IF YOU GIVE A GIRL A PAINT CHIP...

The Downstairs needs decorating...

So if the Kitchen and Living Room need painting, a Girl needs paint colors.

...If a Girl needs paint colors, she needs ideas.

...If a Girls needs ideas, she needs yarn.

And if a Girl needs to go yarn shopping, she needs to go with friends.

So if a Girl goes yarn shopping with friends for color inspiration....

She HAS to go to Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival in Portland!

See?

My beloved friends Abby (KnitKnitCafe podcast) and Mary Kay Carol may have applied gentle influence and offered hostelry to seduce me into going up.  Because Portland is completely repellent all on it’s very own. (I’d drive up there again tomorrow.)

I brought the worst weather they’d seen all year.  (Sorry.)

For the Official Record, we ate at:

Pine State Biscuits, partaking of the Reggie Deluxe--A fine biscuit, a piece of fried chicken, cheese, sausage gravy, bacon and, because it's me, an egg on top:

Bread and Ink Cafe, featuring an unbelievable cinnamon roll, Lox Benedict and a Liege waffle with fruit:

Carol and I also tried the much-vaunted Dar Essalam in Wilsonville, which everyone in the whole wide world recommended.  We went for lunch, which meant we missed the Tagine they’re famous for, but reveled in the Casablanca, a dessert of a perfect phyllo pillow filled with gorgeous fruit that absolutely curled our toes:

The requisite Piggy-Girl’s Logbook being done, we did actually attend the festival as well!  

Friday I took Mary Scott Huff’s Knitting Behind the (Color) Wheel class.  If you are unfamiliar with her work, she is an unparalleled fiber artist and all-around Sassy-Ass Cat.  I would have paid just to hug her.  We started a modular envelope bag incorporating what we learned about color and coordination earlier in the morning, then in the afternoon, applied i-cord (as in ideal-cord, inspired-cord, and intelligent-cord) and a Dorset Button.  



This may have been where I fell down on my lack of sewing skills, but all around it was six sacks of fun and I had lunch with a great veteran spinner and knitter, Betty, who gave me a ride to the MiniChef where we ate, surprise, some pretty mean biscuits.

Is this all starting to swirl together?

As the heavens continued to sheet down rain, Abby and I visited my all-time favorite yarn shop, Twisted, where I scored the Perfect Kitchen Yarn. It was shortly after we fell down at Pine State and then ran the hell home to watch Big Bang Theory and knit.  

Saturday, we visited the festival market, spread through several buildings and out on the lawn, an unfortunate circumstance in the typhoon conditions.  Highlights included Huckleberry Knits, Abstract Fiber and the winners, scratching my current  Self-Striping Itch:

It's Fly Design's Monarch (Purple and Black) and Shoe Fly Sock (Rainbow) super wash, self-striping yarns that made me tap-dance like an elf in the crowded corner booth.

I also FINALLY procured a beautiful, full-size noste-pinne (yes, I immediately lost the tag):

We met up with lots of local yarn gals, including Kristine (Kadyellebee Designs),  of whose sultry voice I will never tire, and KnitCents Rachel came all the way down from Olympia for the afternoon.  Mary Kay Carol brought Wonder-College-TeenK down from school for the day so we walked and shopped and lunched and generally went a bit nuts with the weather and all.  Fiber Festivals are always a little wild and wooly...

Looted up, we headed home, where Abby made the best tomato soup ever:

 ...and we snuggled up to watch Bridesmaids. Siiiiighhhhh Chris O'Dowd is one of my favorite actors ever, as being at turns hysterical and heart-rending is the Irish Gift. And he’s Cute.  And Irish.  A distant second to GingerMan, but an entirely similar sensibility and a hilarious movie.  I now feel really terrible that I avoided it for so long and grateful to Abby for making me watch it!

We met up with Carol on Sunday after brekkie at Bread & Ink and went to Happy Knits where I scored with Sherlock.

No, Really:

This is intended for the Bandwidth Hat from Stephen West’s Book Two, which I reviewed the very first time I ever appeared on Knitmore Girls as “That Squirrel Girl They Know On Too Much Coffee”.  It’s one of my favorite of his designs and I’ve been looking for the perfect yarn for, what, two years?  Local dyer Black Trillium's beautiful swirly-coffee yarn will be the cabled headband with the gorgeous olive for the patterned crown.

Monday I met Carol’s knitting group at Beyond Art, a lovely yarn and bead shop in Aurora, Oregon.  They’re a spirited group of knitters and spinners who also volunteer in the local and state spinning guilds, often in period costume. That’s their super-power, and their secret identities involve a bevy of cheek, naughtiness, and some very sound knitting advice. 

Tuesday I was deposited at the airport in cold, wet, darkest gloom and after waiting extra time in security while the TSA dude literally took a jeweler’s loupe under ultra-violet light to the license of the man in front of me, I hoofed it to my “gate”.

Or “gate-lette”.  To find my plane.

Or “plane-lette”.

I boarded the tiny prop plane, texting my dad, so as not to have a nervous breakdown in full voice...

....dad i can’tstayonthisplaneigottagetoffthisplaneisTINY

He talked me down sufficiently that I did not disembark, weep openly, or throw up.  Thus we climbed through the cloud cover and I saw the sun for the first time in five days.  It was the smoothest flight I’d had in ages.

So the yarn and I made it home safely. 

Now the Girl has yarn in her favorite colors.

And paint can be bought.

The Downstairs can be decorated.

... And if the Upstairs needs to be painted and decorated, a Girl might need more yarn. 

Pin It Now!