September 2017 – John Kast's Place

My New Place

In April I bought a condominium in Northeast Portland.

Why? Two main reasons. The first was to help achieve a sense of stability. There’s a lot in that last sentence, possibly the topic for future posts, and possibly only a topic addressed with beers in hand. The second was economics. Rents are rising in Portland. To me, it makes sense to buy.

Why a condo, not a small house? I want to have the freedom to be gone for longish periods. An apartment seems an easier method than a house for accomplishing that. There are pros and cons of course.

I just finished doing enough with the apartment to call it “done enough”. Furniture, rugs, decorations, some greenery, etc. I have notions for improvements, but the place is now able to accept visitors with a usable second bedroom, and I don’t feel like I have anything urgent to get done. The only major upcoming project is the bathroom, a remnant of 60’s decor that will undergo surgery sometime this winter.

I took some photos, added captions, and printed them for my non-online-savvy mom and dad. They are unlikely to ever visit me here.

Anyway, with those pics hot on my computer, I thought that this was a good opportunity to give others a glimpse of my place on this website.

For those who want to see my place in situ in Portland, use the mapping software of your choice on: 1220 NE 17th Ave. Apt. 12B. It is in Northeast Portland, just east of Lloyd Center Mall, and in the Sullivan’s Gulch mini-neighborhood. It has absolutely fantastic public transport and bicycling available.

I hope that the captions are enough – I decided to just post the pics in the order that I hope my folks look at them. Enjoy!

Weaving – Christmas 2016 scarves

I decided to make a few scarves as gifts for Christmas 2016. You can see them in the Projects page, numbers 005 through 012.

While making them, I got to know the folks at Northwest Wools in Portland very well. I had a good time there, and they helped me to feel welcome in Portland. If you are near Portland and need to do anything with wool, I can say that they are friendly, even with folks like me who know basically nothing.

They helped me with some yarn choices. They also took some pictures of me for their Facebook page. Oh my. Here’s one of them. Do I look as self-conscious as I feel?

There was a point in time just before packing up the car to start the drive to Arizona where all of the recently woven scarves were in one place. I took a few pictures. Here’s one. I kind of like it. Lots of hours went into what’s on that table!

Weaving 013 – Go Steelers!

This one was not exactly a request, but almost. It was a gift for my dad, a rabid Steelers fan. During other parts of the year it can also serve for the Penguins and the Pirates, Pittsburgh being economical with pro team colors.

It is the first weaving I did in my new place (the subject of another post), so you’ll see some new views.

This might be my last scarf for a while. When I get back to weaving, I want to experiment a bit. I expect to create a lot of, well, to be polite, waste. But I also expect to learn what I can do and what I like to do with my loom.

So here we go! All I had to do was to find some Steelers colors on several web sites and copy one of them…

Black. Yellow (or Gold, depending on how regal you feel). White trim. Onward!

Measuring a good length.

Winding around the peg. Everything seems so organized at this point.

Finished with threading all yarn into the right spot in the heddle.

Finished with winding up the warp, with even tension applied. Ready for weaving.

Weaving underway. We use the general term “weaving” as an overall description, but the process of weaving is not more important, but only equally important to the processes of measuring, threading the heddle, warping, tying off, and finishing (soaking, drying, trimming).

Finished weaving. What’s next on the loom is to tie all ends.

Off the loom, ready for a bath.

Drying in the bathtub after a hot water soak.

A bit of detail. Go Steelers!