Sunday, June 30, 2013

Long Time No Blog: Two Things

Well hello there dear and faithful readers (insert illusions of grandeur here). I have missed you. I have been absent on this space (not intentionally but rather inevitably) for two reasons.

One: Winslow



Several months ago, my dear friend and neighbor Sarah and I started kicking around the idea of starting an Etsy shop together. Actually, I think it happened in my living room like this. Sarah, "Wouldn't it be fun to start an Etsy shop?"Me, "Yeah. We should do it." Sarah, "Wait, are you kidding?" Me, "No, I"m not kidding. Are you kidding?" Sarah, "Nope, totally serious." Thus we became business partners. Obviously there were a few things that happened between now and then, including us changing the focus of our shop from vintage to handmade because we realized how much we both love making things. Now, the Winslow shop is stocked full of handmade bowties, neck ties, and pocket squares designed and made by us. There are a few things that we think make our stuffs extra special. First, we use all reclaimed and / or vintage fabrics. That means that bowtie you see below above to be a shirt. Hand knit ties are also on their way for fall, which we're making from unravelled sweaters (all thrifted of course). Second, we do things by hand whenever possible because we both just think there's something special about handmade goods. That means our pocket squares all feature hand-rolled hems, and our neckties are also all stitched using a hand slip stitch (that's right, no sewing machine involved folks). The bowties have less hand stitching due to the logistics of their construction, but still have the same attention to detail as our other products.




Clearly, I could go on and on about Winslow for paragraphs. It's just so darn exciting to work with a wonderfully inspiring and driven friend on such a cool project. But, I'll spare you any more ramblings here and instead point you to our Winslow blog, Etsy shop, and Instagram feed for more.

Two: Tunisia



Yep. You read that right Tunisia. Kevin and I took an extended hiatus to visit our old friend Thomas in Tunisia, and to meet his lovely lady and our new friend Rachel. The trip was jam-packed full of wonderful experiences, quality time with our friends, and good memories. Also, lot of pictures. Here are a few highlights.

Exploring the Roman Colosseum at Al Jem.

Overnight trip into the Sahara Desert on Camels

Ancient cliffside houses in Chenini

Beautiful hand woven rugs

Traditional Tunisian decorated blue door while exploring Sidi Bou Zid

Beach time at Raf Raf

Truly, it was one of the best trips of our lives. Kevin has shared lots more pics here on fb if you're interested!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Churchill Family Yurt Tour 2013: Cape Disappointment



Our fourth yurt tour stop took the Churchill family down to the very southwestern end of Washington to Cape Disappointment State Park. Don't ask me why it's called Cape Disappointment. Despite reading all of the state park placards (with determination) I did not learn. Sure, I could look it up. But I wanted to read it on a flippen' placard, okay?

Well, that got off to a more sour note than intended.

Let me start again.

This was the BEST YURT TOUR STOP YET! Really. We discussed this in detail during several of our beach walks and we both agreed. There's a TON to do at this state park, and we didn't even do it all in our first visit (assumption here is we'll be going back). First though, before I jump into the weekend activities, I've got an announcement to make: we bought a new car! It's a dark gray 2004 Volkswagon Golf. Call us modest people, but it's pretty much our dream car. We hope to have him for a long time (in this non-rust-creating state we now live in). We bought him on a Friday and set off for yurt tour early, early Saturday morning. It was nice to take him on a nice long drive right away. Here he is parked outside our YURT!



Saturday was spent doing two different hikes to the two different lighthouses at the park. That's right. There's not only one but two lighthouses to visit here. This is because this is where the mighty Columbia River meets the Pacific, creating one of the most unpredictable and difficult to navigate sandbars in the world (according to the placards).





The other cool thing about this area (among other things) is that it's where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery first made it to the Pacific Ocean. We skipped the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center this time (who brings $5 in cash on a hike in the woods?) but agreed it was something we could do at a later trip. The view of the ocean, the mountainous Oregon coast, and the Columbia River bar were spectacular. The lighthouses were super cool, too, and really made me want to live in a lighthouse. Can you do that? Do people still do that? Hmmm...must search for a degree program in lighthouseology. Oh! I almost forgot to talk about the old military battery on the top of the hill. It was build pre-WWI to guard the Columbia River entrance (again, nod to the placards). It was pretty cool to explore.



There was one major disappointing thing about Cape Disappointment (couldn't resist). Our fire. Major disappointment. The wood the camp store sold us was super wet. Seriously, it wasn't smoking...it was steaming. So after burning up all of our kindling, old man's beard (a type of lichen), and paper and still not being able to get the bigger logs to really catch, we turned on the old propane grill and cooked out bison burgers and asparagus there. It was so sad. Even our Oregonian neighbors took pity on us and came over to offer more kindling. They probably thought we were city slickers who didn't know how to build a fire. I mean, that's what I would have thought. It was sort of comical really. The guy came over with some really dry kindling, obviously got it to light up right away, starting piling on some of our wet wood, stood back, looked pretty proud of himself, said something smug like "that'll do 'er" (I don't really think he said that), wiped his hands and went back to his camp. Yeah, guy. 15 minutes later your dry kindling was ash and our wet wood continued to steam. We got enough heat to make s'mores and lined our fire pit with the rest of the wood so it could hopefully dry out from the (little bit of) heat and be good to go in the morning. Really, it was more of a smoke than a fire, and the wind was so unpredictable we kept getting harassed by random smoke plumes. We kept joking that we were turning into smoked salamis. Ha!

Then, we took a walk down to the beach, did some beach combing, climbed around the rocks a bit, then discovered a new fun beach activity:


It's a beach see-saw! Or shall I say SEA-saw. Pun intended (always). This one was already set up and we saw some other people doing it first so we knew it was acceptable beach behavior. I think these are the kinds of things people who live near beaches where it's always too cold to swim and too chilly to even take your sweater off 80% of the time come up with. But, since we're those kind of people now, we loved it.



Sunday, we were able to get our now drier wood going better than the night before and were able to make ourselves some fire-coffee, fried tomatoes, eggs, and beans for breakie. Yum. We used the cast iron we broke in at the last yurt tour stop and it's seriously my favorite camping thing.



Sunday we went out on the North Jetty on the north side of the Columbia and Kevin tried some fishing. He didn't really know what he was fishing for. Maybe more surf perch, but we weren't really sure what lives in the in-between of the Columbia and the Pacific. There were plenty of other fishermen (including a sea lion) so there must be something in there, but he didn't catch any of it. I did my usual of finding a nice spot to sit and read.


Previous stops of the Churchill Family Yurt Tour can be found here, here, and here.