That Northern Town

OoooliolioOooooO! I went to Olympia this weekend for a mini break. The trip was uneventful and after I'd set up my roost in that crazy room-that's-not-a-room room (it's essentially a way of connecting the sauna that was added later to the house... like a huge glorified hall with no insulation, that is separated from the rest of the house by a sliding door.) Star and I immediately started mixing this and that in bowls and eventually we created these!Butterfly cupcakes from that cupcake book we got together. They are a lemon-poppy seed cupcake, with lemon filling and a lemon sauce drawn down the middle. Even though they took zest from three lemons and the juice of two to make, they were wonderfully light and not too lemony. That book is definitely paying for itself.

I'm sorry these pictures are still so yellow even after I worked on them in the ol' Photoshop... we took them at night and whether we used flash or not they just wouldn't turn out beautiful. Trust me, they are wonderful and pretty in real-person life.After cupcakes we went to the re-opening of the library in town (apparently there was some sprucing up going on between the time I left and my visit) and listened to Kimya Dawson play. I say listen because there were so many people there that we couldn't actually see her, however Star did manage to gain about two feet by climbing on Ben for part of it. If you aren't immediately saying "Ohhhh Kimya Dawson... cool!" to yourself, it's because you don't realize that she's the one who is on the vast majority of the Juno movie soundtrack. Once you've heard the cd, I think you can imagine the gist of her style... there was an awfully cute children's song talking about poop and butts though. I'm always charmed by children's songs that don't try to avoid references to bodily functions because that's really all children talk about (ok, I'm going to qualify that, it's really all boy children talk about.)

After everyone woke up the next day we went to the Co-op down the street (I'd never been to that one and now I wish I had!) and got some tasties including some pretty purple carrots! Star had invited some people over for a little visit at 6 and in the mean-time we made cheese!Star had read about a cheese making kit either in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or Omnivore's Dilemma (sorry Star, I can't remember, but I'm sure that you'll correct me in the comments later). The idea intrigued her and she bought the makin's for hard and soft cheese. We made some mozzarella. Now, in hindsight, we probably should have used whole milk to do it (I think that's why we didn't have many curds, Starzy... just occurred to me... unless we did and then I don't know what happened), as it was we used a half gallon of milk, a tablet of some such thing that makes curds appear like magic, and a stove. When you make mozzie you have to knead it for a while until it looks like taffy which just so happens to be what I'm doing in these pictures. Unfortunately, you have to heat the cheese in the microwave until it's lava hot, so I was pathetically trying to do it with a spoon. It worked, more or less.

(p.s. If you ever wanted to create the illusion of cooking with yours truly, I bet you could print this last picture, blow it up real big, cut it out and then stick it on the wall of your kitchen. Cooking never seemed so cool! Just a thought.)

And then you have cheese! We made a lovely quiche for the party with the purple carrots, mozzie cheese and other tasty things. I decided to write about what we were doing in the pictures because Star has already done a lovely summery of what we did together on her own bloggerino and I'm going to be lazy and point you in her lovely direction. It was a fantabulous weekend, I even miss that little room I commandeer when I visit.

Hallow-Weenies

I spent Halloween at Star, Ben, Jame and Jenny's house in Olympia this year! I missed out on the sweet costumes last year but I'm sooo on the bandwagon this time around.

Star and Ben in their matching shirts Ben's aunt sent him.

Ohhh it's too good!
Ben made some wicked hand-cicles for the punch. If you fill up two rubber gloves with water and stick them in the freezer then remove the rubber you're left with these crazy ice hands! That's crafty that goes way above and beyond my brain skills.Hands in motion.
Star dressed up as a 12 year-old girl complete with flashing plastic jewelry and hello kitty backpack.Ben was working class complete with grease from black cocoa coated almonds I brought from Trader Joes.

Star and Ben.

Brian was all of the Beatles and Matt was The Dude.

Julian was a mouse...

Complete with cheese!

Evan was... himself but with a can of Dragon Joose. Dragon Joose, by the way, makes me die a little inside.

Jessie, Jon and Freddie came late tricked out with every piece of fluorescent colored 80's wear they could scrounge.

And then Harmony was a Crusader we assume. She made herself a SWEET beard out of spirit gum and either her own hair or her boyfriends'.

Oh, No WAY!

So I'm diddling around, looking at crafty blogs and misc. things on the wide world of the internets when I find this site BuyOlympia.com! All those things I've been seeing in Hot Toddy or the Archibald Sisters or all of the other great stores I can't think up into memory right now are here at Buy Olympia.

Here is some of the goodness, ready and waiting for you there:

I still have an irrational love for this series. The Reading is Sexy, Knitting is Knotty, I Heart Public Transportation, Future Librarian, Guy Brairian, all so good and all by Sarah Utter. Plus this mug is 100% biodegradable corn plastic, grown and manufactured in the US. Bonus.

Chalk Eggs! I'm going to have to do a series about "things packaged in egg cartons" because I found a couple of felting kits packaged in them and something about the way these recycle makes me giggle every time.
Tree Pattern skirt. This reminds me of those awful hunting camo outwears that I see at Cabelas whenever Dharyll can manage to drag me there (now it's far far away sucka!). But this, at least, is cute. So there.
Hello Sweet Morning wallet sold through Tinymeat. They make their wallets and other goodies through independent artist submissions (like Threadless). The wallet I have now is actually a Tinymeat wallet that I got at last year's etsy sale in Portland. I have a stash of these wallets in my closet somewhere that I bought at that sale but then forgot about for a year, so they may resurface during the holidays.Watch Movement ring made from the innards of small, old-school watches.
Handsome Zebra plexiglass coated super magnet.

Oh, I miss Olympia.

Oh Olympia, You Crazy Thing You....

As of this morning, I'm officially moved home in Corbett, Oregon soon to be Sandy, Oregon (in a month or so). I woke up this morning in my tiny tiny little bedroom, so that's what I'm basing this "official" business on. Now, my new room isn’t tiny in the way it was constructed, but because it is CRAMMED FULL of boxes of things left over from my parents’ move here. So my room has a full sized bed with about 1 foot of walking space from the door along one side and that’s it. The rest consists of this looming wall of cardboard… heavy heavy cardboard. I’m working on reorganizing it a little, I did manage to free up about a three foot by two foot space in the closet to cram some of my clothes in. The rest, as with a great deal of my things from Oly., will be put in storage in the new house for the next month. Ah well…

What started this post was not the move itself, but the fact that I’m going to miss Olympia and all of its crazy ways. For example, The Hall of the Woods. I didn’t post about this before because I forgot and after a while it didn’t seem THAT crazy, but thinking back on it, it was a little exotic. About a week or so ago I got a call from Bed and Star about going to a performance-artish-thing. I wasn’t doing anything and this was before Katherine and Peter got back so I’d been hanging out at the house with Monty embroidering all day, every day, PLUS these tend to turn into mini-adventures which are always fun. We decide to go. We left late, arrived late but everything started REALLY late. Then again, I don’t think it counts as late if everyone’s running on this crazy thing called “Olympia Time” which means everything is delayed by at least an hour. So really, they were right on time. But let me back up a little.

We’re driving to this place called the Hall of the Woods, which is where Missoula Oblongata was scheduled to perform (late). We’re driving… and driving and driving. It’s not far but everything is getting more rural and shady the further out we get. Finally, we wind up in this woodsy area when all of the sudden this old purple-ish barn looms up on our left. “Hey guys… I think that was it.” And it was. It’s this crazy purple barn with little lights hanging from the porch and a couple of Greeners hanging around smoking in the front. It’s getting dusky and we pull around to the side and park at the end between an old rickety truck and some blackberries. The four of us get out and look at each other. Behind the barn is a canoe that’s being worked on, there’s a wild-looking garden in front of the car and then on the other side of the truck is a folding table FULL of large bones. Like deer sized. Ben grabs a chunk of vertebra about an inch-and-a-half tall (that’s definitely big enough to be a deer… or something) and holds it up “Cool! Oh… these are a lot of bones!” There’s a lot of enthusiasm in that sentence, and all I can do is quietly hum that banjo music while I size up the mountain of bones, trying to estimate how many critters it took to fill it up. We walk around to the front and squeeze past the Greeners debating something or other, onto the porch and into the barn.

The barn, it turns out, looks like someone lives there. You walk in and it’s a huge, semi-finished space. The roof is mostly a series of huge tarps with some sort of insulation, there’s some furniture, a booth from a diner or something to the side and a giant parachute hanging from the ceiling. The parachute is glowing and looks a bit like a jelly fish with a light stuffed inside. There’s a kitchen and above the kitchen a loft-bedroom area. There are Greeners sprawled out across a couple of couches and there’s a tv with it’s insides yanked out to make room for a fern. We sit down at the diner-booth beause Star’s found a kitty there which needs an intense amount of cuddling.

(Cuddle cuddle)

While we’re waiting for things to happen we watch a couple of kids play with a pretty cute muttly-dog. The kids are wearing all sorts of clothes that look like they’ve been pulled out of a costume chest. Ones in footie pj’s (and it looks like he might just live in them), and another is wearing a peasant blouse, long skirt and bright red shoes. They look like they’re having fun but between them and the dog (which later turns into six muttly dogs) everything still feels a little sketch. Finally the music starts and then Oblongata goes on. It was a neat little three-person performance involving themes like: math, fortune cookies, eggs from space, astronomy, relationships… etc. Afterwards Star bought this print of people you could call around the U.S. who are experts on random things. You could call them anytime and ask them any question (as long as it pertains to their subjects) and just be a kooky Greener whenever you felt like it. As we pulled away from the pile of bones and the growing number of happy Greeners, dogs and children I felt pretty good about the way things are again. In that little bubble, life was good. If only movies and books wouldn’t tell me otherwise. Something tells me it would be harder to find a Missoula Oblongata outside of Oly.

Gunther

If you have no idea who Gunther is, let alone listened to his music, I think you should probably take the time to go to his website (note: this page isn't safe for work, and this one is moderately safe). He parodies the 80's German pop bands, at least that's what people say he's doing. Really, I think he's just living the lifestyle in all seriousness. He has an array of music videos on youtube with songs like the Ding Dong Song or Tutti Fruity Summer Love. In any case we're big Gunther fans so Katherine and Peter decided to have a Tutti Fruity Summer Love/Gunther themed party last night. I made candy sushi, there was tons of Gunther dance music playing, Endless Summer was playing in Monty's room (he was upstairs in mine) and, somewhere in the middle there were a few fantastic games of Twister. We switched some of the lights to colored light bulbs and rigged bicycle lights on their strobe settings to the walls to make dance lighting. All in all I had a great time and I'm glad that, as the last real party of the year, everything went well. The only thing that got spilled was water and only one person was.... feeling sick. Everything's cleaned up and back to mostly normal!

And This...

Can you tell I have homework to do? I can. Anyway, this little guy has been chalked on a wall I walk by when I go to catch the bus in town and I always smile when I see him. He's been there since the Procession of the Species and he's been re-chalked recently. I hope Gramie liked him because he makes my walk a little shorter.

Procession of the Species

Today was the Procession of the Species parade in Olympia. I definitely went last year and there's no WAY I'd miss this year's. Turned out to be a good choice. Evan and I started to walk down around 3, got there at about 3:30 thanks to Evan's crazy fast walking pace, got some sorbet because it was weirdly hot/cold outside. The parade didn't start until 4:30 and it took just under an hour to reach us at the end of its route. The cool thing was, however, that people came down the street with wheel-barrows full of free sidewalk chalk. How cool is that? By the time Star and Ben found us I'd already nabbed a couple of sticks, but then between Star and I we managed to collect the full spectrum of colors. Ben was all for letting the little kids get first dibs, but they're like little squirrels or vultures, swooping down and hoarding all the good stuff. Little hoarders. That's right, I'm not impressed by their cuteness, I know what goes on in their little brains. I was one once, you know. Anywho, this is Ben drawing with our pilfered chalk. So pretty.
But even prettier shoes!

Stylin'.
Star took a ten second nap while we waited, and waited... and waited for the parade to get all the way down to the park.

The Salmon are here! The Parade has officially begun with a bunch of salmon in the street.
This lady was definitely into the whole horse idea. I much prefer when people are really into their costumes than if they just decided to throw a pair of hot pants, some neon nylons and a spaghetti strap shirt with face paint smeared on for good measure, and walk down the street. You're not a species, you're a person with not enough clothing on, that's who you are mister.
This is definitely a Collin-sloth. SWEET. Good job Collin!
Zebra. Not pronounced Zeee-bra, but ZEB-rah. That's the way we do it, thank you very much.
This guy was a banana slug. Amazing.


Ants. Star and I decided that one of the ant people was Jack Longino, one of the entomology instructors at Evergreen, and our faculty sponsor for our beekeeping contract. Go Jack!
Raarrrrrrr.... kitty wants to play.
Man-riding Gorilla!
I think there should have been a squelching sound accompanying this octopiddle.

CRABS! YOU'VE GOT CRABS! CRABS ON BIKES!

Not a crab. A very serious little.... bird?
Vrooommmmm! Goes the sea turtle.

Flower people. Ben has decided that it's not entirely appropriate for flowers to be hanging around so many bees. It's a little naughty...
BEES! You're covered in BEES!
CHICKEN! That deserves capital letters.
Lizardman , getting up close and personal.
I don't know what's more frightening, the aging hippy in the fly suit, or the fly suit itself.

He actually made that little boy scream when he made a *buxzzzzxxzz* sound.
The belly dancing picture and....

the matching video.

Flamingos!