all the pretty houses

See these birdhouses? When Doug and I took Patrick to WSU in August, we took a few afternoon side trips in the Idaho countryside. This was just outside of one of the many small towns around Moscow. There was this big red barn, and then on the east side of the barn, every fence post had a painted red bird house attached. I thought they might be bluebird houses, but I think they are too low to the ground and on a fairly busy road. The west side of the barn had pastel bird houses, laid out in the same manner. I just thought they were so charming!So, too much time has passed since we took him over to blog about. But, Thursday night (when we were looking to pass some time) we went and saw "Hairspray" and had beer and a light dinner at this cool old pub in downtown Pullman. I saw Hairspray at the 5th Avenue theatre on the premier night and loved it, so was really looking forward to seeing the movie. It was great. I laughed so hard - very funny to see John Travolta in a pink sequined dress, dancing and singing. Oh my.

On the way home after our weekend in the Palouse, we decided to get some dinner. We don't always like to stop at the chain restaurants(McD's, Taco Smell and the like), and usually have good luck with those little local hamburger places you find in small towns. We both really like onion rings, so we informally started an onion ring tour this summer. Not that we have been going out of our way to do so, it's just something fun. Anyway, we thought we'd stop in at Ellensburg to get some dinner. The exit we took just had the usual chain places, and we decided to skip them and keep looking. We spotted a sign for "Red Horse Diner" on the freeway and decided to investigate. This is what we found:

It's an old gas station themed diner. Hamburgers and sandwiches are named after cars. Really good food too (including, yes, onion rings!) The funny thing about this place is that when I was growing up in Portland (Oregon), there was a Mobilgas station just around the corner from our house. I could see this same horse sign out my bedroom window, and it was sort of what I remember as my nightlight.

Knitting has been taking place around here - the Noni bag that ate my firepit has been felted,it definitely is smaller, yet still quite large. I finally found some rings that will work, and now need to put the zipper in and attach the rings. I plan to use this as a weekend travel bag.

We have a Noni trunk show in at work right now. One of the bags is the medium adventure bag. I hope to get a picture of all three of the bags lined up in a row, since I have also made the smallest adventure bag awhile back... guess I need to hustle and get this one done!

I did block my adventures in color blending Koigu shawl. I think it turned out quite pretty.

I have a question for those of you who have knit lace shawls - how do you store them? On a hanger? In a drawer or storage box? Right now I've been carefully folding them and putting them in a drawer. Just looking to see if there are better options out there.