Category: Longform
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PDX Winter Light Festival
Last Saturday, Matt and I went to the Portland Winter Light Festival. I hadn’t been before and didn’t know what to expect. My takeaway: A nighttime Maker Faire meant to cheer you up in the dead of winter. There are installations spread around Portland, but we went to just a couple locations. Tonight is the final night for this year.
World Trade Center
There were many fun and interactive exhibits here, both inside and out. This is just a small subset.
The dragon on the south waterfront was very cool. The fire was hot from where we were standing, I wouldn’t want to be standing right underneath it.
Pioneer Courthouse Square
This was probably my favorite installation. The lights subtly changed colors.
I love the community spirit in Portland. I didn’t take any good photos of individual costumes, but people are lovely and creative.
Another display here was a door that had a different scene behind it every time you opened it. Sometimes you were looking at a beautiful nebula and other times, there was a dinosaur running at you. My photos didn’t do it justice though.
Creativity, color, fire AND community. What’s not to love?
Some Weekend Sewing
I filled my time this weekend with some sewing. I had been wanting to make a bag for my daughter to hold some of her art supplies for a while. I didn’t remember the pattern/steps well so I did an experiment first.
I made several mistakes on this first one, but it turned out well enough. It’s missing the tabs though.
This is the bag for my daughter. I’m happy with how it turned out. (She was excited when I sent her the pictures too. I suppose that’s what matters! Ha!)
Then I thought I’d make this tiny one with cork, which came together really quickly. I haven’t sewn with cork before. Is it usually very, VERY thin? The bag is adorable, but I think I’ll remake it with interfacing so it feels a bit more solid.
Happy New Year!
2025! Is January 8th too late to wish someone a Happy New Year? I say no. Happy New Year!
The holidays were lovely. Both kids were in town for Christmas and there’s always a lot of laughter when they are around. We watched some good movies (The Holdovers and Klaus stand out most) and some not so good movies (Red One, eek!). We also watched the series Nobody Wants This which I turned on looking for something non-serious to watch while stitching and it turned out to be so good, I restarted it and watched it all the way through more than once. Apparently my son had told us to watch it before, but I hadn’t. I’d rewatch it again today if I could, honestly.
To get out of the house, we went downtown to see the big Christmas tree in Pioneer Square and to see the Gingerbread House display at the Benson hotel. I’m planning to do this again next year, it was a good way to get into the spirit of the season.
As has become tradition, we rang in the New Year with the neighbors. I highly recommend becoming friends with the people that live all around you.
We’re in the part of the year that reminds me that I live in THE NORTH. (Relative to my own past.) While the sun is out it’s generally flooding all rooms with southern facing windows, regardless of time of day. And yet, the nightlight I finally put in the upstairs hallway hasn’t turned off once!
We purchased an older, low-mileage Subaru for the daughter. She’s graduating this year and will likely move out of the small walkable town she’s living in so it was time. She drove it up to Whidbey Island for New Years and then drove it down to her place in time for school. It should be a great car for her. The son borrowed my vehicle to head back to school early (he wanted some time without the roommates in his apartment) so I’m getting to experience life with only one vehicle between my husband and I. It turns out that it is really easy if you work from home, eat leftovers for lunch every day and the neighbors are the people you spend most of your time with. On the other hand, after 5 years of working almost exclusively from home I’m usually anxious to get out of here. Perhaps having the need to have 2 vehicles is more aspirational than current reality.
January 1, 2025 marked 3 years that I have been sewing or stitching something daily. Most days I spend just 20 minutes or so, but I’ve learned a lot and it’s often a nice way to work through any of life’s frustrations. I have fabric picked out for a few bags I’m really exciting to get started on.
I’m continuing to volunteer for the woodworking guild this year. Figuring out how to organize several classes each month with instructors and assistants through some mechanism other than email is a goal for 2025. If you have suggestions, please send them my way.
Finally, I started learning Svelte and SvelteKit over the break. Matt and I have a couple projects we’d like to collaborate on this year and I don’t know the tools he’d like to use! I’m impressed so far with Svelte and I’m really looking forward to building something with Matt.
Some professional news
Some exciting professional news. We’ve been working on a new product at work and while there’s still lots of work to do, today we publicly announced the waitlist.
Seeing posts like this make it all worth it. Ha!
Steam Bending
This evening Yuri Kobayashi presented at the monthly Guild of Oregon Woodworkers meeting as part of a series of educational opportunities on steam bending that she’s put together for the Guild.
Her presentation was a piece of art itself, with poetry woven throughout. She wrapped up the evening with three simple demonstrations that made steam bending look so fun and easy.
Yet another item for the list of things I haven’t tried, but would like to, it seems.
Mad at the Jointer
Every six weeks or so, I volunteer to assist with a Core Tools class that the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers puts on. Core Tools is the final class most members need to complete in order to be certified to utilize the Guild’s machine room. We cover the miter saw, jointer, planer, band saw, drill press and table saw. It’s really rewarding to see (mostly) new woodworkers tackle their nerves and see what they are capable of. 🪚 🪵
In the most recent class session after one student successfully surfaced two sides of his board on the jointer, I asked how it felt. He said, “I’m pissed off!” I’ve never had that response before! It turns out he’s been planing boards by hand for 3 years and he had never had a board so precisely surfaced. He was still laughing about his ‘wasted time’ at the end of the afternoon. I’m curious to see where his woodwork evolves with this new knowledge, but I hope he doesn’t give up wholly on hand tools!
Fun in the Fediverse!
In my latest exploration of micro.blog, I’ve been trying to understand the federation pieces. I’m following this account from a few different Fediverse accounts of mine and the only place where I’m seeing the content I’m posting on micro.blog is the one I (sort of) least expected to work. Finding that, however, proved the content is indeed being federated out.
I’m not currently seeing my content on mastodon.social which is, unfortunately, the primary place I’d like to. Caching? Versions? Something else entirely?
My gut says caching. The testing continues.
Edit: This post immediately appeared for my https://mastodon.social account. I’m now noticing in at least one mastodon client that my image from one of my earlier posts seems to show up on others. Something to keep playing with.
New Quilt Top
I had started this Star of Wonder quilt in July, but then stopped right before finishing the top when another project became higher priority. I finally finished the top this past weekend. I quite proud of how it turned out. 🧵 🪡
Hello!
It’s past the time when I should set up my own personal space. I’ve been telling others to do this for a while, so it’s a bit silly I haven’t done this myself. Micro.blog seems to have all the capabilities I was looking for, but I have yet to play with it much.
Here we go!