In Progress

Suddenly tomorrow is September (!) and with the change in the weather this week (rain, finally) it feels absolutely like harvest time and the season for cozy indoor crafting. Really, who am I kidding - summer in Portland continues through September - but I'll make the most of this week of cozyness and cool nights after so many months of heat and drought.

In progress these days:

• This chili ristra, made with the glowing fruit of my Dragon Cayenne plant. 

The peppers turn red a few at a time, so the ristra is hanging by the window with the needle still on the doubled thread, ready to add a few more chilis every couple of days.

• Coriander seed

 Mostly dried on the stalk in the garden (from a handful of generous volunteer plants) after we ate all the leaves, I rescued a big handful of these from the rain this weekend. It is finishing its drying in a paper bag hanging in my room, then will move to the spice cupboard.

• A braided rag rug. Perhaps my newest favorite crafty endeavor, I'm completely hooked on this project!

When I moved in with Bill, I was finally able to move my fabric scrap collection from a big bag into some Ikea wire drawers, and I took the time sort it all and purge out all the scraps I didn't want to keep for future sewing projects. A lot were old clothes and linens. Some (read: the bright orange 70s print above) came with other, more desirable fabrics in cheap bags found at secondhand stores. I wanted to make use of all the scraps in some way, and my longtime love of the Little House books immediately came to my aid - a rag rug! I looked up a tutorial and immediately found this one, fittingly on the Little House Living website.

 My rug will not be chic in its color scheme, which is a complete hodge-podge, but it sure is fun and easy to make. Once I had torn all of the fabric into strips, I organized it by color (sort of). One ball is entirely a red and purple based print that I had an overabundance of, one ball is all of the solid colors, and another is all of the other prints. I have no real idea how big the final product will be, but I'm already looking forward to making another in the future. I like the idea of finding some old sheets at a thrift store to create a more consistent color palette. [Tip: Cut the strips into ~3 foot strips. Any longer and they get easily tangled with each other. Also, try not to be adding two new strips at exactly the same point, or the braid gets extra lumpy; try to stagger the bulk of adding new strips]. 

This is a really great project to have at hand to pull out and work on for a few minutes in the evening or on a Sunday afternoon. I've been enjoying listening to podcasts (Backstory is my current favorite) while braiding away. 

Happy September, everyone!

Checking In

Hello, there! It's been an absurdly long time since my last post - life has been busy! Things have happened! For example:
  
I moved out of the shoebox apartment where I spent a great 2.5 years, and joined forces with Bill at the house he has lived at since before I met him.

We share the house with two roommates and a cat, have a small but lovely garden, and the spare bedroom became "my room," where all of my stuff lives and I have a sewing table and a futon for guests.

Life is so much easier without our constant going back and forth between each other's homes, although there are the small irritations of living with housemates (lack of space in the fridge being a primary one for me), although the housemates themselves are excellent people. Most of my kitchen gear is in storage in the basement since the house was well furnished already, so it will be fun unpacking it all someday.

It's been an unnervingly hot and dry summer in the northwest, but we've made the most of it. Sail camping, a fantastic backpacking trip in the North Cascades, a family reunion in Port Townsend, and my birthday at a cousin's new farm - this summer has been one of the best.

 

Day four of five in the North Cascades

Point Wilson lighthouse and Admiralty Inlet

How I spent my 31st birthday

 A summer ritual

It's been summer since April, with weeks of temperatures over 95 F, and even if the entire American West wasn't burning right now, I'd be ready for fall. But now we're praying for rain and here, at the edge of September, I am absolutely looking forward to cooler nights, wool socks, red leaves and baked squash. I've got some new autumn-y projects to work on which I will share here, as once again I try to revive my writing a bit. I hope you're all well, and I look forward to spending more time here in the coming weeks.

In a Holding Pattern

I've been absent from here for awhile, mostly because things haven't felt...blogworthy. My life is good, and filled with good things, but mostly I feel like I'm just waiting for The Next Big Thing. I feel maxed out at my current job. I'm lucky to have a good employer and a supportive boss (who lets me switch my schedule around to accommodate interviews for other jobs!) but my work doesn't stimulate me, and I feel like I have nothing left to learn from my position. It's been nearly a year since I earned my MPH, and I want to be working in my chosen field. I'm currently in the process of interviewing for a big state job that would be a career maker. I may get it, I may not.

I've been at a loss for big projects of my own to work on, so sometimes I get home after work and just wonder what I should do with the evening. For a person who places high value on productivity, I've been having a hard time figuring out what to work on. I have a hard time with feeling at loose ends-- no big trips planned, no big events to look forward to, finished with a big round of sewing/crafting projects and now casting around for new ones. I would be planning summer vacations or trips (one of my goals this year is to go to a national park I've never been to before), except that there may be a job transition in my near future, which makes for unpredictability in terms of time off. Although now I'm considering just planning a week-long trip, so that I have plans regardless, and can take unpaid time off if I have to.

The biggest event that I had been looking forward to happened at the end of March, when my niece, Margaret, was born. I was antsy as all get out to meet her, of course, and had the most wonderful nine day vacation in April, as a live-in auntie. It was so great to be there, to know that I was being useful to my brother and sister-in-law by doing dishes and laundry, making dinner, and waking up in the wee hours of the morning to give Maggie a bottle. It's so incredible (and yet totally normal) to see my brother as a parent, and it was amazing just having so much time with that gorgeous baby.

She was asleep when I first got there, so I only saw her at that point, swaddled and passed out in her crib. I truly met her at 2 AM after a shift change with my sister-in-law. Maggie woke up hungry, and as I picked her up for the first time, she locked her big blue eyes on mine, with a deeply furrowed brow (which is precisely my father's), as if working out that although she had never met me before, I was kin. Just me and her in the middle of the night. Pretty magical.

The weather has turned summer-like, and I've been getting back into garden mode. I kind of got out of garden gear over this winter full of surgery and laid-up-ness. Now it's so very nice to spend my lunch breaks in my community garden plot, and to potter around at home with the little starts under the growlights and the herbs and flower in the pots outside my front door. Still, I have been longing for a big garden outside my back door, always with work needing to be done to fill my evenings. 

 Scapes!

Peas!

Pollinators!

Tonight after work I spent an hour at the garden in 80-degree heat, planting my home-started marigolds, plus beans, lettuce, and another round of radishes. I also cast out some dill. I never plant a patch of dill- I just throw some seeds around the plot, and get lovely stalks coming up here and there. Some self-seeds every year, but I always want to make sure I have enough for canning dilly beans come August.

The neighboring plot is home to this gorgeous (and knee-weakeningly sweet smelling) rugosa rose.

Bill is very busy teaching at the moment (have I mentioned here that he teaches a combination of math and boatbuilding to kids who aren't thriving in traditional math classrooms? It's a job he was born to do), and he's trying to finish his own boat in time for summer sailing, so little progress has been made on my kitchen island. However, we decided we'll get it done in time for my birthday in August, so it will only have taken us 10 months to build!

Otherwise, I've been reading a lot, cycling a lot, job searching, and trying to stave off the itchiness for change. New job, better income (read: pay off student loans and buy a house), bigger projects, traveling, something to feel like I've got a little more forward motion in my life, early in the summer in which I will turn 30.

Springy

One of the many wonderful things about Portland is our early, early springs. Mild weather, biking through town with the scent of flowers on the air. White blossoms in front of gray clouds. Things blooming at the end of February! It's been lovely so far, and it's been way too long since I've wandered my neighborhood with my camera in hand. So that's how I celebrated St. Patrick's Day: an after-work walk, seeking out the brightness of spring.

 (Daphne odora, the best smelling flower there is)

Spring has well and truly sprung!

Snow and Ice

We had an unexpectedly long weekend here, as Portland got hit with cold temperatures, then high winds, then snow, and then ice. Schools were closed, the city ground to a halt, all of my weekend plans were postponed, and I cabin fever pretty badly after the fun of the first day or two. I did a lot of knitting, drank a lot of hot cocoa, and watched a lot of PBS Nature documentaries.

On Saturday night, the freezing rain hit, and the entire city became coated with ice. We woke up to emergency alert text messages telling us not to go anywhere or attempt to drive. Venturing out on Sunday morning with my camera, I managed not to slip and fall, and got these photos:

Those are ice droplets.

Bill's car with its icy coating.

I had only just gotten back on my bike a few days before the storm hit, and after being cooped up inside and unable to go anywhere for a couple days (Portland simply can't handle snow--too few plows, few people have snow tires-- so even those of us who know how to drive in it rarely venture out) I am more than ready to be active again. Bill is finally off crutches but still has to baby his foot a bit, but hopefully soon we will be back in shape to get in some good hikes.