Geekery, Yarn and Zines

I'm not exactly sure how Chuck found out about it, but once he told me there was Star Trek in the Park in Portland I knew we had to move here. I thought we were going to have to wait until next year to catch the event but it turns out they were doing a special double feature this past weekend. A little different than the usual performance in Woodlawn Park, this took place at the Bagdad Theater on Hawthorne and was followed with a screening of the Wrath of Kahn. Yes, I am a Trekkie, I grew up with ST:TNG and DS9 which I love to pieces. And I definitely watched a lot of TOS when I was very little in reruns. Of course I guess I wasn't such a fan to know all of the details of where this Kahn person came from: The Eugenics Wars of the 1990s! Funny, I don't remember that. I love when we catch up to old sci-fi. We watched the original episode last night to compare and it was very close, they did a great job, right down to the fight scene choreography.

Over the weekend we also ventured out to some local yarn shops. Yarn Garden was on the way to the show. They had some really great deals and a great selection of vegan friendly yarns, it was hard to resist and stay focused on the project I was stashing for. With a little help from Chuck I stayed on track. Earlier in the weekend I finally went over to knit purl, which is very close to our apartment. They are a little more of a boutique yarn shop with lovely expensive yarns from Habu and Louet that I really want to work with at some point when I want to splurge on a project. Maybe it's a good thing I'll have to make a little bit of an effort to get to the larger shop! Meanwhile, knit purl has a great window display with yarns and bikes.

There was also the Portland Zine Symposium, which I found out about from Mayor Sam Adams twitter. Although I guess I would have learned about it anyway since it was right up the street from us and there were signs at the farmers market. I don't know much about zines, but I love the DIY spirit. We came home with an anarchist vegan cookbook from the UK. There is a chapter on curry recipes I'm especially excited about. There were tons of cute looking things including postcards, flipbooks, buttons, and of course zines. I had to have the cookbook, and then I didn't have much cash for anything else. Maybe next year I'll go crazy. Meanwhile there's a great list of the attendees to review, and I think I'll be looking out for some of the vendors at bookshops around town!

(The last two pictures above are of some signage I saw on our walk across the Hawthorne Bridge, on our way to Yarn Garden and the Bagdad Theater. We also had some great vegan chili and the Bridgeport Ale House before the show, an event popular enough to have a pretty long line!)