Portland yarns

I feel more or less recovered from jetlag now.  It was much easier to adjust going the other way - just as well, otherwise as soon as I recovered it would have been time to come back.

Bagdad cinema, Portland

Aladdin cinema, Portland

 The weather was mainly wet and cold in Portland (just like home) so my photos are a bit grey.  I took a few shots of building that appealed. Here are a couple of 1930s cinemas - the Bagdad (on Hawthorne), and the Aladdin (somewhere else).  I would have liked a night-time photo of the Aladdin - it looks especially grand when the neon sign is lit up, with the lamp at the top.  But I didn't have my camera with me at the time.

The other photo is the Milwaukie Market - what we would call a corner shop in the U.K.  I liked the array of gaudy ads all over the outside (mostly for beer).

While my daughter was busy with classes, I spent quite a lot of time in Powell's book store - a Portland institution.  It sells new and used books side by side, so you can often choose between a new and  a used copy of the same book.  I bought a few books, including a (used) copy of Knitting Brioche by Nancy Marchant - I have knitted a scarf in a simple two-colour brioche stitch, but the book goes much further and has some patterns I'd like to knit. 

I also spent some time in Knit Purl, a really nice yarn store in downtown Portland.  I did buy quite a lot of yarn there, but for now I will only mention the Brooklyn Tweed Loft.  The store has a good selection of patterns, and I loved Heidi Kirrmaier's Boardwalk design - a mostly stocking stitch pullover with a bit of complication around the neckline.  I bought the pattern and four skeins of Loft to knit it with, in a lovely silver grey.   (The nice people in the store wound it for me, on their electric wool-winder.  It was mesmerising!  I could watch it all day.)   I started knitting it when I got home, and I am about halfway up the back - it's my current TV knitting. 

I couldn't go to my usual Tuesday Knit Night in Huddersfield, obviously, but my daughter found another Tuesday Knit Night at the Yarn Garden on Hawthorne.  It was a good evening - friendly knitters, interesting knitting.  And I found out something very useful - one of the knitters was wearing her Color Affection shawl, and I looked at it carefully and discovered that I had misunderstood the pattern instructions and should have already started the border.   So I am much nearer to finishing than I thought.  (Though as she said, it will take a long time to knit the border - two inches of really long rows.)  

I did lots of other things in Portland that weren't knitting related, of course.  It was a good week.  But the best part was spending time with my daughter.