Portland Walks: On the way to the Give Handmade Craft Show

Sunday was the Give Handmade Sale and we decided to walk to the show and take a train on the way back.

We walked through downtown along 6th, where there is quite a bit of smaller scale public art. Some of these pieces, I gather, were around before a 2009 renovation of the transit mall, while others were newer, commissioned as part of the work in this area. In looking up some of the details tonight, I discovered that trimet has a nice interactive site with a map and audio clips of the artists talking about some of the newer pieces. I also found a nice tourist map (that's a pdf file) that looks a bit more comprehensive, with pictures of a lot of the art. This weekend I felt like stopping for photos of the Cat in Repose by Kathleen McCullough and the Running Horses by Tom Hardy:

 

Also there were many new Christmas decorations around town. You can make out some across the street in the Running Horses Picture above. I was rather taken with the garland at the university club, set against the geometric detailing of the column. (I presume this had just recently gone up based on the fact that there were still scraps of pine and pipe cleaner on the ground around it.) And of course I had to snap a picture of the tree at Pioneer Square during the day, with Jackson Tower in the background.

 

Over in old town, just before the steel bridge, we passed this abandoned building. It prompted me to look up what those red "U" signs are all about, something I've been wondering for while since I've seen them around town on occasion.  I found out from a post on the Portland Mercury site that they mean that the fire department has deemed the building unsafe to enter, and in the even of a fire they would fight it without entering the building. Eeep! I also found a historic photo of the place (5th image down) when it was still in use as a fire station.

We crossed the Steel Bridge. Since the sky was looking pretty great and there was a ship docked I took lots of pictures. More in my flickr photostream. It was a nice time of day to be out, with clouds breaking, although I'm a little surprised we didn't see any rainbows.

     

And on the way back from the craft show I couldn't help but take a picture of this big Narnia poster, with the convention center towers in the background. 

I will try and post some of my favorites from the craft show tomorrow, for now this post needs one more cat and this card might have been my favorite from the show. So, check out this happy cat card from Little Lark!