Power to the Cannon A75

Back in camera battery business, today's adventure to downtown Portland was fantastic! Cecily had a flight to catch at 1pm, which gave us the perfect opportunity to play downtown. After an unexpectedly deLISHious breakfast sandwich, our first stop was Josephine's Dry Goods. Now, if I had a scanner handy, I'd post a photo of me in my prom dress - not to show off fashion of 1994, but to show off the gorgeous-ness of fabrics that Josephine's sells. This is THE place to go for that $28/yard Italian cotton you've been dreaming of! And they are so super nice and helpful, and will give you little snippets of fabrics that you are considering! While there, I picked up the recent issue of Threads magazine because it has not one but TWO articles on knits. And since I'm teaching that class on knits coming up this weekend, I thought I should learn how. ;) Seriously though, there is always something new to learn or new photos to showcase examples.

I also got this skirt pattern. My goal is to have two or three new skirts done in time for my brother's wedding in July. I dearly love the Favorite Things Cute Skirts, but one can only have so many of the same skirt, eh? And I got one of those adorable Heather Bailey big floral prints and didn't want it cut into 8 panels. So I'll try the New Look one and see how it goes. I'm hoping it doesn't look quite so big in real life. The sample at Josephine's looked better. Maybe someone should just tell that model to untuck her shirt, hmm?




After the Josephine's adventure (which also included much excitement over the passing streetcar by my little one), we walked to the Button & Ribbon Emporium. Such beauty does not always come by the yard! And the women working there were so super sweet, especially to the little boy with buttery hands (I mentioned those breakfast sandwiches were good, right?).



They have a whole basket of goodies that they let him choose from. They even had a tractor button! He was in heaven! For such a little store, they have an (almost) overwhelming amount of inventory. Every imaginable color, style, size, and fiber content of ribbon! And I don't use a lot of buttons on the garments I make, but if I did... Or if I knit well enough to make a sweater worthy of the buttons they carry... Oh wow.

With only 15 minutes left on our parking "meter" (how are we supposed to refer to those little stickers now?), and only 15 minutes left until we needed to leave for PDX, we hopped next door to Fabric In The City. Sadly she doesn't have a website for me to link to. What it would say is that she doesn't open until 11am on weekdays and that her store is delightful! The store is worth so much more than our little visit allowed! She has a lot of fantastic quilts on display, as well as great handbags and other crafty items.