memorial day

i love long weekends. always. they have such a good vibe about them. memorial day is like the unofficial summer kickoff, everyone grills and drinks beer and the party is all about being outside which i am so into. this year we were trying to figure out what to do since we live in a new place and everyone has plans but us. every memorial day since db and i moved in together we've had a bike adventure so we decided to make up our own scavenger hunt around the city via bikes this year.

on the list:

eat a vegan treat

go to a new park and lay in the grass (bonus if we get to climb a tree)

sneak a drink in public

go to a new record store

draw a hopscotch on a busy sidewalk and leave a stone next to it

take a selfie

ride on a dirt road

get wet

skip stones

we didn't succeed in hitting them all (we missed the last 3 but we'll do them sometime) but we did pretty well for a late afternoon jaunt into old city. what we did end up doing...

selfie! right before sneaking drinks. just because i'm not posting pics doesn't mean it didn't happen.

chilled in a new park! i brought a helicopter my mom gave me just in case we found a good enough park to shoot it around in. it was a wild success even though the stupid thing stopped working after 5 seconds, that almost made it funnier.

then db drew an expert hopscotch and we had a hopscothoff, made friends with strangers walking by and left a little encouraging note next to it when we left. this was one i was pretty bummed about because i forgot chalk and was convinced we wouldn't be able to do it and for whatever reason it was the best sounding one to me. well i'll be damned in the park we chose some kids just abandoned their chalk! it was meant to be. ...i'll spare you the blurry, strange pictures of us actually jumping around.

after hopscotchoff we went to a new record store a friend from work recommended called Repo Records. it was a good one, and i ended up nabbing Kid A on vinyl finally which is pretty amazing. we still haven't listened to it, but it's going to be awesome.

we also managed to get vegan treats in there! it wasn't in the same trip but we went to Little Baby's for ice cream/vegan ice cream with some friends and got probably the most epic ice cream toppings of my life, paprika pepitas. mind blown.

it was a fucking bomb weekend, i hope your memorial days were as much fun!

a tree

just in case you haven't seen anything beautiful yet today. how did nature come up with this stuff?

fort wetherill

db and i went up to rhode island this past weekend. we did the usual see everyone you possibly can thing, but on saturday for my bro's birthday we planned to take him on a mystery daytime adventure. what did we do? why play in broken glass and rubble of course!

we drove down to forth wetherill in jamestown with some flashlights, raincoats and a camera to spelunk in the defunct military base. originally the fort was named "fort dumpling" and was built by the british in the 18th century. very british name, no wonder they lost the revolutionary war with forts named like that. really? storm the DUMPLING? not intimidating but very amusing. it was used by the british then the french and then the us and eventually fort dumpling was knocked down to build this guy, fort wetherill, in the same spot. it was last used in WWII to protect narragansett bay from U-boats. after that it was turned over to the state and now it's a public park. most of it looks like it was blocked off with rubble but it's all be pushed aside so you can crawl around in there. it's really really big, i would guess over a football field sized area of crazy underground buildings and totally NOT zombie proof tunnels that weave around in complete blackness. it was shitty and rainy out but somehow the drear was really fitting.

it was really cool, if any of your guys live near it i totally suggest wandering around. it was interesting to imagine what it was like when it was being used and what all the random rooms, tunnels and tracks on the ceilings were for. there's something so beautiful about the decay of time.

baker's doz: there are many other things i should be doing right now...

so, i wrote this list of projects i want to complete this year, when they're allowed to be started (either date or relative to other projects' progress) and whether or not i have all the supplies ready and waiting. sounds like a great idea right? it worked really well at first, but all good things must end. plus it's no fun if it's not rebellion, even if it's rebellion against my own past planning.

the downfall of all project organization happened because as a quite late birthday gift db ordered me a pair of monogrammed signature needle arts needles in the size he knew i wanted! he didn't wrap them and present them in a normal way though, he told me to "check on my yarn because he saw a weird creature this morning". i went hunting thinking there was a demon moth trying to wreck what's left of my good yarn but instead saw these needles jammed in a ball of yarn. way better than a moth! they look like mini rocket ships, i was so excited i cast on the boxy sweater i had planned as my casual over the summer knitting/carrot i was dangling in front of myself to finish a few less exciting projects right then. i literally sat down and cast on within 5 minutes. apparently i save my willpower for cheese exclusively.

so to the project. it's going to be the super fabulous pullover, boxy! i had myself on Joji's message list for when the pattern got released but couldn't find the tomato madtosh i wanted to make it with, so it just got put it on the back burner until i'd have the yarn and time (ha). when madelintosh announced the colors they were discontinuing for 2013 and grapefruit was one of them, i went online and bought the last 3 skeins eat.sleep.knit had. voila! an amazing, cozy sweater in my fave yarn of all time. that worked out well right? now to ration working on it so i get something more timely done.

i have too many awesome things to work on and do, but as my grandma says "idle hands, devil's workshop!" so something along those lines just might be what db had monogrammed on my needles...

baker's doz: short row sweater 2.0

here it is, another silly knit half sweater... my specialty. i knit one of these last year and loved it so much i made a second one in a color i like more. this one i changed a little to make the back dip the same as the front, all about it.

short row sweater by purl soho (modified)
madelinetosh sport - winter wheat

i can't believe i've already finished 9 projects this year! not so bad. i sort of fell into a rut with making doubles of patterns and losing interest while simultaneously having less time to work on things because i got an outside of the house job and a string of very fun visitors. hopefully i'll get back on it, i have some fun stuff in the works and some surprises i can't wait to post about. secrets secrets!

belmont plateau

this weekend we went to belmont plateau in philly, seriously every park around here is ridiculously cool. we packed a bag with supplies (beer) and db lead the way into the woods because he mountain bikes there. we heard weird birds and smelled some weird smells, uzo hopped over logs like the hardcore off road dachshund he is and i retaught db what poison ivy looks like for the millionth time. we had a beer picnic on a log in the woods while uzo sniffed around and decided he owned everything around us. db had been talking about making a terrarium since right when everything died in the fall, so we brought the supplies he needed to nab a few plants and rocks to build it. that was saturday and it's still not dead... pretty impressive. i decided i'm growing peas this spring and nabbed some bean poles from a dead tree in the woods too. i can't wait to have my very own pretend tree on the deck! plus we get to eat them. i remember peas being the only crop i'd ever grow when i was younger that would actually work out. carrots on the other hand can kiss my ass indefinitely.

also,

led zeppelin IV anyone?