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| OMSI Exquisite Creatures Exhibit |
November was a month filled with
all the things I love: quilting (mostly sewing…there is a difference), cooking,
and a trip to Portland. It’s been over a year since I’ve spent serious time in
the cabin (aka the Studio) and it’s been much longer than that since I’ve
shared that space with Maria or anyone else for that matter. A sharp contrast to the days when we had our quarterly Stix retreats there and I would spend countless hours beforehand preparing for them. Sadly, the cabin
has come to feel abandoned, as well as all the projects left half-finished. Having
two weeks of uninterrupted time with Maria to work on various UFOs (a quilter’s
term for unfinished projects) was inspiring. It brought back so many fond
memories. When we weren’t in the Studio, we were in the kitchen canning
cranberry sauce, making holiday breads, and testing Thanksgiving recipes. It was a fun couple of weeks and I'm feeling renewed and motivated!
We spent the Thanksgiving holiday
in Portland. Our stay was longer than normal due in part to snowy, icy weather
conditions that closed the I-5 for a couple of days and kept us from leaving on
our usual Monday following a visit. All was good though as it gave us more time
to acclimate to Lauren’s new home and the Beaverton area, in general. In fact,
we used that Monday when she returned to work to meet her around lunch time and
tour the Nike World Headquarters Campus. We’ve talked about it since she joined
Nike about four years ago, but never fit it into our schedule. It was quite the
experience and one we’ll do again on some future visit. “Campus” is a fitting
description of the over 75 buildings on almost 300 acres. Our tour with Lauren
was limited to about an hour walk around Lake Nike (manmade), a walk through
Prefontaine Hall (home to the famous waffle iron used to create the sole of the
first Nike Waffle Trainer) and the Volkswagon van used to sell some of the
early Nike tennies, and a visit to the Nike N7 building that includes displays
of shoes created in partnership with Pendleton using Native American designs
and Pendleton woolens. Pendleton Woolen Mills have always held a special
interest to me due in part to the influence of my first 16 years growing up in
Arizona and secondly, my interest in textiles. Years ago we visited the original
mill in Pendleton, Oregon (opened in 1895) as part of our family vacation. More
recently we toured the mill in Washougal, Washington. Verne has carried a
Pendleton man bag since before manbags became cool and I have several Pendleton
blankets I’ve collected over the past 25 years. Growing up with so much
Pendleton has apparently inspired the girls to start their own collections. Pendleton
is functional art at its best.
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| Early days for Nike |
I’ve digressed from our visit to
the Nike Campus, but all this talk about Pendleton brings to mind a funny story
from our recent trip. It begins years ago when Verne and I first started our
lives together. It was during the early ‘80s when personal color charts were
the rage. I’d had mine done and found what I intuitively knew to be true…I was
not a Spring or Summer, but a Winter. I’d grown up often wearing hand-me-downs
from my older sister who has very different coloring than me. With her brown
hair and blue eyes she always looked great in Spring/Summer colors. On the
other hand, I had black hair, green eyes, and very pale skin and looked best in
blacks, whites, and primary colors. Verne came to me with a wardrobe of beiges,
browns, and other disgusting colors. To make what could be a very long story
short, he had his color chart done and was found to also be a Winter. That made
it easy for me to shop for him and even easier to donate just about everything
in his wardrobe. However, there was one piece of clothing he refused to
retire…a Pendleton sweater that he still owns and wears today. It’s no ordinary
sweater, though as it happens to be the very collectible sweater that Jeff
Bridges wore when he portrayed “the Dude” in The Big Lebowski, one of Verne’s
all-time favorite movies. And, of course, one of the girls’ favorites. On
Friday after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) we went to one of our favorite
Portland restaurants, Thai Peacock, for the girls’ birthdays. Jana and Andy
were late because of a “quick” stop by the Pendleton store in downtown
Portland. She arrived wearing the Dude sweater! Because of its popularity,
Pendleton has remade the sweater and now offers a female version identical to
the 1980s sweater that Verne owns. It was too funny for words…so unexpected and
such a contrast from her normal upscale, dressy attire!
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| Jana in her Dude sweater |
It only took one Black Friday experience
a few years ago to be reminded of how much I dislike the commercialism of the
season. Black Friday shopping is one ritual I cannot embrace. I love a bargain,
but I’m not willing to join the frenzied crowds at the malls on the busiest shopping
day of the year just to save a buck. That said, a little Amazon shopping is always
a good thing. No lines and no strangers in my personal space. Or, a little tea tasting/shopping
at Stash Tea is good. A few more shoppers than normal, but rather than feeling
crowded, it’s more like hanging with kindred spirits. Speaking of tea, we spent
Friday afternoon touring the Smith Teamaker manufacturing facility and
headquarters. We were first introduced to Smith Tea a few years back when it
was served at Thai Peacock. I’m not sure whether it was the Smith tea or the
fact that it was properly brewed (since then we’ve learned how to properly brew
tea), but Jana and I flipped over it. We shared a pot and couldn’t stop talking
about it for the rest of the evening. Not long after that Lauren decided she
needed to find “an adult drink”…she didn’t like coffee, tea, or alcohol. Of the
three, tea seemed to be the best choice so we went to the Smith tasting room
and shared a flight of different teas. She settled on a Jasmine Pearl and has expanded
from there. Since that first tea tasting experience she has read a half dozen
books on tea, done numerous tea tastings, and has become the family expert on
the subject. Steven Smith, who started Smith Teamaker, started out as the
owner/teamaker at Tazo Tea (later acquired by Starbucks) and Stash Tea (sold
when he retired). He came out of retirement to start Smith Teamaker, which focuses on high-end teas with an emphasis on black teas from the Darjeeling area. They are
by far the most excellent teas we drink. A trip to Portland is never complete
without a tea tasting at Smith and it’s even more special now that we’ve toured
the entire facility and learned more about the company's operations and philosophy.
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| Our first visit to Smith Teamaker in 2016 |
Lauren has been a volunteer giving
submarine tours at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) for five years
now. We love the museum and have attended just about every special exhibit
they’ve had over the past five years she’s volunteered. With one exception,
they’ve all been outstanding with this most recent exhibit topping the list. It
is called Exquisite Creatures and is a stunning exhibit of art using nature (animals,
minerals, and plants). All of the art in the exhibit is three dimensional and
presented in glass shadow boxes ranging from very small (under 6 inches) to
large multi-paneled installations covering an entire wall. Most of the smaller
organisms are presented in a geometric composition resembling a mosaic, with
many using tiles so small they are difficult to identify without a magnifying
glass. At first glance, they look like shimmering beads slightly larger than
the head of a pin, rather than tiny, iridescent colored beetles or other
insects. My least favorite were the compositions using snakes, although
according to the artist, they are “less threatening when focusing on their
physical design elements.” Maybe I didn’t focus hard enough.
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| OMSI Exquisite Creatures Exhibit |
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| Family at OMSI special exhibit |
We enjoyed another intersection of
art and science on Saturday when we visited the Beckham Estate Vineyard in the
Willamette Valley. Little did we know when we set out to wine taste on Black
Friday that several of the wineries in that area were holding an open house,
one of them being Beckham where Jandy had a particular interest as wine club
members. The vineyard is located in the Chehalem Mountains, an area known for
its Pinot Noir. What makes the Beckham Estate Vineyard unique is that Andrew
Beckham is a potter as well as a winemaker. Andrew bought the property about 15
years ago to build a pottery studio. He encouraged his wife to grow grapes and
they now have 14 acres planted to varietals of Pinot Noir. At some point he
began making huge (100- to 220-gallon) vessels, called amphorae, in which he ferments
and ages his wine. If you know anything about wine making, you know the
majority of wine is aged in French oak barrels. Using clay pots is uncommon in
wine making, although it dates back centuries and has several advantages, including
wines that are finished in about half the time and with greater clarity than
wines aged in oak barrels. After touring his winery and tasting his wines, Andrew
invited us to see his pottery studio. Being an old potter myself (I took a ceramics
class in college and watched the movie Ghost several times, each time imagining
I was Demi Moore), I was particularly interested in seeing his studio. His
pottery wheel is a standard size, although he throws pots that weigh as much as
650 pounds. Once they are shaped, he adds a beautiful decorative design along
with a signature and number. The pot is then moved using an overhead crane to a
shelving unit where it dries until it’s ready to be fired in an oversized kiln.
Meeting Andrew Beckham and touring his winery and studio was an experience to
be remembered! The wine was good, too.
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| Wine aging in clay amphorae |
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| Clay vessel on potter's wheel ready to move to drying racks |
