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.

Stitching Fast and Slow

Good morning, my friends. Well, I skipped a day of blogging, and so I have a lot to show you. Happily, my dental appointment is behind me, and I'm good for another year. And, look ma! No cavities. Always a good outcome.

Backing up to Monday morning, I cut back the peonies to the ground. We'll look for them next spring. For now, I'm enjoying the last gasp of the flowers. This first one is the Firefighter dahlia. When we left on our trip mid-September, it had not a single bud on it. I was threatening to replace it. When we got home, there were three flowers and more buds. So here’s a handy gardening tip: If fertilizer, water, and TLC don’t work, try threats and intimidation.

There are still a few flowers on the echinacea, but these plants are looking pretty well bloomed out. I cut some of the taller stalks that fell over. I’ll let the bloomers stay until they die.

This is the Bumble Rumble dahlia…still blooming away.

This is the Checkers dahlia.

This is the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia. I’m going to have to cut these back and move them inside the garage soon. They’re still blooming to beat the band, so I guess we’ll just watch for the first freezing temperatures and let them carry on until then.

These are zinnias. I enjoyed the heck out of these.

Another zinnia. I might plant a whole row of zinnias next year. They brought me great gardening joy this year.

These next ones are all in the bee garden. My phone calls me this next one is Clarkia.

This is coreopsis. This is a new one to the bee garden this year.

The Black-eyed Susans are new too. I think I might have bought a separate packet of seeds for these and mixed it into the Northwest wildflower mix.

This is mallow…another newbie to the bee garden.

This is our old friend godetia. It is well-established in the bee garden.

If you’ve been following for a while, then you might remember that I have a large vegetable garden plot. When it started feeling like too much to care for, I made the vegetable portion of the garden smaller. Still, there’s a large fenced area, and just letting the unplanted portion go to weeds was dispiriting. 

About five years ago, I started throwing out pounds of wildflower seed to try to establish color there. This has been the most gratifying bee garden so far. Lots of new flowers have appeared, and the previous newbies are filling in more and more. There is still plenty of weedy tangle, but the flowers are nice, and the bees love them. It’s gotta be good for the vegetables, right?

Speaking of gratifying, Smitty is back in his happy place on the corner of our deck. It’s good to be home.

There’s been precious little time for sewing this week, but I grab a half hour here and there. I filled in my embroidery hoop…

And then moved to the next position.

And then I pretty well filled that in too.

So I moved my hoop to encompass the last of it. I’ve stitched even a little more since I took the picture below. I’m expecting to finish this today.

Okay, and making progress on my quilts-to-be-quilted pile is still my first sewing priority. Quilting has commenced on the Cats in Pajamas. As a reminder, this is what it looks like. I’d planned to do one row at a time, but I’m working with the vertical rows.  

It was hard to decide what to do with this. And what color thread should I use? I was leaning toward white both top and bottom. When I pulled the cover off my machine and found it already threaded with those colors, I was satisfied that the quilting gods had spoken loudly and clearly.

Speaking of gods…His Worship was there to advise me on the design.

We finally settled on this design by Angela Walters. There’s a little bit of chit-chat at the beginning of her video. She’ll start sewing about a minute in, and you can see her design.

I’m doing it block by block. I liked the wavy lines part of this design, but I didn’t like how she filled it in. I decided to do a sort of loop de loop design in mine. And how could I do anything without my cat? He helped me adjust my tension.

And then I went to work. Here’s the first block. I’m doing them all the same. So far, I’ve done two of four vertical rows.

Here’s how that’s looking from the back. The quilt is large at 72 x 72 inches, and I feel a little as if I’m losing a wrestling match with it. I have some other ideas about what to do with the sashings, spacer blocks, and the outer border. That probably won’t happen before the weekend.

I’m kind of excited to show you what I’m going to do next. Matthew is an engineer by education and experience. He’s also a musician, and a deejay. He does some gigs on the side, and he’s adopted the zebra as his symbol. Without saying more than I should, I’ll tell you that in addition to being smart and talented, he’s also very funny. (I’m his mom…I have to brag on him a little, doncha know.) Since he was a little boy he’s had a delightfully offbeat sense of humor, and I used to tell him he was the zebra with the horizontal stripes. So, I’m happy to see that he’s embraced that part of himself.

A few days ago he texted the head of a zebra he’d created using AI. (I think he’s trying to create a logo.) I looked at it and said, “I can make a quilt from that.” Well, that got an enthusiastic response, and so that’s what I’ll be working on next. He's requested queen sized.

I have some figuring to do. It’s similar to a pixelated design. Already I’ve decided to cut the pieces to 4 inches (3-1/2 finished). To make it queen size, I'll add two rows of the background colors to each side, following the pattern of colors already there. Cool, huh?

So, I haven’t made any more progress on Northern Wilderness. I’m hoping to get back into the sewing room today, but it’s also a grocery shopping day. It's a terribly long list. Like I said, it’s a busy week. We still have to take Smitty to the vet tomorrow. He seems fine. We’re not expecting any sort of dire news about him, but he’s 14. He’s just like the rest of us. At his age, anything could happen. And then the kids are coming for dinner on Friday. I’m looking forward to that, and we’re keeping it simple, but I have some cooking to do ahead of time. 

Okay then. I guess I’ll get to it. Mike has gone back to bed for a while. We'll preward our grocery shopping trip with a trip to McDonald's for our beloved Egg McMuffins. ("Preward." Did you see what I did there?)

Have a good day, Everybody!