I belong to a knitting group called the TKGA
http://www.tkga.com/ and I signed up for a class they were offering at their Knit & Crochet Show which started yesterday in Portland. The show continues on through Sunday with classes and a vendors' exhibit hall where you can purchase all sorts of yarns, needles, books and associated necessities for knitting and crocheting. The class I chose was called "
The Mad Hatters" and it was supposed to help you design your own hats. The show is being held down at the Doubletree Hotel near the Lloyd Center so it was easy to get to and I was able to park over near the Lloyd Center. When I registered for the show, I was given a goodie bag (shown on left) because Iwas a TKGA member. That was a pleasant surprise. The bag is huge, a fine size to hold all the materials I'll be needing for the afghan I'm planning as my next project. Inside the bag was a brand new book called "Just Bags" from Lion Brand Yarn, a couple of skeins of Lion's Jiffy yarn, a ruler, a knitting needle, some patterns and a catalog - all things I can use.
Sadly, the class was NOT a pleasant surprise. The bubbly instructor showed some slides, talked a bit about creating hats and motifs and then spent a good bit of time talking about her new book which will come out next year. She was pleasant, my classmates were pleasant but the class itself was a waste of money as I really didn't learn anything useful. The main thrust of the class was to design a motif and then calculate how many stitches you would need to cast on for a multiple of that motif (i.e. if your motif is 10 stitches wide, should your hat stitches equal 110 or 112?? - a no-brainer as your total number of stitches needs to be evenly divisible by the number of stitches in the motif so anyone who made it through 3rd grade math would know to use 110). I saw some nice patterns and got a few ideas but I would have been better off purchasing a book and reading it on my own. So that was disappointing.
I'm hoping to go back today to the shopping/vendor area just to look over all the yarns and supplies. It's not likely I'll get my afghan yarn there but I might find some nice yarn for a hat or scarf, and unusual yarn that I can sample.
After the class, I rushed home as we had tickets for Leon Russell that night. We drove over to Tastebud
http://www.tastebudfarm.com/ for supper - salad & pizza & beer. All tasty but not a wide menu available. We walked across the street to the theater for the concert. Tom Heinl
http://cdbaby.com/cd/heinl was the opener and he was really quite funny and had a good voice. We enjoyed his portion of the show but were really looking forward to Leon. About 9:15, Leon and his group finally came on. We especially liked "Lady Blue", "Back to the Island" and some of his other rather mellow songs from
The Best of Leon album that we've had for many years. You'll get a bit of a feel for the Leon we were expecting if you sample (under his picture) "
Song for You" and "
Hummingbird"
http://www.amazon.com/Leon-Russell/dp/B000002TYM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1242458234&sr=1-4 . Sadly, the albums we really like are no longer available (according to amazon) so it's good we hung onto our albums! We found at the concert that the Leon we loved was no longer available either. After listening to 5 or 6 songs, including "Lady Blue" and "Back to the Island" which we hardly recognized as they had been so distorted, we walked out. What had been done to his fine songs was nothing less than torture. This was the worst concert I have ever attended. It was HORRIBLE. Some night we'll sit down with a drink and bring out our old albums and enjoy the real Leon, hoping we can erase from our memory the travesty his music has become.
Friday - the plumber showed up to install our new toilet and sink in the hall bathroom. Finally, we were getting rid of the ancient gray fixtures for our newly chosen white modern ones. It took him much of the day to get this done, made more difficult since the bathroom is on a slab.
While he worked at that, I headed over to the library to spend a couple of hours on the HOLDS. I checked books in, sorted them alphabetically on the rolling carts, and then (once a cart was full) shelved the books in the reserved section. I find that I really enjoy it. I spend a couple of hours just concentrating on books and alphabetizing them by name of the patron who reserved it. It's relatively mindless and yet useful and I generally come across a book or two that I'd like to reserve myself. In fact, today I came across one that I actually had reserved myself. Sort of funny to check it in and see my own name pop up.
Later in the afternoon, I headed back to the yarn show and checked out all their books, yarns, needles & supplies. I surprised myself by not finding a single thing I needed or wanted and left the show without spending a penny. I did pick up a 15% off coupon from Lion Brand Yarn that I can use on the afghan yarn I plan to purchase so the trip to the yarn show was not wasted.
Tomorrow we head to the gorge to check out the wild flowers.
On Saturday we drove over to Dalles Mountain Ranch at Columbia Hills State Park. It's about 80 miles east of Portland and looks like a different world, more like the west you'd associate with New Mexico or Arizona. The area we went to is a former ranch of 3,300 acres which is full of lupine and arrow-leaf balsamroot flowers this time of year. They were everywhere we looked. Gorgeous!! There are no trails through the open meadows, creeks, and stands of scrub oak so people are allowed to walk where ever they please. Parking is a little tricky as there is no designated parking along the narrow dirt road but there are areas wide enough to allow for a car to be parked off road and we took advantage of that. We met a fellow from the Ukraine who was there wandering about taking pictures of all the flowers as we were. He was on his own and requested that we take his picture so we got to talk with him a bit.
