Wheatless in Seattle

Back from the handfasting… and no, the joke above is not mine.

My plane was four hours late getting into Seattle so Thursday night’s plans were stuffed. Went dancing to blow off some steam but the delay was still thing we needed. Friday we went to Pike St Markets for breakfast and then spent the afternoon at the FolkLife festival. Rather handy that the wedding coincided with one of the biggest folk festivals in America. We watched

bevsob

 perform funky acrobatic tricks and listened to Flodd (they call themselves tango pop but it sounds like klezmer to me). We also saw Bev’s little red studio (beautiful! *envy*) and met and chatted to a friend of Bev’s named Raven who showed us her emporium filled with erotic art and erotic Lego.

We tried to keep out of each other’s way and off each other’s toes — Doug was somewhat nervous about the handfasting speech and I had a lot on my plate. Saturday morning, we had breakfast delivered and then I looked up gluten-free bakeries while Doug finished getting dressed. Stopped at Da Vinci’s bakery on our way and picked up divine strawberry and custard tart so I had cakey things to eat at the handfasting, not knowing that their “cake” was going to be individual chocolates I can eat anyway.

It was all lovely.

puzzlefox

 is a sweetheart and her man’s not bad either. Met lovely folks. Doug took photos when he wasn’t being part of the ceremony and handed the camera to the groomsmaid’s partner when he was.

That night was another planning disaster. Went back to the hotel room to collapse for a while with hopes of going out to the bride and groom’s again for hot-tubbing, ended up having awkward discussions, not getting onto dinner until 11, having gluten issues with the food and then finally getting to the hot-tub past midnight to find everybody had gone to bed.

Sunday we had brunch with everyone, at this awesome vegetarian place called Café Flora and then Doug and I went to the Experience Music Project which was amazing. I remember writing about this place when it first launched. I could lose myself for hours in the oral histories of the musicians. One of the most amazing was Linton Kwesi Johnston talking about conscious decisions to pattern the rhythms of his poetry off the bass in reggae rather than iambic pentameter after reading Black Panther Literature.

Photos when I get an opportunity.