Mid-East meets Midwest

My husband and I were walking down the street one our way to Trader Joe's to get some of our favorite goodies when we walked past a building we have walked passed many times before.

But this time something caught my eye. I tugged on my husband's arm to get him to slow down and pointed to the main entrance. "Look!"

"Yeah Bloomingdales. We don't need anything" He replied as he started walking again.

"No. Look at the writing around the entrance. That's arabic. Look at the detail. It's all Arabesque. It's beautiful."

We stood in awe for a few minutes before the freezing weather forced us to be on our way.

On our walk home we let our imaginations run wild with all the possibilities of how that building got there. Who built it? Why here in the heart of the city? How did it become a Bloomingdales of all things?

After all our pondering and speculation I was surprised to find out the real history of the building. It was built by the local Shriners group in 1912 and was an auditorium that the circus would preform in.

I find that I smile to my self as happen past this building again and again. It seems to bring me memories of the sun and palm trees of the Middle East every time I walk by.

My little piece of the Middle East right here in Chicago

FO: button band hearts

I used my own pattern to knit some button band gloves with heart buttons.

Knowing that my friend would ADORE (pink hearts!) them, I sent them her way.

As a knitter I'm not sure it gets much better than someone calling to gush about how much they love something you knit for them. It makes all the work completely worth it.

Pattern details:

Pattern: Button Band Fingerless Gloves of my own design

Needles: US 7's

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in SFO Sky

Mods: I used super cute pink heart buttons and I omitted the stripes as the yarn is stripy enough.

randomness

1. Tt's 40 something degrees outside and the snow is melting

2. The snow melting means that my beautiful city has turned in to a drippy, slushy, dirty mess.

3. There are three (count them three!) tv shows out right now that take place in portland

- Portlandia being the most obvious (and best) stays the truest to the sites and feel of Portland

- Perfect Couples quietly takes place in Portland although you can tell their Portland is WAY too sunny to actually be filmed there

-Life Unexpected takes place in Portland but it's a bit too 90210/Dawson's Creek for me

4. Bonus! Leverage was also filmed in Portland! But I'm not sure if it still is or not

5. I love seeing Portland getting a little tv action. It's such a beautiful city that is under appreciated

6. I got my first skein of bugga! I have been wanting to get my hands on some of this yumminess for ages and boy was it worth the wait! SO SOFT! and the colors are so rich and have so much depth to them. Just beautiful

7. I have some more patterns a brewin in my head and on my needles so stay tuned!

Snowpocalypse

Well I got my wish.

I wanted to be away from the sand storms. I wanted to be away from the heat. I wanted to be away from the relentless sunny skies (for an Oregonian it's just not natural for it to only rain 2 weeks a year!).

So what did a get? My very first blizzard.

I don't know what is in my blood that I seem to end up living the extreme of possible weathers. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where people get all fidgety if it's dry for too long (like three days in a row). Spent three years in Dubai where 90 degrees is often a relief from the heat and now living in Chicago where apparently it's normal to get 50'' of snow a year.

I happened to be in Detroit when The Great Blizzard of 2011 (imagine a movie announcer saying that) hit. Detroit didn't get hit nearly as badly (only 10" instead of the 20" Chicago go) but boy it's was kinda freaky. Wind so strong the snow was flying from left to right and it was howling. It's really hard to sleep when the wind is howling... it's just too creepy.

This is the courtyard in the Hotel before the storm hit

And here is after. And this is after a day of me not leaving the room! If there's a blizzard and food can be delivered I see no reason to leave

You can see the snow coming up past the windows

This is our windshield. The wind blew so strongly that the car didn't get buried just frozen.

When we finally did make it back to Chicago this is what we found (These pics aren't very pretty because let's face it snow isn't very pretty after the first day...)

Glad that wasn't my car!

This is the INSIDE of our parking garage. Snow is like sand and it gets EVERYWHERE!

There are still piles of snow like this all over the place. And dump trucks filled with snow driving down the roads. I think they just keep moving it from one place to another.

The path through the park by our house still had snow up to the knees

Fortunately Chicago does a great job of clearing the roads and for the most part it wasn't a problem just 2 days after the blizzard.

And it still wasn't a problem when it started snowing again