Christmas Tree Burn

Last saturday I attended a Christmas Tree Burn out at Kelly Point Park. The idea is to get as many christmas trees as possible and light them on fire. This is something that happens in San Francisco every January. Several years ago we collected about 40 trees and lit them all off at once down at an abandon warehouse in North Portland. The flames got to about 100 ft, it was truly amazing. This year we had about 5 trees going down to the park and hoped that others would bring trees too. When we got to the park there was a recycling area where folks had dumped their christmas trees already...so we had another 14 trees. As we gathered several people brought trees as well as a firework Christmas tree that my friend Karl put together from fireworks left over from new years. We were waiting for a bunch of people that went to the Blazer game to protest against the Westboro Baptist Church folks who were in town to protest the Blazers for coming out in support of Gay Marriage. It was getting cold so the trees were set off before everyone arrived. It went off in a magnificent blaze as dried trees often do. As the fire started to die down more folks arrived and added more trees. It was fun to see the fire reach a hight of about 70 or more feet in the air. The area was quite wet so there was no danger of a forest fire, we were also about 15 ft from the Columbia River so there was plenty water to use if anything caught on fire. We also honored some friends that passed away back in October in a car accident on I-5. We wrote messages to our friends on pieces of paper and attached the messages to the trees, the paper burned with the trees and the good thought went out to our friends. It was a nice way to honor our friends and get some closure. 

One hot afternoon 

Last week it was quite hot so we headed down to Kelly Point Park past St Johns. It was nice to sit in cold water watching boats go past. I'm busy sewing to see what I can make quickly and is interesting enough to sell at a farmers market or on Etsy. I was talking to a friend and she told me she sells tons of reusable bags where she works. I decided to try my hand at making bags. I have made other recycled bags but I think vintage fabric and ribbon is a hit. These bags are about 20" tall by 18 " wide. They are easy to make, it's all about the gusset on the bottom to give the bag some structure. I used some scrap upholstery fabric and some really beautiful vintage ribbon for the handle. The thins is I have tons of scrap fabric that I can use to make a few of these bags, making all of them unique and one of a kind. Most of the time for me is spent decided on color combinations.