Now my man and I are local lovers by nature. We both love small businesses and buying locally. Portland was the perfect place for us to go for this reason. We did some research, I looked at local yarn shops of course =). My man looked up a bunch of local micro brewery's, which there were plenty of.
As soon as we got there, we checked out a local yarn shop, Twisted.
This shop was the first one I went to and they had like over 10 local dyers I swear! I loved all the yarns in the shop and my man even helped me pick out some yarns =). He's the best. Picked out his own sock yarn and some yarn we found together for hats. All local dyers of the Portland, Oregon area. Some were from Washington or California, but all were yarns I could not get at home.
After finding our way through what I must say is a very organized public transportation, we ended up at Burnside Brewing Company for dinner. I was very adventurous during our trip and had mussels that night. But the beer might have been the best choice. It was a Belgium chocolate and strawberry stout, called Red Light District. After reflecting on our trip I asked Jared which beer was his favorite and he said this was his favorite he tried.
The next day we went to the only yarn shop I contacted to see if they had local dyers and they were completely underwhelming after visiting Twisted. Not even worth to mention the name. We of course found a place for lunch, BridgePort Brewing Company.
Now I warned my man that I'd be knitting in all the pubs we'd be in and he didn't mind at all =). He tried the Hop Czar and I tried the Summer Sizzler. Both our kind of beers. I did learn a lot about beer in general on this trip, which I know my man is very happy about. I figured out I like the citrus beers or the malty beers. My man is faithful to his hops though always ;-).
AFTER our lovely lunch at BridgePort, we stumbled upon a wonderful local yarn shop, Knit Purl.
Now my man found this shop on our way back from lunch, have I mentioned he's the best? Haha, but this shop was super cute and right in town, I loved the atmosphere. The awesome fun fact I learned about this shop was that the owner actually owns Shibui. Naturally I had to get some Shibui and I found a beautiful pattern to go with my purchase. They have all the colors and it was so much fun. I had no idea that Shibui had that many colors or different weights of yarn! We get a few where I work, but had no idea they had all the beautiful colors =). We should expand our Shibui collection here, haha.
Probably my favorite picture from the whole trip. Both of us wearing knit hats by me and both of our smiles just so big =).
Well after a little bit of resting we found another local brewery to check out, Cascade Brewing. We only tried a few beers, but made my man take a photo outside for his nerd beer portfolio ;-).
This brewery focused on sour beers and we tried these 4 that were all fruity, which is very common in sour beers. My favorite was the Apricot. The others were a Black Cap Raspberry, Cherry Blond, and I think the Blueberry one. I don't think a sour beer would be my first choice but I was glad I got to try them and test them out.
We ventured to an Irish Pub, Kells, for dinner. They had their own beer, but we tried some different local beers. I had a Widmer Hefeweizen, which is SO GOOD! We got some to take home at a whole foods the next night =).
The next morning we went out to breakfast, but went to Voodoo Doughnuts after. The most awesome doughnut place ever.
We actually went to Voodoo Doughnuts twice... Hehe, we had the Maple Bacon Bar, the Portland Cream, and Old Dirty Bastard the first time. Then we had the Memphis Mafia, Captain my Captain and McMinnville Cream. Look those up followers and readers, you need to see how good these look. Also these doughnuts are HUGE!
We may or may not have gained 5 lbs in Portland, haha.
My man did so much walking though for all my yarn shop travels. This was Wednesday and we ran into 2 yarn shops this day. One of my favorites for sure was Dublin Bay Knitting Company. Sadly I did not take a picture in front of this store because this store was adorable and probably the most organized yarn shop I have ever seen. So clean and they dye their yarn solstice, which I snagged 2 skeins of =). I also got to chat it up with one of the girls that worked there and she told me about a few other shops that I should check out while I was there.
***SIDE NOTE; I missed the Yarn Crawl by 1 day. We got there the day after the yarn crawl had ended but all the shops had lots of local dyers anyway so it was a win win.
So the girl told me about the other yarn shop that was on the same street. Naturally I had to go, and my man was very nice about following right along to the next yarn shop =). Pearl Fiber Arts was the yarn shop and they were another cute shop. I was drawn to their yarn that was locally dyed and the dyer used cake dyes. It was awesome beautiful colors and I picked up another 2 skeins. I will put a picture up of all my yarn as soon as possible. Just lots of other things going on as a senior in college to stress about.
Anyway, there was another brewery we checked out for happy hour that night. If you haven't caught on, we went to amazing breakfast places (which for some odd reason I'm leaving out), then checked out at least 2 local yarn shops and then went to happy hour at a local brewery, then another brewery for dinner. That night happened to be Hopworks Urban Brewery. My man found his brewery with a place that serves organic beers.
I had the Organic Velvet ESB. The English Session Beer I picked out all by myself and throughly loved it. The session beers means that you should be able to have a few in a "session". Which is why they made them. My man will confirm once he reads that if I said that properly, haha.
Anyway, after Hopworks, we went to try another local brewery but with dinner. Deschutes Brewery was a good brewery and we were told to go the by different people so it was a must go to. I got another Hefeweizen because I had liked the one from Kells so much. I probably should have tried a different beer because I sadly didn't love it. It wasn't awful, but definitely not as good as the Widmer. The food was pretty good though, I had a healthy salad (we had been eating very unhealthy food and a salad was necessary for my body, haha).
After Deschutes, we had to checkout this bookstore, Powell's Books. Now we went to Powell's again, because this picture is clearly from the day, haha.
If you can see, this book store is a block large AND has multiple floors! I got lost in the knitting section.
As you can see the bookshelves are very tall and I had to have my handsome help me from time to time but I could've stayed there for hours looking at all the patterns =) hehe.
The last day was spent at the parks and the brewvana tour. I'm going to have to save those for next time though because this post took me too long. I must go to bed. Goodnight!
<3 Carly
No comments:
Post a Comment