I didn’t end up taking many pictures of Portland at all. Towards the end of the day, I thought about all the pictures I should have taken, like yarn shop signs, the garter stitch coat in one of the shops that was super cool, the entire wall of Koigu, the super cute store owner with the heavy, eastern european accent, etc. But I didn’t. Here’s what I’ve got-

Katie and I on the train on the way down to Portland from Seattle.

Although we walked all over downtown for hours and hours, we did hop on a streetcar for a few blocks.

After lunching at a psychedelic teahouse and hitting the three yarn shops on the “tour”, one of them twice, we went to the infamous Powell’s Book Store. I was going to link it but the website is pretty lame, and why exactly they have a naked chick on their home page is beyond me.

Supposedly, they’re the largest independent bookstore in the world. Or something. I don’t know. It was huge. I knit on a bench in the art gallery upstairs while Katie shopped for books, and I missed Nate terribly, knowing that he would have loved it. Then Katie found me and knit a little herself.

We ate chicken enchiladas at Cha Cha Cha (how cool is that?) before heading back to the train station for the ride home.

The tower says “GO BY TRAIN“.

And that was it. I bought some sock yarn and completely delicious silk mohair laceweight that isn’t too fuzzy. Something that I’ve found to be quite unusual.

It was a great time.

Clark got a much needed haircut this morning. He looked a little wary ’til I held the buzzing clippers to his head, then he grinned and was quite enthusiastic.

For awhile.

But I had to finish anyway, and by the end, he wouldn’t look at me.

Also this morning, I knit Liv’s watchband. Finally. I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I cleaned the kitchen and in the process, uncovered the watch parts and needles I’d set out to do it. I’d decided to keep it simple and make it stretch over her hand, as opposed to reincorporating the buckle.

I was going to do an interesting stitch pattern but there were so few stitches, it ended up looking better in plain ol’ garter stitch.

Last night, I nearly finished carding batts for Clark’s sweater. I carded 7, have one in process, and one more to do after that. I have one skein completed, at about 240 yards.

There’s a lot of single still on the bobbins, but I think I’m going to fill them up again before plying another skein. I hope to get much of it done today, because the rest of the week is going to be busy at the girls’ school.