Our Day in Town and Meeting Salley Mavor

Yesterday we had a wonderful spring break outing.  You may remember awhile back that I mentioned that one of my favorite artist/children's book illustrator/writers, was coming to Portland, and that I had hoped to attend her book signing.  Yesterday I had the very wonderful opportunity to attend Salley Mavor's Once Upon A Thread illustrated lecture and book signing.

Yesterday, after church, where I enjoyed teaching a Sunday school lesson about Palm Sunday, the whole family headed in to Portland to Gossamer Fiber Arts and Crafts store.  Gossamer Fiber Arts store is a small, cute little shop that sells wool felt and roving, has a nice selection of yarn, as well as art work for sale from local artists.  They were hosting Once Upon A Thread.  Salley Mavor is the writer of Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects , this is the wonderful book that I often recommend for learning to make wire frame dolls, as well as other embroidery and felt craft work.  It is from Felt Wee Folk that I learned to make my little flower fairies, and fairy tale dolls.

Like this flower fairy, and Rumpelstiltskin.

So of course I was very excited to meet the writer of this book, as well as hear her lecture.  I was so glad that Sarah and Joseph could also attend, the lecture was wonderful, and showed the progression of her art from the time she was a child to present day.  Salley Mavor's art work is stunning, her embroidered detail is just amazing, it was a real treat to see some of her art work that I hadn't seen before.  She also showed pictures of her work space, I am always fascinated by the spaces people work in, I like to see that creative space.  All around very inspiring lecture, Gary and the kids, as well as myself, all truly enjoyed the experience.

Here are a couple of pictures of  Salley Mavor giving her illustrated lecture.

I had a fun time browsing through Gossamer Fiber Arts store, and in addition to buying two new Salley Mavor books, I purchased a locally made Beeswax Egg Shaped Candle for Easter, and a cute tiny little felt bird made by a local crafter.

Salley Mavor just recently came out with a new book Pocket Full of Posies A Treasure of Nursery Rhymes, which was the book that she was signing.

Here are my Salley Mavor Books.

Here is my signed Pocket Full of Posies, I love her little drawing

Here is a picture that Gary took of me meeting Salley Mavor and getting my book signed.

Such a fun experience!  Here Gary took a picture of Sarah and Joseph and Me outside of Gossamer.

Afterward, Gary and I decided to surprise the kids with a fun spring break treat.  Since we were all the way  in Portland, we decided to stop at a very fun Doughnut shop. Anyone who is familiar with Portland, Oregon, knows how popular Voodoo Doughnuts is.  Voodoo Doughnut Shop is well known for their funky doughnuts, and it has become quite the place to visit.  We live about an hour away from Portland, and people will often make the hour long drive just to get these tasty treats.

As soon as we got out of the car we could smell very delicious doughnuts being made.  The line was, as I had heard it would be, slightly long, but the staff was very efficient, and we had just enough time to decide on our choices while the line moved along.

We got a picture of Sarah and Joseph with our big pink box of doughnuts.

Then the kids took a picture of Gary and me :)

Here is the fun big doughnut box.

And here were some of the doughnuts we picked out, yep, that is Captain Crunch on a doughnut, as well as a "grape ape" doughnut, a " Miami Vice Berry" doughnut, a bubble gum doughnut, and a giant apple fritter.

Here is a picture of the little voodoo doll doughnut, which got rather smooshed, and the one I liked best, a maple bar with bacon on top (yum yum).  Pretty fun doughnuts, you can see why the kids enjoy them so much.  I was very leery about the cereal topped doughnuts, but it actually tasted pretty good.  We all enjoyed them, and will have to make a stop there next time we visit downtown Portland.

While we were out and about, we noticed the rivers were looking pretty high, so we made one last stop on our way home, and took a look at Clackamette Park, the place where the Clackamas River and the Willamette River join up.  As we suspected, the rivers were rising.  Here are some pictures of the flooded park.  You can see the picnic bench almost covered in water.

There are always tons of birds at Clackamette Park, when the kids were little we would bring them there to feed the birds quite often on Sunday afternoons.  Luckily, I had some crackers in my Sunday school bag, and the geese, ducks, seagulls, and a few crows enjoyed their snack.

What a fun day, and a perfect way to wrap up spring break.

Here are my Amazon Affiliate links for Salley Mavor's wonderful books.