Yay Portland

OK guys and gals as promised, here are some photos from my trip! :)


I *think* this is Mt. St. Helen...or maybe the pilot just lied to us. :P


Hilariously awesome carpet in the Portland International Airport...I even got the matching socks! :)


Yep, that's a gigantic fish stuck in those bricks. Southpark Seafood Restaurant. So good I went twice! Their cheese plate is soo good!


Trying on clothes in a thrift shop! Buffalo Exchange.


Totally amazeballz ramen I had the last night I was there! At Shigezo.


Some yarns I scored at Knit Purl PDX.


Hilariously cute sign in bathroom at Masu restaurant.


View from my hotel room!

Click the jump below to see more photos! :)

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Voodoo donuts!


Trying on clothes at the Bettie Page store. The girls there were SO nice! :)


Lunch at Broder near the Hawthorne neighborhood! I wanna move there! :)


Me looking derpy in my suit after presenting to like 200+ people. @___@;; stressful!


AMAZING chirashi and SUPER FRESH sea urchin (uni) sushi at Masu. Celebrated the night after my presentation with this meal, hehe.


Another shot looking out the window from my hotel room. 14th floor at the Hilton downtown Portland...


Octopus Pasta. The pasta was so tender and tasty but it was too spicy! >__<;
I even finished knitting a hat on the plane! xD


Went to an EPIC HUGE thrift shop called House of Vintage there and I REALLY wanted this cute dress but it BARELY did not zip on me. >__<;; one size too small!
Some of the items I did score on my trip. :) All vintage! Needs dry cleaned so badly. The skirt on the left is maybe from the 80s/90s and it's dry clean only. Bah. The dress on the right is 100% wool made in Italy vintage from the 60s! I am soaking it in Eucalan which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone who wants to wash 100% wool, 100% alpaca, and other such fibers!


More little treasures I found thrifting!


Delicious pasta!


An outfit I bought from the thrift shops. Most of it is vintage.


Cute "N" size batteries I purchased at Spartacus...I can use them in my vibrators ;P


Pretty vintage dress I bought but when I washed it the dyes bled. >___<;;
Brunch my friend had at Broder. Swedish style lunch and breakfast. :)


Found this at the thrift shop but I did not buy it...I just took a photo cause I loved the art-work. :)


Myself and my good friend Maria who drove ALL the way from Seattle, WA to be with me in Portland, OR for the weekend! We went to college together and worked on the Cube Satellite project together called COPPER which launched last year and is up in orbit now! :)



THE END!

Hope you all enjoyed my little travel picspam! :) Portland is a beautiful city, people there are so nice, lots of great food + shopping, and I WANT TO MOVE THERE! But it's so expensive. >__<;;

Yarnbox (Mini) Review

I don't really write reviews anymore maybe in part due to my extremely busy work schedule, but I was determined to share my thoughts on a subscription box called YarnBox which is effectively a yarn-of-the-month club, if you will.

Basically you pay up front for X installments and they send you a new box every month. I started with the bi-monthly plan (1 box of yarn every 2 months) which in and of itself, is not cheap at all! But if you are used to spending a lot of money on yarn and whatnot, this is actually not a bad deal.

My first box contained this amazingly gorgeous green Siidegarte Siide-Flauschig yarn from Siidegarte in Switzerland:


(The colorway is Aichblatt which means Oak Leaf in Swiss-German, according to the owner of the company, whom I asked over Instagram.)

It also came with a couple of free patterns:


These get automatically saved as PDFs to your YarnBox Library. I downloaded mine to my PC and printed out one of them to begin my project. :)



I began knitting the "Sproinger" hat pattern. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sproinger

It's a really fun looking hat and definitely very slouchy/spring-y/squishy looking. (Gotta love the way people describe yarn and patterns, lol!)


So far so good! I really adore the way this yarn feels and smells, and plus green is my favorite color (well, right next to pink, that is!) The other possible colorway was blue, which is really nice as well, but I am WAY happy with my green, wouldn't trade it!

You can see past companies YarnBox has featured in their monthly boxes by visiting this page:
https://yarnbox.com/yarnbox-store-locator/

Before I had subscribed to them, I bought some yak yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch which was one of their previous suppliers. I was VERY impressed with the quality of their 100% yak yarn. I don't think the 100% yak was in a Yarnbox, but rather, one of their blends. Man... I love knitting with obscure animal fibers/luxury fibers/whatever you call it. I'm one of those weirdos who's all like "damn, if you can brush it and spin the hair into yarn somehow, I want to buy it and knit with it!" Haha. Maybe I should find a luxury fiber of the month club...I've seen a few on Etsy but they were hella expensive...which makes sense! But the one I really wanted to subscribe to costs an arm and a leg in part due to shipping from Australia. Bummer.

Anyway, I digress!

I was so happy with my first Yarnbox I decided to upgrade my membership to getting 1 box every month, billed every 3 months ($111.)

I plan to try KnitCrate too. In fact, I just received notification that they shipped my first KnitCrate! Excitement! I will have to post a review to compare/contrast YarnBox and KnitCrate later. I told myself I'd try both and stick with just one that I like better but now I am scared I will love both so much that I won't want to stop getting both in the mail. AHHH. Now I have like 5 subscriptions...Netflix, Warcraft, Ipsy, YarnBox, and KnitCrate. >__<;; bye bye, hard-earned monies. :P

Going to Portland on Monday... + Knitting Updates

Sorry again for neglecting this blog. I had a post for March but it somehow got deleted. >_<; wtf. I am going on a business trip to Portland on Monday and I will be gone for exactly 8 days... returning on the 14th. I hope to take some good photos while there and maybe explore the city a little after my conference is over. A friend of mine from college is driving down from Seattle just to see me. Yay! :) I have never been there before, so it should be fun to explore a new city. It's been a few years since I was out to the West Coast. I was in Arizona last year...I don't recall if I posted any photos or not. I have been so bad about that, I know! Sorry! >__<; I know I posted photos of my trip to Philly a while back. But yeah. Long flight on Monday so I plan to bring lots of ...you guessed it.. knitting! (I love how this blog started out as a fashion and makeup blog and has slowly shifted to knitting. LOL.) So yeah. KNITTING: I got a cute hedgehog knitting gauge!

Also finished a simple hat for my BF's dad. Baby Alpaca Grande by Plymouth Yarn. Love how soft it is. Might even be softer than Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky... hmm.

I messed up a few times though...the pattern said to use straight needles but that if you wanted it seamless, you could use circulars. Obviously I went with the circulars because they're so easy to use and I didn't feel like doing a three needle bind off to make a seam or w/e it's called.

Also decided I would try to start a new pattern. It's called Ojo de Dios by Vanessa Ewing. It's only available from Interweave Magazine (Winter 2013 edition, I think.)


See here for more info:


http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ojo-de-dios-shawl

Not really sure if I know what I am doing though... I thought I did, but after knitting a triangle and a half, it dawned on me that I had somehow accidentally put the garter stitch on the right side instead of the wrong side. Derp. I kind of like the way it looks but now I am struggling to pick up stitches and match it. Uggh. >__<;; I am sure I will figure this out eventually but it's going to take me a little while. Only 2nd time using DPNs. The first time I used DPNs I attempted to knit fingerless mitts...it didn't go so well. I ended up getting 1/4 of the way done with one mitt and totally messed up on the thumb gusset... alas. :(
Still trying to figure out those pesky triangles. >__< I managed to find some big enough buttons I liked at the local knit shop while I was purchasing my Gina yarn for the Ojo de Dios shawl and I attached one to finish my mug cozy!
OK so it still needs blocked.... but yeah. You get the idea. xD

I still haven't blocked anything before. I guess I am still a knitting n00b. I'm gonna take my friend's advice though and get those puzzle piece interlocking mats from Harbor Freight and some non-rust T-pins and go that route for blocking... and my other friend gave me instructions on how to block! I am so glad to have friends who like to knit. I'd be totally lost otherwise (or spending lots more time on the intarwebz, lol.)

In other news... I am STILL playing Rune Factory 4. I got Rune Factory 3 for 3DS as well but it's not as fun, haha. I think it's a mixture of the fact that I was spoiled with such cool new features in 4 that 3 is just...meh. I still can't figure out how to auto-sort like in 4 (maybe you can't!) and plus I just dislike the characters in 3. IDK why. They just seem so...flat. But then again I felt that way about a lot of characters in 4 until I invested a lot of play time into it. Oh well. Maybe I will do a separate post with my musings....hmm.