New Adventure

I left my job of 25 years. I have no job waiting, I do not really have a safety net set up, but it was the right thing to do. I had been unhappy for a couple of years. I kept going to work because I loved the people I worked with and well to be honest the health benefits were GREAT. Now my husband & I are looking at health care, we signed up for Cover Oregon and hoping that we can keep the doctors that we have been using for the past 5 years.


Now I get to go to events on the weekend, wake up and play with the kitty's and my favorite of all….sew whenever I want to sew. I can stay up till 2am making a shirt for my husband or a dress for myself. It's all a little frighting but also new and exciting. 

Hat Museum in Portland Oregon

We went to the Hat Museum located in Ladd's Addition in Portland Oregon. It's worth it if you are at all interested in hats. There are over 1000 hats and one of the coolest hats is made from a very large mushroom. You have to make an appointment to go to the museum and only 6 people at a time, but it's worth the time as the tour is amazing. 

My latest Pendleton Rug, I'm on a mission to make 20 of these and try to sell them on Etsy. I love staying up late nights watching movies and crocheting these rugs. It takes me about 2 hours to complete a rug. 


As promised here are some better photos of me in the fashion show, they were taken by a good friend who attend the Quilt!Knit!Stitch! convention…Thank you Tina!!

All the lovely ladies that made dresses and were in the fashion show

Me wearing my saltwater sandals and my very comfortable Party Dress. 

Quilt!Knit!Stitch!

I attended the QKS event at the Oregon Convention Center on Friday August 15th. I was in a fashion show with about 7 other ladies that had made dress from Mary Adams book "The Party Dress". My husband attended the event and attempted to take some photos. I love my husband but he is not a photographer. 

There were a couple of Mary Adams dresses on display at the event.

A very blurry photo that my husband took as I was twirling in my Party Dress

All the ladies that made a Party Dress at one of the workshops that Mary taught in Portland a couple of years ago (Mary is in the center wearing all black). She is offering the class again at Mill End Fabric Store August 23 & 24, 2014. 

I arrived early because there was a class Pendleton Woolen Mills sponsored demonstrating how to crochet a wool rug from scrap that the mill use to toss in the landfill. Her rug was above was beautiful. Mine below looks a little like pizza. 

 I have always loved braided rugs and recently tried to crochet a rug from fabric scrap. The results were not what I wanted but I would not give up. In the class the woman talked about how to make all your stitches very loose. As someone that has crocheted in the past that was very confusing. Today I went to the Mill and bought some of the scrap for $2.10 a pound. The scrap looks a little strange, it's very loose and frays easily. I bought a lot of gray, blue and black scrap. My understanding is once you wash the rug it felts up nicely. I will be cool to say it's a Pendleton Wool rug that if you put it in front of a fire it will not burn, it's a natural flea repellant and it's totally washable!!!

 I see several of these small rugs in my future, the one I made took me about an hour to complete. 

All Girl BBQ

For the last 10 years I have hosted an All Girl BBQ in early August. It's similar to a Naked Lady Party but with hair dye, nail polish and make-up. A friend of mine use to have these every year and when she left Portland, I found myself longing for a day of trading clothes, eating great food and trying many different colors of nail polish. Sometimes after her parties I would go home looking like Mimi from the Drew Carey show. 
A few of the same outfits would come back year after year, someone taking it home only to bring it back the next year…as with this gem. I love this 3 piece pant suit it looks like something that Maude would wear. 

One of the things I love about the BBQ is the little girls in my neighborhood love to come to these events. They dye their hair and try on all kind of make-up as well as playing dress up. Last year one of the neighbor girls Sophie was devastated that the party was the same weekend as horse camp. I explained that I would save her some cute clothes and when she got back I would dye her hair. This year Sophie did her own hair..as well as offering to do hair wraps for everyone at the BBQ. 

Anyway, no matter what you call it, All Girl BBQ, Naked Lady Party or clothes swap, it's always fun to spend a day with creative like minded ladies. I also get a wonderful new (to me) wardrobe. Some of the pieces of clothing end up in my studio waiting to be re-purposed, but a lot of things are donated to a local thrift shop. If you ever get a chance to go to an event like this…go it's good for your soul.