The Peculiarium

Good morning, my friends. It was a stormy day yesterday, but it didn't dampen our spirits for visiting Portland's Peculiarium.We had so much fun. 

The City of Portland is divided up into quadrants. Burnside Street separates north from south, and the Willamette River separates east from west. The Peculiarium is in one of the older areas of the city in Northwest Portland. Parking is a nightmare there. After driving around and around, I finally found a spot two blocks away. Happily, it hadn’t started raining yet. Walking along, I passed by this potted camelia blooming away.

Turning a corner, I could see the Peculiarium. Despite those “Open” signs, I was a few minutes early, and the door was locked.

This guy was there to keep me company, and such delicious food was being served! How could I resist?

The door opened right on time, and this greeter was wheeled out.

Matthew was just a few minutes behind me. I wandered around the gift shop while I waited for him. They had a whole big board of these little things…are they tacks? Pins? Not sure. Of course, I liked the cat ones best.

This made me laugh.

Also…apothecary, anyone?

When Matthew arrived, we bought our tickets and headed inside. It’s a small, but crowded space. We were in and out in about half an hour, but there’s no way we could see it all. The walls are covered floor to ceiling, wall to wall with interesting things to look at. It’s one of those places that requires a second (even a third) visit.

My pictures are mostly posted in the order I took them. Certain things caught my eye. The image below is of classic Universal Pictures monsters, but Matthew and I photobombed it. A lot of what you’re going to see is movie memorabilia. I’m not sure how much of it is genuine as opposed to representing some oddity, myth, urban legend and the like. You can read (or listen) to a little blurb about it broadcast by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

This is a cast of a footprint from Sasquatch, aka Big Foot. It was about 15 inches from heel to toe.

I’m not sure about these cats, but cats. I must photograph them.

This one might actually be Smitty. I’ve heard he has a night job as a superhero.

The California Raisins! What a hoot!

With our country’s new chief of staff, this might actually come in handy.

Here’s a close-up of the sign. (I wonder if these can be purchased on Amazon.)

Someone got married here.

This movie came out when I was nine years old. It scared me so badly, I had to get in bed with my mom and dad that night.

This happened one town west of where I live. Sorry it’s not a better picture. I cropped the text and posted it below to make it easier to read.

Here you go…it’s a little easier to read, and it’s worth reading to the end.

Here’s the Batmobile.

The Ghostbusters’ car.

Okay, now this was fun. I knew this was how they did those tall building scenes in films, but I’d never seen this in the “flesh” before. Matthew is actually lying horizontally. It’s an optical illusion that makes it look as if there is depth to the photo. 

And then some friendly folks standing nearby offered to take our picture together. How could we resist? Don’t look down!

Okay, and this was interesting. See how the image below has depth? It was actually shaped more like a traffic cone, with the center square and woman closest to us with the rest falling farther away. (I hope that makes sense.) It’s a little like looking at one of those pictures where you have to relax your eyes and let them see it as it really is.

There were a lot of these fun interactive exhibits. This was a box-shaped thing. Matthew was looking through a small hole cut in the middle. The only face that is his is the one in the middle. The rest are projected with mirrors(?) I guess. I was on the far side of the box holding the camera up to a small hole cut for that purpose.

Here, one of us could have poked our head up through that hole and allowed ourselves to be operated on by aliens. Nah. One can only embarrass one’s self so many times in a single day.

Matthew (the musician) knew what this was right away. It’s a type of synthesizer known as a theremin. This is better seen and heard, so turn up your volume if you need to.

This cat looked for all the world like something Louis Wain might have created. If you’ve been reading a long time, you might remember when we visited The American Museum of the Housecat in North Carolina. It was more fun than I could have imagined, and it was there that I first heard of Louis Wain. He was an artist with a special talent for drawing cats. He also suffered from schizophrenia, and his art changed over time as his disease worsened.

Okay, now this was just downright offensive. I was well into my 20s the first time I encountered a pushbutton phone. Who’re you calling old? Or weird? Or just what are they implying here, anyway?

The only one of these early cell phones I remember was the one in the middle known as the “Brick.” Our first cell phone…shared among family members…was a smaller one, but it still had a pull-out antenna.

These are all characters from The Simpsons. Matt Groening was born in Portland. He uses the names of places in Portland in his cartoons.

In the middle of the image above is this original drawing from him.

Of course, we had to stand in front of the crazy mirror and turn ourselves into dwarfs.

This little shot glass was in a display case. I looked for them in the gift shop, but they didn’t have any. Bummer. 

And that was our visit. Great fun. I want to go again and take Mike with me. If we get cabin fever this winter (probably), it would be a fun way to break out of the doldrums.

After that we had lunch at this restaurant and French patisserie. Lunch was delicious, and it was fun to catch up on what’s going on in his life.

This was their dessert case. Oh my. See those little orange cake-like things below and on the right side?

Yeah, I got two of those to go. They’re called “Passion.” They were a combination of chocolate cake, white chocolate, passion fruit, in a sort of custard. The outer portion there is like an edible chocolate ribbon. It was sticky and icky, and it tasted really good.

And that was our day. It was great fun. Looking forward to the next time. There’s going to be a gingerbread house display at one of downtown Portland’s hotels in December. That might be a good way to spend a rainy day.

So, I’ll get back to my sewing today. The Snow Day embroidery should be finished this morning, and I’ll get a start on the quilting for Grandpa’s Bridges. My goal will be to quilt three of the embroidered blocks (one row). That might be overly-ambitious. We’ll see. And then I’ll get back to the Zebra. I’d like to make another three blocks for that.

Okay, then. The day begins. Make it a good one.

When Hobby Becomes Mission

Good morning, my friends. It’s another morning of writing fast. Matthew and I are meeting up this morning. I’ll say more about that in a minute. 

It was a busy sewing day yesterday. With the Cats in Pajamas soon to be rehomed, it was time to think seriously about the next quilt in line to be quilted. Grandpa’s Bridges is next. This should be pretty easy. Already I have some ideas about it, and it’ll all be doable.

Yesterday I picked out the threads I want to use. The threads I’m about to show you all come courtesy of my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. For the embroidered blocks, I’ll use this off white.

For the outer border and sashings, I’ll use this pretty variegated King Tut thread. Are these colors perfect, or what?

For the inner border and block borders, I’ll use this pretty brownish/rustish color. (I’m still not sure I will quilt the block borders. Sometimes I just have to wait and see what my hands decide.)

For the bobbin, I’ll use these. They’re different threads and different colors, but nearly indistinguishable. The back of this quilt is busy, and I will defy anybody to find a color change if I need to switch horses in the middle of the river. (It’s a quilt with bridges, right? How could I not use that horse/river metaphor?)

Okay, so that was my commitment for the “quilting” part of my day. I really wanted to get into the sewing room and work on the Zebra.

The second block for the third row was laid out. I just needed to sew it together.

And then I sewed, and sewed, and sewed my guts out until I’d completed the third row.

And there’s what I have of the Zebra so far.

Here’s where the title of this post comes in. Mike and I were talking about this the other night. If you’re a long-time blogging friend, then you know I keep a whiteboard listing of all my projects, and I have a workflow I follow pretty rigidly. I like having a lot of projects. It gives me lots of short-term goals to work on, and each project feels fresh whenever I work on it. Also, it keeps everything moving forward so that I don’t forget what I’m doing from one go-round to the next. 

Occasionally, though, a project comes along, and it causes me to shove everything else off the table and focus on it obsessively until it’s finished. Generally, these tend to be special requests from friends or family members. Baby quilts are a good example. Quilting is my hobby. But when I get in this mode of full steam ahead on a project, it becomes a mission. And all of that to say that my mission is only half accomplished. There is more to do. Oh, yes.

But I thought I might go insane if I sewed together any more squares for the day, and so I switched gears and traced the first stitchery for “Over the River and Through the Woods.” 

Happily, I can use that fabric I purchased for the Zebra, and then rejected. It’ll be great for this project. I was a little short on yardage. Fortunately, Meg Hawkey always had us cut generous backgrounds for embroidery. I cut my panels about an inch narrower on all four sides, and that gave me plenty of space to trace the design. They’ll be trimmed even more when they’re finished.

So, I traced the top scene. It took about an hour to cut the fabric and do all this tracing. I’m glad to have it done. 

I won’t start on that for a few more days. I’m still working on the Snow Days piece. And since I’m heading out early this morning, I don’t know if there will be time for any sewing today. Matthew and I are meeting up at a place called The Peculiarium. It’s billed as a museum of the “freaky but true.” Now, this I gotta see. We’ll get some lunch afterward. Should be fun.

Okay, then. It’s time to be on my way. Have a freaky day.

Cats in Pajamas Put to Bed

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy day yesterday, but I managed to get it all done with a little time to spare. We'd run out of the biscotti I baked last week, and I had my eye on some Sweet Cherry Jammers. These are made with some homemade sweet cherry jam...cherries from our trees. Think of a thumbprint cookie, then slide the cookie out from under the jam and shove in a biscuit. I wrote a lengthy post about this back in 2012. (Yikes.)

While I was mixing these up, I was shocked to find I didn't have enough all-purpose flour to get the job done. So I asked The Google if it was okay to substitute whole wheat flour for the all-purpose variety. The Google gave me the go ahead, and so I did just that. Honestly, I can't tell the difference, although they are a little darker in color.

While those were baking, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. I stitched until there was no more room for stitching...

And then, I moved my hoop to the right. There are a couple of little snowflakes outside my hoop in the lower left corner, but I'll capture those with a little more stitching there at the top. 

With that almost finished, I'm going to need to get busy tracing the first block for "Over the River and Through the Woods." I'll start with the top block, and that will take me some time.

That will be for another day, though. I was determined to finish my quilt binding for the Cats in Pajamas. And that's a wrap. It finishes at 72 x 72 inches. This was my project for 2024's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It was started 1/2/24...nearly three years in the making.

Here's a peek at the back. I turned the back strategically so that you could see the two cats devoted to Smitty and Sadie. Smitty's cat has a striped tail and green eyes. Sadie's has a stubby tail and yellow eyes.

And then I needed one more block to finish off the second row for the Zebra project. Now the top two rows are finished...that's one-third of the whole, if you're keeping score.

Now I've sewn together the first block for the third row.

The second block for that row is laid out. I'll get busy sewing it together today. I doubt I can finish all the blocks for the third row in a single day, but I'll give it a righteous try.

With the Cats in Pajamas finished, it's time to turn my attention to the next in line to be quilted. I'll be starting on Grandpa's Bridges today. Mainly, I'll be selecting threads and getting the machine set up for quilting…adjusting tension…that sort of thing.  Probably I'll do the embroidered blocks in an off-white thread, and then switch to a variegated brown for the rest. 

There was a lot accomplished, but I was worn out by the end of the day. Also, I didn’t get my Bowflex workout done. I’m determined to get back to that today. Probably I’ll give the Zebra the bulk of my attention today. (I almost said “lions’ share,” but I should probably keep the lions away from the zebras. Wouldn’t you agree?)  As always, there's plenty to keep me busy. 

Matthew and I have a meet-up scheduled for tomorrow. The weather seems uncooperative for walking, but we'll figure something out. He's spoken up for the Cats in Pajamas quilt, so regardless, I'll come bearing gifts.