After School Snack

Well, really it's lunch, but it is after school, my first day of school, my first round-trip to class and back. Toasted white tuna sandwich with lettuce and sweet relish and an orange.

Bliss.

And even more synchronous, my textbook for today's class arrived in the mail this morning already, so I can do the reading assigned before the next class on Wednesday. Is this perfect OR WHAT? My Intro to Archaeology prof is a funny woman who manages to keep her reading glasses hovering above the very end of her nose and they never slide off. About 40 students in all, three over 40 years old, and only two cell phones rang during class. Prof showed some slides at the end of the class period, and then it was suddenly over. Sixty five minutes, syllabus in hand, I went and activated my student email account, then headed home. I'm also seeing new shoes in my future, because it is quite a hike from the bus top to campus and all my Birks need re-soles.

I know it's goofy to be this excited about undergraduate classes, but getting to this humble place has been a 25 year journey. Bringing lots of baggage along. Yes, I'll get a job doing something, I reassured Betty, and gave up trying to explain why I'm majoring in Anthropology. She thinks I'm going to do Forensic Science like on television. Whatever. It's my money, I'm not going to worry about who gets it or not. Everyone else I know is thrilled for me, and that warms my heart so much, my enthusiasm is contagious, my face glows with it. "I got a fever, babies!" says my inner Christopher Walken. Say no more.

Chop wood, carry water. That's what you do before you are enlightened, and what you resume doing after you are enlightened. So today, I'm doing laundry and washing dishes, while reading my text between loads of clothes and dishes. I'll try not to be a total spaz and call everyone to twitter about class. But as I went over the Hawthorne Bridge this morning, it dawned on me how many of my deepest life wishes have come true in the last couple years. Big BIG wishes, major Life's Dream types. Going back to school, to get an upper college degree---in motion again. Meeting Robert Plant in person---September 2005. Having my own bookstore---done. Being a writer---varying degrees of consistency, but happening. What's left? Well, going to Provence is huge. And large-canvas painting. Singing in public. Creating a permanent grand-scale garden with a varietal bamboo grove and tea house. Finding a great guy. I think that's about it. And I think they all look doable from here, because the really big ones at the top of the list are checked off already. Holy shit! So so cool.

Tomorrow morning is Intro to Biological Anthropology, and Asian Women's Studies, a senior level class. Hominids, neolithic tool makers, the beginning of art. Asian cultures to prehistory and the roles of women in it. No wonder I can hardly sleep at night, I feel incendiary about this stuff. "So why aren't you taking any business classes?" Betty wanted to know. There's no fire there for me, it's a bucket of someone else's cold ashes, not even mine. Finally, I'll quit explaining, it should be evident to everyone by now.

Entering Surrealandia

The first tingling of uncertainty began running down my neck late last night, that feeling that someone left a door open to the cold somewhere in the house and it had found me.

Holy shit, what am I doing? I'm turning my life completely upside down (again) and walking straight into the unlit expanse of a new place I didn't even know I was going to until last week.
Am I crazy? Can this work out? Can I really pull this off? Do I still have it in me to be a student? Will the money come through or will I hit the ground really hard on my face in 8 weeks?

This morning the cold draft is only my back porch door cracked open to the sunrise and it's warming quickly in the sunshine. The creepies from last night are gone, but I should have expected them just about now, after making so much progress in this whole project in so little time. One more poring through the catalog's flagged pages is enough to restore my certainty that it's about damn time I'm doing this, and the biggest regret is that it didn't become this obvious to me earlier in the year. Not sure why, but it didn't, so that is past and start from here.

Everything is sent off now, the ball is beginning to roll, and now I stay busy finding work and getting other projects done (another Etsy sale came in overnight) and actively wait. Work through the self-doubts that are like having a bad hair day, they come and go. Time to start winterizing the garden, restock the booth, ride my bike to the library, sew a few pillows, check into scholarships online, go through craigslist and jobdango 3 or 4 times a day. Maybe Powells to sell a few books, check Belmont and Hawthorne shops for job openings. There's a scholarship contest I found that is judged on a written essay from one of their topics you choose to write about, for $10,000. That's my housing expenses for a year, so a worthwhile time expenditure I think. (waiting waiting)

It's going to be a few weeks at least, so busy is best. Gotta run now....

Alternate Universes

I said vehemently that I wasn't interested in having my own store. And repeated this to anyone who was nearby and probably not listening anyway. In renting a booth space at House of Vintage, I was splashing in the kiddie pool of a shop-thing, but not really committing. 'Easier than a continual yard sale, yadda yadda' and felt fine with this. Fine, I said. Really.

But that's all changed now.

Thanks to CRAFTzine's blog, I am now hopelessly in lust for my own funky green/sustainable/vintage fabric-textile-fiber-sewing shop.

Rhett, whatever shall I do now? There's no hope for me.

This picture is from Ambatalia, a fabric nirvana in Mill Valley CA, and I'm so beside myself with love and inspiration and envy that I may need to walk around the block a few times and eat ice cream or something. Good god. Like the time I first stepped into the former Hexafoo retail space on Belmont and felt faint and pierced like St Ursula with raptureous pain. Here is my ready-made life, just with someone else's (husband's?) money and some sexy younger woman living it. And a small artsy staff. Maybe I can re-adjust the time-shift sequencer and do this again slowly...

No good. The owner of Ambatalia is named Molly, and her inspired visionary oasis has classes and things for kids and moms and non-moms and our ilk of fabric fanatics; anti-mall, anti-plastic, pro-sustainable and renewable, un-crassly-commercial, very creative and unique. She begins her store blog last October 31st by talking about her reluctance to throw up the usual obnoxious Xmas window display, and how her store is so not about that. I hugged my monitor. There's lots of pictures of Molly and her store and her amazing staff, and her beautiful goods, and the website is fun.

I think it was the crappy weather this past weekend for the Hawthorne Street Faire that sort of deflated my hot air balloon of love with Groovy Rhubarb, that I didn't get the sales and turn-out that I was hoping for and honestly, counting on for revenue for August. I was kinda blue-ish and not on fire this morning to whip up stuff. I spent an hour with Sunday's job classifieds, drinking what felt like really bitter coffee, but that was just my mood. Another gray chilly day, blah blah blechh. Where's my Muse today? Should I abandonez-vous?

Then I opened the link on CRAFTzine to Ambatalia's weekend fabric sale, and I decided to live again (with deep envy) and stay on focus with my own funky alt-business. If Molly can do it...

Belly Full of Beans

Another rapturous morning moment spent in the local Garden of Eden, surveying how the midnight rain refreshed K & H's plantings. So I can be forgiven for grazing on some tender green beans while singing to cats and other Deva garden spirits? I'm keeping your Mojo going while y'all are away. There's plenty of time and many sunny days ahead to replenish your stock by the time you get back. Then I returned home to water the porch planters that were teased by the rain but got no love, and then polished off a few handfuls of gold and red cherry toms. I like this hunter-gatherer stuff. This was truly a Breakfast of Champions.

The tide has turned on this summer, it is really noticeable in the evenings now. Not being one of those folks who hungers for autumn anymore, I am hanging on to this cooler and gentler summer for dear life, the green that lasted throughout, the earth unscorched for a change. Maybe we in the Willamette Valley can slide slowly slowly into a two month Indian summer, some spicy notes, some golden hints in the trees, lots of southern sloping sunshine and crisp blue skies, liquid honey sunsets. No rains, no frosts, no permaclouds, no gray windows, not until November anyway. The tomatoes can last that long without frosts, the ones that were on their way to ripening before the sun fell away. I wish.

This year we are thinking about enclosing the porch with the kind of panels that come down in the spring, so the front porch is another room for all but the coldest winter days. Keeping the cold winds out, and letting the warming sunshine through, almost like a public house biergarten.
What else would we be doing out there in the cold? There are three home brews on the schedule---Rubus Maximus, a ruby IPA for our girl Rhubarb romping in the Elysium Fields;
Zephyr Golden Ale, beautifully clear and bright, but packs a wallop; and Bruno Bitter IPA, a dark and robust strong flavored brew with a handsome head. This Autumn will see us swimming in hoppy heaven, so if you are on your way over and hear Jimmy Buffett's live CD and people singing along to "Cheeseburger in Paradise"---you're at the wrong house. But park any where you find a space.

From my window this heavy gray bank of clouds looks like snow, as we used to say in Michigan. Coming from the coast, they look like waves and waves rolling in on the black sand. Two blocks over I can see the top of a maple tree already beginning to go gold the top three feet. This is a huge Japanese maple with small leaves that look like baby dragon feet, and it turns earlier than any other tree in the neighborhood. More accurate than a calendar, with black bark like wrought iron fingers, the tree hovers for a few days as a glowing lantern, before they all fall at once. Sure enough, it's usually the third week of September, and the other trees seem to take the cue.

Not such great weather for the Hawthorne Street Faire this weekend, however. Cool is okay, chilly and rainy is not. Dang. Lots of pedestrians the past few days, and the street renovation is officially done (fanfare) with new crosswalks that drivers still zoom through, and two more lights to snarl up 5pm traffic. I love it that the #14 is a straight shot downtown, but it takes 45 minutes during rush hour to get between downtown and 39th St or vice-versa. So let's add a few more lights...But I digress. Since the turnout at House of Vintage might not be what we all planned on, I hope once the sun returns this coming week, the newly arriving college kids needing STUFF will come here and stock up on funky with mom & dad's SUV to take it back to the pad. Forget about that Scandinavian Nightmare by the airport, don't go! Don't conform!

Keep the Local Love Happening, my brothers and sisters. Peace.

Maybe I Need a Truck

(so many topics for this picture, thanks U-Handbag!)


Da-da-da-DAH!! Groovy Rhubarb is my new occupation, and I even considered ending the blog, because the 6 months of post-Borders life is behind me now, and that's how I started writing here. Re-inventing myself, the dreaded Mid-Life Crisis, dumped for a younger business plan, etc. Boo-hoo.

But, this is the first stage of this whole process, I think, and it now has little bearing on Borders, or bookstores, or being a manager. Publishers' Weekly online reported the 6 month straight decline in bookstores' sales for 2007, and 2006 was not great. My former industry is undergoing some ruthless anorexia nervosa right now, will they survive? I think I got out at just the right time, and would be dancing on eggs right now if still running my old store. So I'm trotting my extensive skill-set on to this newly hatched project, and we're going to fire the second stage booster rockets and leave orbit. The Hawthorne Street Faire is this coming weekend, and we'll have great weather and mid-80s temperatures, so lots of foot traffic. I want to sell insane amounts of stuff, and charge ahead into September in the black already. (should be sewing, not writing, dang!)

One of the great archive pieces of my overland migration was hauled to the booth today, my 1880's domed-lid steamer trunk, that I've had since high school, and am wanting to be free of it.
It's emblematic of the clinging to the past, the stockpiling of treasures, antique ideas needing airing, and besides, I can barely move it by myself anymore. Someone will give it a good home and take over from me as the New World guardian of this sturdy wooden chest, and I can look forward, into the light wood of my future. It doesn't need to be Ikea, it can be Mid-Century teak or birch, whatever. My old trunk would make a great scary Halloween prop for a haunted house business (hint hint hint) and you could re-sell it afterwards! Wow, smashing idea!!

There's a seductive stack of freshly washed linen tablecloths whispering to me and I must go. The sink of dishes is trying to get a work in edgewise, but my hearing is selective today, in spite of the aroma of Mrs. Meyers' lemon verbena, one of my favorites. And that new Martha mag arrived in the mail this morning...hmmmm. NO. Load the bobbins and grab those scissors, girl.
Time to make money.

Farmer's Market Time

Which in Portland, really fires up in earnest about now, almost July. This week's Willamette Week listed some of the most well-known produce and Farmer's Markets, along with hours of operation, type of selection, degree of carnival atmosphere, and how to get there. One that they forgot, is the Asian Produce Farmer's Market out Division and 92nd Ave, a smaller, recent start-up market, with no carnival touches, but vendors happy to talk to you about the vegetables and herbs unfamiliar to you, and what to do with them. Oh Happy Day! Free parking and bring cash. I'm already thinking of the slender eggplants to grill, and the choys---grilled choy is amazing!

The Montavilla Farmer's Market will get underway in a few weeks on westbound Stark just east of Mt Tabor in the gravel lot by the stoplight. Now that the Montavilla blocks are fun to stroll again, I'm hoping for a rejuvenated interest here, with lots of local fruits and herbs as well as the pepper-zucchini-tomato standards. Seeing as cucumbers are going for $1 each at the Fred Meyers around here, please someone deliver us from highway robbery and make their own local fortune selling us local unwaxed cucumbers, please! I know gazpacho has ebbed into passe, but those of us who still make it just wince at prices like that.

One sad note---Uncle Fred's produce market on Hawthorne below the Safeway is closing---what used to be the dependable neighborhood pumpkin into Christmas tree vacant lot and abandoned 1940s gas station, had morphed into the dependable year-round outdoors tarped produce and flower market, featuring local harvest. The market owners' said they had signed a lease knowing full well that the lot owners could shut it down eventually, and the site will become another of the rusted steel, glass and sloped roof condo blocks that are appearing along Hawthorne since 2005.
And screwing up traffic for years at at time, I might add. The one on Hawthorne & SE 33rd took forever to finish, and there are two in various stages of start-up and completion up at 44th & 45th-Hawthorne, another traffic snarl with the big big crane set-up. Damned housing market, because not everyone can pay $450,000 for a 3bdrm bungalow in SE anymore, we need $200K 1 bdrm condos like the Pearl has to make up for it. Belmont maybe next. I may be a renter forever at this rate. We could become like New Yorkers, marrying for real estate location, not love, like getting a residential Green Card. "We've never had sex, don't exchange gifts at holidays, I met her parents once at Passover, but look at our SE44th Ave Dream Bungalow! This is my suite..." "Happy Anniversary...uh, it's Jeff, right?" Air kisses all around.

Speaking of crabby-grass (meaning me), poor Steven's new sod is beginning to do the Summer Thing and browning, so we were kidding with him that it was nice while it lasted, but now we're going to put in the community garden, midnight roto-tilling dirt commandos. He didn't think it was funny too much, so we stopped teasing him, but it boggles my mind to think of the farmer's market we could have here...better stop. I never imagined in all my years in Florida that Portland would have such a Mediterranean climate, zone 7, and even 8 in south facing, protected areas.

My neighbors have 8ft dill plants already, their blossom heads blowsing in the wind like Nile River papyrus plants, and the bronze fennel nearby is going to bolt soon. It hasn't even been hot since the beginning of May, must be ideal conditions for these herbs, but made my early tomato plants kind of stall out and not take off until about 10 days ago. Now they are about 2ft tall and set with lots of blooms and little pea-sized tomatoes. Might have to ditch the short cages and go for the bamboo tri-pods this year...when my inner-Martha takes over full time. I had a lot of hopes for a big basil crop this summer, until I skipped a week of wheatgrass for the cat, and he ate all but two of my basil starts. Lesson to me, that cat knows how to really hurt me.

The latest version of the Market String Bag is now available in grape colored cotton, along with Provencal yellow---so many enterprises, so many digital pics to take. Today I'm putting the photo lighting box together, which I gleaned from the profile photo on a vendor's site on Etsy, so I don't have to wait for a sunny day to take cedar fence shots outside. I should put together a photo pictorial on how to make a photo light box and post that on Craftzine's blog page...instant fame. As the newest shirt in the Groovy Rhubarb line will say---"Where's my staff?" I'm going to make it Tang Orange, and dedicate it to Steven, for enduring my carded button pitch with such grace yesterday after a long drive from Medford. Bless you.

Love That 'Completion' Thing

Going to ship off tomorrow morning to arrive in time for Betty's birthday next week.
The fastest I have ever completed a knitting project, it fits, I only had to rip out part of one sleeve, and this shot shows the blues and purples the most accurately.

I LOVE NORO YARN!!!

The t-shirt style took 8 and a half skeins of the 10 I got, so there's enough for me to make a little trophy piece of this yarn that I love so much. Maybe short fingerless gloves. With a thin leather palm for driving. Girl Genius works overtime even when unemployed. (Why am I writing in the imperative?)

Beginning week 3 of Groovy Rhubarb at the House of Vintage, and I am the only used LP vendor anywhere near the mid-Hawthorne shopping areas. This week it was all tourists branching out from the Waterfront Village areas (from the rain) and doing the vintage shopping trip, German tourists more than from anywhere else. Anything with a rose motif was hot, and I sold a lovely teapot set, big ticket item, ding ding! Since the urgent gift knitting is done, I am now launching full tilt into the crafting of the merchandise for the Etsy site, scrounging for more items for the booth, and desperately trying to finish organizing my work room. The coolest thing in the whole world was liberating some cardboard shelf trays from the recycling bin of the hippie grocery store on Hawthorne, which I painted a lovely French Blue, and now they all match, look like something from an organizing store, and suit my need for visual consistency in tools for stashing materials. And I truly dig dig dig French Blue, which is white and blue kids' tempera paint mixed together. Really. Basically free. I bought those quart bottles of tempera paint at Jerry's Art-a-Rama in Deerfield Beach at least 10 years ago. (shut up)

Along the lines of the 'Completion Thing', the Rose Festival is over, so I'm going to segue into Mock Oranges for the gallery this week. If possible, it's almost a jasmine-orange blossom blend, and 300% intoxicating. And it's been a cool spring the last few weeks, so everything is still in bloom instead of bolting and withering too fast. With glowing skies until 10pm and later for the next month or so, the perfume settles back onto the porch in the evenings, and it feels like being in a Maxfield Parrish painting. Or so it feels to me.

Congratulations to Linsey for completing her apprenticeship in horse gambling, slapping down and taking names, so she can get on with the tattoo artist apprenticeship. Or was it the Reading to Gifted Toddlers charity summer? Cruise Director for the Naughty Secretaries' Wham-Bam Whirlwind Tour of Patagonian Nite Clubs? Something publishing? Her blog kills! Read her brilliance while she guest blogs about crappy bookstores.

Peg did the gravity tests on the WWOTP IPA #2 and we are clear for take-off. The Summer Slug-a-Chug party is this Saturday, when the suspecting public will be sampling the new batch, lining up for more, and stopping the presses to make our brewery famous. It was suggested that the new finished basement space would make a perfect pub. Not by me, but I do agree. Since it would be down a small flight of concrete stairs, I'm thinking "The Fall On Inn". Or maybe "Den of Iniquity". I'll stop now.

Fait Accompli !!

Zee Szveaterrrr----she is done!

(pause for Colbert Report-style ovation)

Now we await the reaction from the recipient after she receives it, and I'm just not going to stress about that. Waaaaay too much to do for that.

And the WWOTP IPA---I came downstairs yesterday morning to find a rather large mason jar on the hall table, golden with the hoppy nectar, ready to be savored. Peg worked her alchemical magic and did the bottling mid-week, and another home brewed batch of Wicked Women on the Porch Imperial Pale Ale is about to be consumed. Not quite this early in the morning, I'm only on my first cup of coffee, but definitely towards sundown.

And The Goon Squad was here almost the entire day yesterday, and it smelled like they were priming something, and are almost done with the basement renovation. No ovation for them.

Busy day ahead this morning, so I won't dilly-dally too long here, I have a trip to the House of Vintage right away to restock and re-merchandise. Being a lovely cool morning in the low 50s, it is a sharp contrast to a week ago setting the booth up, when it reached 90 inside the shop by noon, and just went up from there. Rose Festival tourist overflow is winding its way along Hawthorne, and Hawthorne is becoming known for its great hub of thrift shopping, and I have many more treasures to provide those bargain shoppers. And some nice books to sell to Powells. (heh heh heh)

No time to gloat over the bee-utiful Noro sweater---I'm going to take a sunny picture of it later today, and of course, will share it here. Since it's a new yarn from the Japanese Noro company, the nice people at the Yarn Garden said I should bring it by for them to see when I finished the t-shirt style summer weight sweater. Okay, I'll gloat later, too. Gotta go!

I have a store again!

Signed the lease today, I am now a vendor at the 'House of Vintage' on Hawthorne.

Tomorrow morning, I load up the Kia and make like the flea market of olde, except that it's inside, with 80s music and more ugly 1960s lamps than I ever saw in all of my childhood friends' parents' basements and rec rooms. With the big GothGirl space at the front.

Perseverance, and good timing. I am so excited! Starting out with LPs, some 1970s rock& roll paraphernalia, books, fabricky items, old video tapes, things that I've been carting around so long that they have become 'vintage' since I got them...the mid-40s usual realization that it has been almost 30 years since high school, ohmigod, why do I still have some of this stuff?

To sell, to sell, to young 20s hipster types to whom this era of
brown and yellow draperies or orange and olive lampshades has a delightful charm. Oh, I can show you 70s...

I considered "The 70's Will Never Die" as a great name for a booth, and it's not too late. The owner is very easy going with being creative, and encourages merchandising that increases sales, so that's cool. And since I am in a starter size space, it's small enough that I'm not in overwhelm about filling it up, and it's easy to completely change around to keep it fresh. The time commitment is minimal, so I can still do all of my other creative and money making projects, like blogging, trying to get writing jobs, setting up my Etsy sales site, and most likely, getting a part time job. I get to lead four lives at once, at last! And there is that new novel idea that came to me yesterday, a murder mystery, no less, increible!

There's still time, I keep saying to myself. All of these interlayered happenings feel more genuine than most of the work I've done over the last few years, yet the experience along the way taught me so much that I know will help me run my own business. Fifteen years ago I would have wanted to do my own little bookstore, maybe a spirituality artsy poets dragged through Asia a few times kinda store. But things are different now, after the bookstore manager's experience. I don't want a little cafe or restaurant of my own, either. So already have done that, too. To feel really in tune with all my interests and expressive needs, I need to do an assortment of things. Perhaps this summer is the time and the right mix of circumstances for me to really launch this muthaship. Six months ago I found out I was losing my job. And it certainly was not the end of the world. This summer is going to be so cool!!
stock pic

SE updates

Well, we have to talk about Portland Nursery...

First of all, it's too beautiful for all of the pushiness of lattes in one hand and pulling a cart haphazardly across people's feet in the other. Browser hours need to be early, because when it's busy you have to know exactly what you want, what the Latin name is, where it's placed, where the tomato carts have been rolled to, or you will be gridlocked in rows of carts and coffee sipping oblivious shoppers pulling the staffer assisting them into tiny pieces. Sorry, it had to be said.
My neighbor Steven says we need to cut out over there on a Wednesday afternoon sometime and actually come home with everything we went there for. Cool, coffee's on me.

Another early morning hot item I want to enjoy is the cupping at the SE Belmont Stumptown Annex, where I discovered the amazing variety available, only because the main cafe was packed.
The buzz there is great, and tables are taken early by laptoppers, which is cool with me, I just wish they might share a 4-top, two singles sharing a 4-top, way Euro and better use of resources. Or, let's pop it overhead and do a loft space, even better. I love it there, and we all want to be there at once, not a bad problem for a business to have...

Hot new sk8r place on SE Washington just west of 82nd called "The Office", where a sleepy relic of the 70s used to be, Liberty Natural Products. That stretch of Montavilla is getting very Belmont, now that the theater is restored to showing current 2nd run movies. There is the anchor Lebanese restaurant, and some wi-fi cafes, a paper store, thrifts, and a farmers market.
A few weeks ago I spent over an hour in the Antique Emporium, with the familiar booths of individual merchants and one cashier station, but there's a great variety of antiques, mid-century, reproductions, sleazy kitsch, cutsey kitsch, scruffy furniture, shabby chic, and garage ephemera.

The Hawthorne Beautification plods on, with traffic even worse now with the added lights and one lane merging. Who's idea was this? Someone who lives in SW, obviously. The impact on small businesses here is severe, and everyone has "No Meters on Hawthorne" signs in their store windows. The Bagdad sidewalk side remodel looks great, but this seems to all be going on way too long. I want to have the usual Hawthorne stroll back soon, Spring is here already.

There's nothing like having out of town guests to make you see your town like a tourist, and remind you (me) how great it is living here everyday. The lilacs have lasted a month. Frost is a memory. The roses are almost here. The wisterias are to the gods. I can put on a wool sweater and sit outside with a hot bev in the morning, then by 4 have shorts on and sit on the sunporch with a cold beer. With lots of industrious activity in between, job-hunting, housework, weeding.
You know...