really feel that my little guy is really gone. I’ve spent the last few years going through ups and downs about losing my big and very old dog (who at this rate will outlive us all), that I never expected it to happen to one of the cats. And I’ll admit that out of the two, Spud was our favourite. I know I know, don’t play favs but he was really the best. Smokey is sweet and I love him to bits too, but he also has the potential to be super annoying, always underfoot and begging for something. He’s chilled a lot the last few days and I do feel sorry for him to have lost his friend, too. We’ve spent lots of time cuddling. I hope over the long haul he adjusts ok to being a single cat, because I certainly don’t need any more animals around here, and we won’t be adding another kitty to the family, despite how much fun they are.