I Love Portland

Last Saturday morning, I attended the graduation celebration for the City of Portland's Economic Opportunity Initiative (EOI). You may recall when I went to this last year - I was one of the "graduates" of the program. This year, I went as a staff representative for Trillium Artisans, the nonprofit where I work, which is funded by the EOI.

We had seven artisans graduating this year, and one of them, Tim Combs, was a speaker at the event, along with Mayor Sam Adams, (above) and EOI Program Manager Lynn Knox (below).

Here are some pictures that I took of Tim. I was up in the balcony and the lighting was bad, so these didn't come out so hot. But Tim did a great job talking about Trillium's community and ways it has helped him learn to market and sell his art. He even mentioned Etsy!

Afterward there was coffee and chitchat, but we didn't stay long. Chuck, who was sweet enough to come with me, was wearing some Dartgun buttons and was thrilled when Mayor Sam shook his hand and said, "Dartgun." hee hee!

We bailed out of City Hall pretty early and headed down to the waterfront. It was a beautiful day!

We checked out the new location of Portland Saturday Market, which has been moved to Waterfront Park under what looks like a big hangar.

Lots of familar faces and booths that have been at the market for many, many years. I hope the new location will be successful for them! It's still under the Burnside Bridge (which you can see a bit of in the picture below)!

In some ways it seemed a little too crowded and cramped to me - maybe the aisles between rows of booths are narrower? But it also seemed cool - new, fresh, and clean, and will probably be an even better spot for tourists. Apparently there is no ATM on site (like there used to be) and that was a little discouraging, so we didn't end up getting food. Alas, no Horn of Africa, no Jalisco's burritos for us. We just went home and made sandwiches. (Update: I am so sad to hear that Limey passed away and no longer has his yummy British food cart - no more pasties, no more cuppa tea. Sigh. Lea, thanks for letting me know.)


I just wanted to say that I love Portland! I love the fact that I live in a city that funds a program like Trillium, which helps artists to become business people. And I love it for finding a new and better home for Saturday Market. I love living in a vibrant, creative, beautiful city. I feel really lucky to be here.

My picture with the Mayor!

This morning I attended the celebration of the City of Portland's Economic Opportunity Initiative. That's me making a funny face on the far left. I got to have my picture taken with the mayor because I have been with the Trillium Artisans microenterprise program for three years (as an artisan - I have been staff for about two years).

Pretty much everyone else in the picture (except for Mary LK Davis, who is standing just to the left of Mayor Tom Potter in the back row) is "graduating" from different city-funded programs such as workforce programs and other microenterprise programs. One of Trillium's board members was also there, and she was kind enough to take some of these pictures.

Here's me with my handsome escort -

And here I am with Mary (like me, Mary works for Trillium in addition to being an artisan - she does our accounting):

Well, after that exciting business, Chuck and I headed over to Portland Saturday Market, where I haven't been in ages. We bought some fudge, and had pasties (yummy meat pies) from Limey's age-old booth in the food court.

Chuck bought me this great necklace for Mother's Day!All right, enough pictures of me. Here's fellow Trillium Artisan Denise in her Crafty booth -

We took some of the fudge over to the linoleum store where Suzie Q works - it's her birthday (she'll probably kill me for posting this)!


Who knew linoleum came in so many great colors?

On the way home, we went to Portland Music, Trade Up Music, and Village Merchants (a crazy cool thrift store where I scored a gorgeous embroidered bag and a cool beaded bracelet).

All this and we were home before noon! I can't believe it. On a normal Saturday we probably wouldn't even be out of bed yet.

Well, now I must be off, there's rockin' to do tonight (see next post!)...

Here's my first blog post!

Hi! This is the most recent picture I have of me, Christine, at my table at Crafty Wonderland on May 13, 2007.

I love this event. It's held down in the lounge at the Doug Fir, so it is dark. They played great music all day. I also noticed there were a lot of babies there! Was it because it was Mother's Day? So many cute babies...and I don't think I heard any of them cry!

Hooray for young families in Portland - they are awesome. I wish there had been an event like Crafty Wonderland for me to take my babes to when they were little. But we did take them to Saturday Market, during my first, short-lived attempt at being a Market vendor (1998 - business name: Linoleum Hogass Records). I have a great picture somewhere of Julius sleeping in a guitar case in our booth...

Couldn't find the guitar case picture, but look at this old snapshot from 1998!

And so it begins...this is exactly what I want my blog to be like...a mix of the old and the new. This blog will go back and forth in time pretty often as I pull together all the history and "residue" (as we used to say) of this colorful, vibrant, crazy, artistic life I have been blessed with. Enjoy!

P.S. Someone comment and ask me what "hogass" means!