SERVING
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• Garden Home • Glen
Cullen • Hillsdale
• South Portland
• Multnomah Village
• Raleigh Hills • Vermont
Hills • West Portland
INSIDE:
Lines drawn on
proposed Lake Oswego
to Portland streetcar
Southwest Portland’s Independent Neighborhood Newspaper
Volume No. 19, Issue No. 4
www.swportlandpost.com
Portland, Oregon
Complimentary
– Page 3
February 2011
Southwest Portland knitting groups are great places to make friends and relax
By Polina Olsen
The Southwest Portland Post
The food is good, and the lighting is
perfect. It’s a spot to make friends and
have a beer. Maybe that’s why the SW
PDX Stitch ‘N’ Bitch thrives two years
after Wendy Lee started the knitting
group on a hunch.
Each Wednesday evening, Laughing
Planet (4405 SW Vermont St.) lights up
with bright yarns, clicking needles and
gorgeous hand-knit clothes. Drop-ins
gather around back tables over south-
western burritos and Zappatista salads.
Like all knitting groups, the best part
is the people. All skill levels and ages
are welcome.
“I started the group two years ago
before Thanksgiving,” said Lee who
learned knitting about five years ago.
At that time, the only local group met
just once a month. “I wanted more, so
I decided to start something. I never
dreamed it would get so big.”
Ravelry (www.ravelry.com), a free
online knitting community, proved
crucial to the group’s organization
and ongoing success. The place to go
for patterns, help with projects, and
everything related to yarn, Ravelry
provides space for worldwide virtual
groups like “Fair Isle Knitting,” and
local meetups like “SW PDX Stitch ‘N’
Bitch.” Spreading the word was as easy
as posting when and where. Now the
group has 138 members. Fifteen to 40
drop by Laughing Planet each week.
We stopped by the group’s annual
Christmas party. That night the large,
laughing crowd prepared a cookie
exchange and brought presents. As
usual, ages ranged from mid-twenties
to sixty-something.
We met attorneys, stay-at-home-
moms, teachers, and a budding novel-
ist. Several women have cottage busi-
nesses. Raya Budrevich sells hand-dyed
yarn and custom-knit children’s clothes
from her website blissfulknits.com.
“I’m just trying hard not to go back to
work,” she said as the mothers of young
children nodded. Conversation drifted
from book club favorites to the best way
to make limoncello. Master knitters sat
next to scarf makers. Everyone had a
good time.
Of course, other knitting clubs have
sprung up around the neighborhood.
Northwest Wools (3524 SW Troy St.),
the Multnomah Village yarn shop,
teaches classes and encourages drop-
in groups. Each Sunday afternoon,
Donna Arney, (seated red shirt) and Melissa Schmidt (standing) chat about their
latest projects at knit night. (Post photo by Polina Olsen)
the Knitwits meet and welcome new
participants. They’ve sponsored an
annual knitting cruise for seven years.
This time, they went to Alaska.
“It was so much fun for the women
to hang out together,” said organizer
Diane Wade. “We all knit berets and
wore them to dinner. And, we had a
book club. We read Skinny Dip. The
beginning takes place on a cruise.”
Wade specializes in charity knitting.
“I knit all year for the Soroptimists,” she
said as she picked up her needles. “I
(Continued on Page 4)
City wants to use the Jerome Sears
Armory site for emergency use
instead of housing
By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
While it may be used by the City of Portland for emergency management, the
Jerome Sears Armory is no lonager being considered for affordable housing.
(Post file photo by Don Snedecor)
Don’t forget to renew your subscription. Form on Page 2.
The Southwest Portland Post
4207 SE Woodstock Blvd #509
Portland, OR 97206
The City has given up on plans for
housing development on the old Je-
rome Sears Armory site, and is looking
for alternative uses. “I just don’t think
this pencils out any more,” Commis-
sioner Nick Fish said in a voice mail
message to the Post last month.
Margaret Van Vliet, Executive Direc-
tor of the Portland Bureau of Housing,
told The Post that a local match for
a project proposed by Community
Partners for Affordable Housing, a
non-profit selected to develop the
site after the military had declared it
surplus, would have been somewhere
between $3 and $6 million.
Part of this cost was the price of the
four-acre site on Southwest Multnomah
Boulevard, which the City had hoped
the military would donate. “We’ve
pursued a number of housing develop-
ment projects in the last 18 months, a
couple we’ve had to let go, and this was
one of them,” Van Vliet said.
The City gained the right to acquire
the property in 2007. In 2008, after an
extensive public process, housing was
selected as the preferred new use for
the site. According to Van Vliet, Mayor
Sam Adams’ office favors using the
property as a west side emergency
staging area, providing storage for
vital supplies for use in case of a ca-
tastrophe.
Christine Miles, a spokesperson for
the Portland Office of Emergency Man-
agement, told The Post that the City
currently has no place for the storage of
emergency supplies and equipment on
the west side of the Willamette River,
which could create a major problem if
a major earthquake were to make the
bridges impassible.
It could also provide storage space
for the Transportation and Water
bureaus. It could be used to store
snow-removal equipment, gravel and
sanding trucks, and “a place where
crews could store what they need for
ongoing projects,” Miles said.
Other possible uses could be classes
and training for Neighborhood Emer-
gency Team volunteers as well as City
personnel, Miles said. “It wouldn’t
be a place where trucks will just sit,”
she said, although she was somewhat
vague about how much activity would
occur there on a daily basis.
Miles said that the City had not yet
determined that this is a suitable site.
One key consideration is whether the
federal government would be willing
to donate the land for an emergency
preparedness use, as they were not
willing to do for housing development.
City representatives plan to attend
the next Multnomah meeting, set for
7 p.m. Tuesday, February 8 at the
Multnomah Center, 7688 S.W. Capitol
Highway. There the City will supply
more specific information, community
members will have another chance to
react, and the association may take a
position on the issue.