This is my most favorite outdoor event of the year. Come. COME! Tomorrow, Saturday, May 8th …all day until 6 pm! My booth will be on the North side of Leavitt Avenue (situated right in the middle).
It’s supposed to be gorgeous here this weekend. I NEED the sun. should be perfect.
Have beautiful weekends!
xo~betsy
***Song of the Moment: Weeks of Rain, by Hauschka***
My sweet sis-in-law gave us 4 deliveries of fresh veggies, fresh eggs, fresh bread, fresh cheese and whatever other fresh goodness local Hood River Organic farm wanted to share with us. I was GIDDY with excitement over this generous Christmas gift. Every two weeks when the leafy-green box arrived, I practically knocked the deliveryman over when I jumped on him with jumbled gibberish non-sentence-forming enthusiasm. We did things with vegetables we’d never done before. ummmm…yeah. This is totally PG, people. Check out the sexy geometry.
root vegetable baked fries. parsnip fries. what? yes, I said, parsnip fries. root vegetable gibberish so satisfying yum.
crispy mushroomness pods.
beat filled beet bombastic bellies
What the!? What IS it? anything that looks this cool MUST be good for the soul. a little food art dance in my belly.
What?? This is what: I love veggies and fresh pregnant men!!
A big ol’ fresh Friday to you all.
~betsy
***Song of the Moment: Tonight , by Lovers***
Sunday was spontaneity at its finest.
Coffee. Lady Bug. Salvaged wood. Record store. Astral Weeks. Rega Turntable. Surprise-a-friend Sunday. Saint Cupcake.
Dakota and the Humane Society. Swedish meatballs. New sheets, high thread count, mm. Pictures in toy bins. Colanders. Frozen yogurt. TJs and free coffee. Good talks and reading. Scrabble.
Silence.
I feel like I could live in these perfect creations by the inimitable Betsy Walton. The colors and their combinations astound me. I own a favorite shirt by the artist which was a gift from W (I think he purchased it at Crafty Wonderland…I’ll be there again for the spring show). I didn’t put it all together until I started seeing her work more and more around town… and finally I realized she is in some of the sweet stores I also sell in. It’s official:
I am smitten. (Plus, she has a great first name…)
so, like me, take this color and get through your Mondays! ~betsy
***Song of the Moment: Sweet Thing, by Van Morrison***
bleh. BLEH! I DESPISED this song when I was younger. Let me refresh your memory:
“If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with! love the one you’re with!!”
what. WHAT!? really. I mean, really? Reeeeeally, Stephen Stills? I mean, I know Billy Preston was a hugely influential human being, but really? Did you really mean that?
Those are the thoughts I had as a 7 year old, staring out the backseat windows, listening to car music and finding myself slipping into the catchy groove. I would always start singing along and when I found myself there, I would stop and think—is that really what I want in my life–what I have to look forward to?? being the leftover choice? and just going along with it? And then I would have a mind protest. Yes, this is what happened in the 80s, in my little developing brain, looking out the window on sunny Sundays after church.
I mean sure, that’s greeeat for the chooser, but the leftover—the leftover then truly gets the shaft, no?:
Chooser: Man, I sure wish I could be with fill-in-the-blank. Man, I miss fill-in-the-blank so much; my heart truly aches.
Leftover: Wow, I sure do love being with Chooser. I hope Chooser feels the same about me…goo goo.
Chooser: Well, it’s too difficult to be with the one I really want to be with and oh…hey…look at this sweet little Leftover thing sitting next to me. I guess it wouldn’t be too bad if I gave it a shot. something is definitely better than nothing.
Leftover: Gosh, could it be love?
Chooser: “hey, Leftover, do you wanna like really hang with me. You’re cool. I like you. ”
Leftover: “YES!! I really like you too!”
hmmmmm. fishy. And my little impressionable imagination always expected I would be the Leftover. ugh. it hurt so much already, and I wasn’t even near the threshold of grown-up love.
While I still believe this whole idea is a bad one, in terms of relationships with human beings, I haaaave begun to embrace it where objects are concerned.
It works for that, I think. This morning when I walked out of our tiny St. Johns condo, I had this mushy thought…”I love you, condo.” The thought jumped out at me. I couldn’t believe it! I’ve spent months and months fighting this thought. I mean, I’ve really put energy into it. Ever since W and I merged our physical lives, I’ve struggled with our arrangements.
Yes, the condo is very very small. It’s not in the neighborhood I would have opted to live in, had I been given the choice. I don’t think the outside is the most charming. Though this hasn’t happened much lately, we used to wake up to bar-closing drunken expletives trailing down the street. And we’re still seeing completely annoying inartistic graffiti greet us on grumpy mornings before work. and whiny whiny whine…But…
It’s so cozy inside. It houses some of our lovely things, yes. But it also houses us—keeps us warm, reminds us of funny things we said/did, holds our first 6 months of marriage, it’s sweet, it’s modest… and the neighborhood is actually one of the most beautiful in the city. For me, Cathedral Park is competing for the top slot of the most beautiful parks in Portland, second only to the park we got married in. The St. Johns community is exactly my favorite kind—non-pretentious, honest workers, trying to be the best it can be. And recently I discovered, we actually do have friends who live up here.
picture from columbiariverimages.com
we have a place to call home.
with that alone, I have no problem loving the one I’m with.
***Song of the Moment: True or False, by Bishop Allen***
