Lucy: Mostly healthy, YAY!

Lucy went into the vet today. Unlike last time,we just wanted to get her in for a routine check up and teeth cleaning. After seeing all the crystals that came out of her bladder last year, it was a relief to find out that her urinalysis was clean. Unfortunately, she's on prescription wet food to help with that, and wet food doesn't offer the same teeth cleaning benefits as dry food. She had to have two teeth extracted and is now one antibiotics and pain medication for a little while. Fortunately this time neither are bubble gum flavored (cats don't like that...) and we're just relieved she didn't have any bigger problems. I'm also hoping, for her sake, that we have several more sunny afternoons so she can enjoy rolling around in the sun while she gets better! Please cooperate Portland?

Finished Knit: Thank You Socks for Chuck

 

Pattern: Freshman Cable Socks by Star Athena from Interweave Knits, Fall 2009

Yarn: Elann Esprit, in Charcoal

This is my first pair with the oodles of Elann Espirt yarn Chuck bought me a while back. I made these as a thank you for the yarn, and also for helping with my booth at Crafty Wonderland! It's harder than I would've thought to find a nice simple sock pattern for a guy. Lace socks are fun, but that's definitely not okay. And Chuck was skeptical of cables but this pattern was nice and simple. 

I did the foot a little incorrectly (I wasn't in the mood to be careful about following the pattern when I did the first half of the pair, I guess) but it still works. I'm sure chuck won't mind. And these were knit on US1 needles...which makes for a very cozy pair of socks. The next pairs I knit will be on bigger needles...that small  was rough on my hands and my new needles. So I didn't swatch and found this out the hard way, but the socks still fit fine, and they are finally done! Maybe the next pair will go faster.

Saturday Market Photo

From a plant vendor at last Saturday's PSU Market in the South Park Blocks.

Wildlife: Osprey at Tanner Springs

 

A few weekends ago we watched an Osprey catch a fish. Of course at first we thought maybe it was a peregrine falcon. It took a passerby asking if we'd caught a picture of the Osprey, then some review of our photos and googling to determine that was correct. Very cool, since we've never seen an Osprey before! This article talks about the birds. We walked into the park thinking "hmm...I could've sworn there were more koi last time we were here." And now we know why. We watched him hang out on several balconies, and the metal awning of the building pictured above, much to the dismay of smaller birds in the area who made a few futile attempts to get him to leave. He swooped down a few times with no luck until finally he swooped down right above a couple of kids, grabbed a koi and flew off, around the corner to enjoy his feast. I felt very satisfied for him, even though it was just a captive pool of fish.

Tanner Springs is one of my favorite small parks in Portland, and one of the main reasons for that is the attempt to reintroduce native plant life and tanner creek (a creek that used to flow on the surface of the area, but was rerouted to flow below ground through pipes.) It's very cool that the park has brought back some wildlife as well, even if they're coming for captive fish who weren't really supposed to be in the park in the first place (according to the article linked above, people in the area started dumping them in the park at night, much to the dismay of park officials.)

Kenton Street Fair

I've been falling way behind in my posts! A few weekends ago we headed over to the Kenton Street Fair on Sunday afternoon. I didn't really know much about the neighborhood or fair beforehand, which seemed like a really good reason to make our way out there.

The Kenton neighborhood is home to a big Paul Bunyan Statue, pictured above. He greeted us right when we got off the train. It was built in 1959 as part of the Oregon Centennial celebrations, and added to the National Register of Historic Places recently, in 2009. Amusingly, he's facing this sign. We spotted a crowd of paul bunyans at the Salvage Works & I later found out that was all part of the festivities.

 

Music, crafts and fancy cars. Of course my favorite was the Yarn car, a car carefully covered in strands of yarn. It was a nice set of blue colors too, and the vanity plate even said "yarncar." Of course I was there for the crafts, and I was smitten with a bag right when we walked in to the fair. After perusing the whole event, I decided it was my favorite thing there and I had to have it. (Even though we strolled through the fair twice, that's still pretty impulsive compared to my usual shopping style.) It was from Zig & Hersh, & looks much like this one except it's a mossy Portland green. I've been carrying it ever since!