2011 I'm not done with you just yet!

Here's a recap! I liked the recap Sarah from Petite Cabbage Press did on her blog so much I'm going to use her idea. This is a picture heavy post! My year by month in photos:

January

North Pearl District, Portland, OR

February 

Ross Island, Portland, OR

March

Squirrel Graffiti in Ladd's Addition, Portland, OR

April

Cherry Blossoms on the Waterfront, Portland, OR

May

Boy & Bean (that link plays music) at Atlantis Lounge/Mississippi Pizza Pub in Portland, OR

June

Rose Festival CityFair on the Waterfront, Portland, OR

July

Starfish at Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR

August

Pickathon Music Festival, Pendarvis Farm near Portland, OR

September

Crowd waiting for Vaux's Swifts at Chapman Elementary School, Portland, OR

October

Migrating Cranes fly over as we walk up to the Pittock Mansion, Portland, OR

November

Miniature Room at the Art Institute, decorated for Christmas, Chicago, IL

December

Snowy Owl in Montrose Harbor, Chicago, IL (more on this in a future post!)

I can't complain too much about the last year. It's been filled with nature, live music, lots of great walks and a couple of great visits with my family in Chicago at the end end of the year. Last year one of my resolutions (though I try not to make those typically) was to walk 500 miles. I stopped counting several months into the year when we reached something like 300 miles, and we kept on walking a lot so I'm sure I accomplished my goal. This year we climbed up to Washington Park without much effort, which I'm sure was not the case when we first moved here. The only similar goal we have for this year is to keep it up and to finally make it over to Forest Park (somehow we haven't been yet) and spend lots of time hiking through it.

More pictures from my year are in the 2011 Highlights set on flickr, which I'm still working on wrapping up...once I get the last pictures uploaded from my Chicago visit, I should be close. Then it's on to filling up a new 2012 set! I have a feeling it's going to be a very good year.

Live Music: Mississippi Ave.

Last week I fairly spontaneously purchased tickets to see Joan as Policewoman at Mississippi Studios for last Saturday night. Chuck pretty quickly agreed we should go since it had been too long since our last show and he declared we could check out a place with vegan pizza over there that he's been wanted to visit for a while, Mississippi Pizza Pub. We great pizza and beer there, the place was crowded but laid back, and about half way through our meal there was entertainment. Local swing jazz trio Boy & Bean (note that their site plays music upon opening), pictured above, made us want to spend all of our weekends on Mississippi Ave. 

Mississippi Studios is a recently renovated venue; work was completed in 2009.  Local architects Sum Design Studio designed the space which features steel and glulam beams, red walls & old theater seats. It's also decorated with re-purposed drums as lights behind the stage, and old light fixtures, a reminder that the rebuilding center is right down the street. You can just barely make them out in this picture, on the left, but I really liked the chipboard guitars hanging on the wall...after years in architecture school it almost seems like something I'd enjoy making, but on second thought they look like a heck of a lot of hard work, involving intense cutting and gluing. Very impressive

I suppose because I've seen that so many musicians I like have played there since we moved here, it fell pretty high up on my list of Portland music venues to check out. (We definitely need to check out the Doug Fir soon though.) It was smaller than I was expecting, which was great. The first opening band (local group Themes) played on a nice rug on the floor in front of the stage.  This made for a very quick transition time between acts, and a night filled with lots of music. The second opening act was Bhi Bhiman from San Francisco, who took the stage alone with his guitar, almost crowded out by Joan's equipment. His guitar skills and songwriting impressed us.

And then Joan Wasser is just very cool. Her outfit was all black, with open strips in the back. It seemed like she was having a great time. She even mentioned that Mississippi Ave was "dangerous" because of all of the cute shops and she was glad she didn't have more time to spend on it. I think the highlight of the show, for me was the performance of their song "Save Me" which was dedicated to the rapture. 

We had a weekend full of music! There's always live music at the PSU farmer's markets. And friday night we went to Al's Den at the newly completed Crystal Hotel to check out more free music, Brian Bonz. That's also a really cool space with really good music. A little closer to where we live too, but Mississippi Ave. is too cool not to go back often.

Last Best Ever: Music in a Church!

Yay! We manged to get tickets for and go to all three of the free "Best Ever" events put on by Google as a promotion for HotPot in Portland. Last night was the last, featuring Y La Bamba, Typhoon & The Dandy Warhols, took place at University Chapel, pictured above.

Y La Bamba: right up my alley. Dramatic vocals from the lead singer, an accordion, castanets, a ukulele at one point, yay! Plus take a look at the neat Vintage Tiger Sweater, which she later took off, I'm sure it was hot on the stage in all those lights.

Typhoon: Lots & lots of people on stage at once! Which meant they had a very big sound. Violin, Cello, two trumpets, 3 guitars, 3 people on percussion...or something close to that. 

 

The Dandy Warhols: Light Show! Whoa. My personal favorite was the Moire Pattern pictured above on the right. It seemed like a big concert in a small space, which is a good thing in my opinion. 

Can't help but be a little sad it's over, it was such a fun way to do some very cool things in Portland. Skating, taking the Portland Spirit down the Willamette River, and lastly just getting to go to a music event in a cool space. YAY Portland Music!

Music and Boats!

I think I can get away with boats plural in the title of this post. We were only on one boat, but we saw row teams and kayakers out on the water with it, so it applies! Last night we boarded the Portland Spirit for the second Google HotPot Best Ever Concert. The bands playing were the Builders & the Butchers and Red Fang. A boat is a small space, and while we did get to enjoy the bands I could see little more than tops of heads and tambourines being held in the air. So my photos are of the boat and the views from the boat.:

 

The route started in Waterfront Park went down to Lake Oswego just past Elk Rock. Per informational cards provided that's where the Willamette River is at its deepest. We turned around near a rail bridge, came back to downtown and passed under the Morrison Bridge for a view of the city before returning to shore. I took this picture near the rail bridge, and some other pics of the rail bridge that didn't really turn out because it was so dark. 

We passed under 5 bridges, only one of which had to be raised (twice!) for us, the Hawthorne Bridge. Everyone on the boat was pretty excited about stopping traffic. And there were plenty of excited "I'm on a boat" proclamations throughout the evening, from both the musicians & the passengers. 

The city as seen from the water at night with all the reflections is pretty amazing, especially with good, local, live music! 

   

Update: Google posted a set of pictures from the event here.

Music & Skates!!!

I got to go roller skating last night!!! It's been too many years. I'm not even entirely sure when the last time I got to go skating was. I remember making Chuck and some friends try ice skating years ago when we still lived in Ohio...so that was 6 years ago at least...and for the first few laps I was not very sure of myself, but I think it came back to me alright, as long as I didn't really need to stop very quickly. I promise I was going faster than this picture would have you believe. I just slowed to say hi to Chuck, who was not skating (although I tried to convince him):

 

There was also live music from Lifesavas and The Thermals. Not to mention the live organ music played before and in between sets, there's a Wurlitzer suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the rink, with a glass booth for the player on the side of the rink. While we didn't get any great pictures of the band, there is a nice set from the event over on Oregon Music News and here is one from Google. This event was all thanks to Google, they are using Portland as a test city for a new service: HotPot and are having a series of events to promote it. I picked up my wristband for the next show, on the boat Portland Spirit, earlier today!

They also gave us a a cute booklet with a link to the "Best Ever Mixtape: Portland" with lots of local music, which seems to be available streaming at besteverpdx.com

Update: Google added a video from the event to their post and I found myself in it! I'm at about 0:13 to 0:14 from a little left of the middle to offscreen on the left. I couldn't find chuck though, probably cause he wasn't skating!

Month of Busy in photos

The last month or so has been busy and fun. We had a guest come to town who had never been to Chicago before, so we did all the classics.

Shopping:

Millennium Park:

I gave my tour of the Robie House:

Chuck's Campus, which has my favorite bathroom:

Water Taxi:

And the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier:

Then we spent the entire last day of her visit in the Field Museum because it's such a great place. Worked out nicely too since that was the one stormy day! We learned a lot about strange birds like this one:

Yeah, being a tourist in the city you live in is pretty fun. I probably had just as much fun as our guest did!

After she left, we had a couple of free music events. She & Him! For Free! In the Pritzker Pavillion! Of course it was great, and packed!:

The Blackhawks won the Stanley cup, which normally I don't care at all about sports, but that was a big deal. Happened to be going to City Hall right at the beginning of the parade, which was crazy! And they dyed the fountian in Daley Plaza...red, which is a little creepy.:

Then the Blues festival:

I helped (and brought Chuck along too) get all of the planters at the Robie house planted, first time they've been able to get all of the planters filled! So now it looks as it was intended to look. There's not really much of a yard there, but you have planters on every level:

It's been rainy with rainbows:

and last night we got high speed winds, but for less than an hour. Long enough to do this at our apartment building:

And lastly, I finally finished my diminishing rib cardigan and took pics of it after the storm yesterday:

So that about covers the last month or so!

Highlights of 2009, Part 2

Living in Chicago, where there is a lot of theater we got a chance to see a few interesting performances this year. One was a free aquatic performance (picture above on the right) by a french group performed out near the end of Navy Pier. (I originally blogged about it here.) Another outdoor performance was by Redmoon Theater and was a sort of musical based on a fictional Norwegian Pop star. I tend to highlight events that sound truly unusual, difficult to imagine from written descriptions and possibly involve puppets and these two events fit the bill.

We also recently got to see The Addams Family, a new musical in previews here in Chicago which they will take to Broadway soon. It is still playing at the Oriental Theater (signage pictured on the left) for now. It stars Nathan Lane & Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia. What really impressed me though was the set design, which was rotated, connected & assembled to create various sets, reminding me of the original stage version of Sweeny Todd, only with a larger budget. There were also puppets involved. It was pretty cool.

We didn't have a chance to go to as many concerts as I would've liked this year. Perhaps in part because the first one we made it to was a pretty big deal. Leonard Cohen toured this year, and seeing as how I've been listening to his work (at first with my parents) for over 25 years, I couldn't miss his show. And it was well worth it! We did get to one other show, on my birthday as it happens. Devandra Banhart was much better in concert than I expected, in fact it was a fantastic show, summarized well over at chicagoist.

I'm probably resolving, again, to cook more often than I currently do. So my favorite sources of inspiration for that from 2009 are shown above. Tiramisu cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World, and tempeh meatballs from Vegandad. The meatballs were surprisingly easy to make, and the cupcakes were not surprisingly harder, but not that hard, and well worth the effort. These photos make me drool...so I will move on.

Pictured above are, yes, the only two things I sewed up this year. But I was satisfied with the results. I enjoy sewing...the Lotta Jansdotter bag especially, with many pieces was a lot of fun to construct. But somehow I find that it just takes to much for me. I can almost see how it isn't really all that much, and especially not that much more than knitting I guess...but somehow I find that (though my yarn stash can at times make a mess) it's much easier to tuck away some balls of yarn, a project, etc....it's significantly more difficult for me to pull out the sewing machine, ironing board and everything else in our small apartment. I either have to commit to single setting project completion, during which time it sort of feels like the whole apartment is in chaos, or I am faced with a mess to clean up then recreate until I finish. It feels like more of a pain than I want it to. But I will keep trying, I feel like I have improved even though my projects have been few and far between. And maybe some day I'll have enough space for a sewing corner or something, where stuff can just sort of stay out.

As for resolutions....I'm making "read more" a resolution again. But...it should go better this time. I was given a Kindle for Christmas, which really surprised me. I've been having a lot of fun with it so far, and I expect will help me towards this goal. (one way it helps is that I can knit and read with less of a challenge than propping open a book) Pictured above is a contest entry to win a kindle etched with your design (I didn't win.) I have no plans to etch that into my kindle (I'm not taking any risks, the thing is too awesome!) but I might end up doing something with that design.

I saw Leonard Cohen!

We may have been way up in the balcony, I couldn't help but wonder how amazing the show must have been from the front (something like $500+/seat) rows, but it was still a great experience. Our first time at the Chicago Theater, which is an interesting theater space. We spent some time before hand discussing how they dust and generally keep it clean, and also counting the sculpted faces all over everything, including the chandeliers.

The show itself was a good 3 hours long without an opening act. Maybe not the greatest thing for Chuck, the night before his final review for studio, but I didn't hear many complaints. Cohen did bring along a slew of musicians though, including his collaborator Sharon Robinson and the duo The Webb Sisters, who were well featured over the course of the evening. I didn't know a lot about Sharon Robinson, and it turns out she wrote one of the great tracks off of Bettye Lavette's I've got my own hell to raise in addition to collaborating with Cohen on "The Future," "Waiting for the Miracle," and "Everybody Knows," among other songs. Her website features several tracks, including her take on Everybody Knows, which is quite different!

It was a great evening. The set decoration was sparse, but I was one of the many things I really loved about the show. Rugs covered the stage floor, which combined with Cohen's comfort on stage and his great soothing voice...It felt quite comfortable, warm and sweet. I'm still contemplating the way the pacing on several of the songs was different, slower, more dramatic in person than on the albums...which I think may lead to the need to own a copy of the live DVD that just came out. Regardless there will be many more listens to his catalog...which is always true, I never seem to get tired of any of it...but I've seen him live! That's really too cool for words.

Nice Weeks End

Well, although I spent most of the week in denial that we had not succeeding in procuring tickets for the Leonard Cohen concert on Monday, it all turned out alright. I was, up until Thursday night, telling myself somehow we'd find tickets. Moments after they went on sale there were resellers everywhere, and though I wasn't thrilled about the idea, we were considering figuring out how to best go about getting tickets that way. But really I don't think we had any idea how to do that. So it was pretty good news to hear Thursday night that he was adding a second show. Friday morning tickets went on sale and we were much more successful this time! We'll be in the Balcony, and though the tickets were expensive, we fortunately didn't have to go as far out of our intended price range as I'm sure some people did (ticket prices went up as high as $550 for some sort of VIP package.) It's probably best not to think about how much money was spent in a matter of seconds, or particularly how much the annoying Ticketmaster people made...but I digress. We got tickets and it's going to be a great show.

Also this week I had an order from Vegan Craftastic, who was nice enough to post about it, complete with pictures of the necklace in action! She has some really cute stuff for knitters in her new shop as well, and some time soon I might have to return favor.

So although the amazing weather we were having yesterday decided not to stick around for the weekend, it was a lovely end of the week for me!