pit stop

Well, sometimes you're walking right past the Liberty Bell to get to the nearest metro station. I'm not sure if anything besides the urge to do something pointless drove me into the building, but I just walked in, took one selfie, and then loudly giggled the whole way out of the building to continue on my walk to the metro. I didn't even look at the bell. It's broken anyways! It's not even broken for some good or interesting reason, it was just made shitty. Seriously, look it up it's ridiculous.

I like being a local here, WE HAVE MORE FUN DAMNIT.

NH!

When I was younger my family used to go up to my Grandparents' cabin in the woods for a week once every summer. It was amazing, it's still my favorite place on Earth. Since I started working at 17 I haven't had the chance to do more than 3 days and although I've gotten to do tons of amazing things, a week in NH has been the white whale.

Well day dream of lazy reading on the porch no more! This year Db and I got our own week because you know, we're adults now (hahaha).

It kicked ass.

We didn't climb trees or play in the creek in the woods all day BUT WE DID get to play in a frosted donut shaped water tube and hang in a hammock by the lake all day. The weather was beyond perfect, especially compared to the annual Philly mid-summer sufferfest. It was almost like mother nature was saying "sorry guys" for raining on our wedding day, the majority of our camping trips and all our anniversaries so far. I'll take it!

Uzo got over his fear of water… mostly, and he swam every day like a champ. Just one week in the woods turned him into a mountain dog. His dirty little bandana gave him courage to do dumb shit and generally be more independent it would seem. It was super cute. He was even down with chillin' in the hammock!

IT WAS AWESOME. A far cry from our usual full throttle traveling escapades but equally as fun in totally different ways. Doing nothing is the best sometimes.

NH I love you.

happy holidays!

This six month living in a foreign country thing has been insane. Since mid October, Db and I haven't been in one place longer than ten days, and on one particular day we went to four countries! It has mostly been for his job, and for just under six weeks of it we lived out of our suitcases going from hotel to hotel around eastjabumfuck Europe. I wore lots of black and we did lots and lots of sink laundry. Oh the glamour! We also got to go to some absolutely badass places like Barcelona and Paris though, so the weird parts were definitely worth it.

What you see here is our lovely christmas tree, which is decorated with an ornament Db was given for free at an all you can eat Chinese buffet in northern France. I hung it on a lamp in every hotel we went to after getting it so we could have some sort of festiveness going on, it's funny which little things make a difference when you have almost nothing. This silly ornament kind of marked our home base, and now we get to bring it to our real home base because today is our last day in England! In addition to the ornament, we got the sculpture (which we named "Fjord in Space" after Brâncuși's "Bird in Space" series) in Norway, the Rooster in the Açores and I made the 100 link paper chain countdown to tomorrow while Db was in Bulgaria. Db even went to Singapore! Clearly we had no idea what we were in for when we came over here and Sheffield has decided it best to say goodbye by giving us a day full of blazing sun and pouring rain, mostly both at once. It's pretty hilarious and not that unusual.

So while I pack up and we're shooting over the Atlantic towards our lovely Uzo and favorite people, I hope you are all having a great holiday season and have a kick ass New Year. See you all in 2015!

yarndale

This past weekend I was lucky enough to be able to go to Yarndale! My fiber loving cousin told me about it last week and after investigating I realized not only did it look rad, but going was totally doable. I got dressed in my very best handknits and Db and I hopped in the car for the 2 hour drive to Skipton, armed only with cookies, bananas and reusable bags because there was likely to be some yarn related retail therapy happening.

We needed the cookie and banana fuel, and the bags. It was a victorious day.

Yarndale was really cool even before we got inside, they decorated the trees with bunting and pompoms and there were people scattered all over the grass chatting and knitting together while wearing amazing handknits. I loved it, it was great actually seeing people working with yarn and wearing handmade garments. Ravelry is great and I love it, but being surrounded by actual humans who think fiber craft is cool was a whole other level. Someone recognized my cardigan was Grace by Jane Richmond, it blew my mind. Inside there was an entryway with the most epic crocheted bunting that likely exists on Earth (6,212 triangles total), yarn bombed bikes and maps so you could mark where you were from. Upon inspection Db and I saw that no one had pinned Philly so we got to mark our spot. In the actual show there was a massive number of vendors, most of which were local to the UK and sold UK made goods. I'd only heard of two before! There was everything, seriously, everything. Fleeces, roving, carders, spinning wheels, drop spindles, swifts, dyes, knitting and crochet tools, patterns, finished garments, felting tools, peg looms, a booth just for vintage tools (I died, and scored gorgeous things) and every imaginable kind of yarn. I was overwhelmed. They even had little sheep, alpacas and angora rabbits that you could pet. Of course, we pet all the animals, that's kind of my life moto at the moment.

It was a really fun time, it totally put fiber festivals on the radar for me.
For more pics, read more >>>

epic vaca to the motherland aka. faial, açores!

Over a month ago Db and I went to Faial with my family, and oh man, it was SO COOL. I had no idea my Dad was from somewhere so beautiful. I've heard stories my whole life and always imagined it to be pretty rad, but holy shit! I got to see where my family lived and where all the classic stories took place. This house is actually the house my dad and the whole family lived in until they came to the USA. That front window was a bedroom view of the open ocean. I got to see the stone oven my Vavó used to cook bread in, the whole house was magical.

 While we were there we got to hang out with super nice people always, eat such good cheese, bread and fish, see dolphins, black beaches, volcanoes and tropical plants. I would totally like to go back someday. The island maybe takes an hour to ride around the whole thing, and the villages are all really small and cool. They have names that translate to things like "Deep Ravine", "North Beach" and "Little North". Db, my brother and I were all kinda of surprised by how much we liked it. Totally worth the wait in making it happen!

For more pics, read more >>>

london

 Last week Dillon had to do some work at the other office, which happens to be right outside London. We picked a hotel in zone 1 and while Dillon was at work I got to wander the city, slowly turning my feet into hooves between taking breaks to read Orwell's 1984 while IN London, where it takes place. My mom lent me her copy (published before 1984 which is important) and I saved it so I'd be able to read it here. What an amazing way to read this book, wandering around and then reading a bit at night and realizing I was at the place they met up in the book earlier in the day? Reading about the capitalists and how the worst of all is called the King while sitting within view of Buckingham Palace? So so cool. Everything about this pic amuses and disturbs me, including my dollar bill bookmark. I also finally found a legit art store in England, so London is alright by me.

I figured out the first day we were there I walked just over 7 miles! We saw Buckingham Palace, walked the Mall and saw pelicans in St James' Park. We went to The National Portrait Gallery, which disappointingly and surprisingly did not have a portrait of England's national treasure and most often heard voice, Sir David Attenborough. FOR SHAME. We watched Big Ben toll 6 and then a huge rainbow form over it and checked it out at night looking all spooky and imposing, too. We deemed just about everything to be "the Queen's favorite". Shitty pub named The Bag o' Nails? The Queen's favorite. White Pelicans? The Queen's favorite. The geraniums that are in all the gardens in the city? Geraniums must be the Queen's favorite. The Queen also must make her guards wear their stupid uniforms for fun because they carry automatic rifles, no old fashioned weapons there.

It was really fun, and this past weekend when we were there was Summer Bank Holiday which is basically English Labor Day aka. "Summer is over, PARTY!" So we got not only an extra day to explore, but we also got to go to the Notting Hill Carnival with two friends who live outside London! It was … huge. Really I can't compare it to anything except what I imagine Carnival in Rio to be like. I have never seen so many people in one place in my life. Everyone was having a great time, the music was so loud, everyone was gorgeous, people were walking around covered in chocolate and the drinking was no joke. No little nips on the street, we're talking people dancing with 750s of Jager ten feet from cops. I would love to know what it looked like from above, it was wild!

We went all over really, it ruled. I was surprised by how cool London is.
For more pics, read more >>>

hey hey norway

Db travels a lot for work. Usually in the US he travels podunk places and occasionally somewhere cool like Portland or San Fran. But in the UK where can you go? Oh, places like NORWAY. Now I've been pretty lucky so far in life when it comes to seeing things I want to see, like the Pantheon. Not to discount that, but I didn't even know it existed until college. Norway and the fjords on the other hand? I have wanted to see them since third grade when I found out I was part Norwegian.

Story time!

In 1994 when my family went to Epcot my brother and I each got to pick one country to visit and with zero hesitation I chose Norway. It was cool, and amazingly I still remember it pretty clearly… it's probably the only thing I remember about 1994 besides the next part of the story. The next fall the whole fourth grade class had to choose a country to do a project about for "country fair". No country could be picked twice and you got to choose when your name got pulled from a hat. The entire fourth grade classes' names in a hat! That was like… 100 kids. As I nervously sat there willing my name to be called all the other kids picked off the usual suspects; England, Canada, Ireland, Brazil… I was afraid someone would pick Norway because in my mine why wouldn't they?! But lucky me got my Norway even considering I wasn't called until near the end. That day I went home and up to the (scary) third floor where my mom's set of Encylopædia Britannica was, sat on the floor right there and cracked it open. I so, so clearly remember everything about it, right down to the rug I sat on and what that book smells like. Literally the second I saw a picture of the fjords, and struggled to figure out how you would say it out loud, I wanted to go there. I think I even remember where on the page the black and white pic of the fjords was; top left of the left page. Clearly it left a huge impression. My project ruled, I even went to the library. Oh 1994.

Wanting to go to Norway was the longest standing desire of my life. No joke. All the usual "I want to do this someday" things hadn't occurred to me yet, like getting a puppy or owning a house or falling in love. Nope, wanted to go to Norway. And it was also the one desire I still thought was the most inaccessible and unlikely. Like if you don't want to go to Oslo, where do you aim it? It's a huge country! And the airfare. Yikes. So fast forward to a few weeks ago. I land in England and Db goes to work the next day and we have this conversation via text out of absolutely nowhere;

he - "You want to go to Norway wed-thurs?"

me - "Like, the day after tomorrow?"

he - "Yep. We could take the weekend. Look up Stavanger."

Hahaha, BEST WORK TRIP EVER. So I tagged along on his business trip and my dream life became real life for a few days. Enough story time! It was absolutely amazing and there are far too many pictures! I literally cried tears of joy on the ferry through the fjords, I still can't believe it was real. We would both go back in a second.

For more pics, read more >>>

portugal

Db and I went to Italy and Amsterdam on our honeymoon, and on the beach in Fiumicino we decided that our next big vacation would be a beach vacation in Portugal. Three years later that trip is tomorrow! Finally! The MOTHERLAND! We're meeting my family in the Açores where my Dad's side of the family is from, and then Db and I are splitting off to Lisbon for a day and then the Algarve to swim near caves and wear tiny inappropriate bathing suits! I cannot wait for the bakeries, seriously. If the Portuguese bakeries in RI are that good then I can't even imagine how good the ones in actual Portugal are. However beach vacation + tons of amazing pastry = ??? Whatever though, I've been hearing about the real Portuguese bakeries for my whole damn life, I am eating EVERYTHING.

I'm so excited, mid-summer is the perfect time for adventures, I hope you all are having a rad summer so far!

pic

england so far - in pictures

made it.

We made it to England! And have internet finally! And our bikes arrived yesterday! And in the midst of everything we went to NORWAY!

My life is a charmed mess if that combination is even possible.

There's so much that has happened between Philly on the 26th and England today that I can't even imagine how long a "what I have been doing for a month" post would be. I've sewn two dresses, been to 5 countries in 7 days, gotten really good at currency conversions in my head and calculating what time it is back home, eaten terrible pizza and tons of weird but amazing candy, forgotten my knitting on my parents' living room floor before my flight… the list goes on.

Now time to get on my lovely, much missed bike to go investigate the local yarn shops. Let's see if I can get my hands on some Bluefaced Leicester wool! Man, keeping it local in the fiber realm here is going to rock.

new adventure!

Hey all, sorry I've been truly shitty at posting fun things lately. Truth be told I have some crazy stuff going on and we are in the process of…

moving to England for 6 months!

Db and I got a really cool opportunity and jumped at it! We got very little notice and now are kind of scrambling to get everything ready to go, as is evident by most of my houseplants in the "loading area" that is my studio before boxing them up and driving them north to my parents' this past weekend. Our house feels so quiet and empty without them!

So there it is, insanity is on its way! Don't worry though, in between the insane number of things we have to do to prepare I have made time to pick out a few cool knitting projects to stowaway in my luggage, special for England. Best parts? Weekend trips all over Europe and England's generally shitty weather will never make it too hot to knit. Knitting season year round!

I'm so excited to share our adventure with you guys, we have no idea what to expect but we know two things, it will be weird and awesome, and the candy and soda in Europe RULES. Priorities!

bike adventure in the pinelands

Two weeks ago we had a freakish and thorough break in the weather. The snow melted, the sun shined, the coats and gloves came off. We opened the windows to get some fresh air in the house and then packed up our bikes and drove to the pinelands! The pinelands are this really weird ecosystem that apparently only exists in southern New Jersey so they're protected and NJ made a fairly large state forest of it. There is a lot of mountain bike single track to ride, but since I don't have a mountain bike (yet) we brought our cross bikes and rode around on the fire roads. It's great because all the sand drains really quickly and the massive amounts of snow didn't make anything muddy.

It was great getting out there and seeing trees even if most of them were dead, and also riding without tons of gear on. We heard a tree fall in the woods (yes it made a sound) and heard the most berserk screaming hawk/eagle ever… we decided it must be it's mating call but honestly the thing just sounded insane. And as we rode through the sandy, abandoned and creepy trails Db told me stories he'd heard about people apparently using the pinelands as a place to bury bodies. Good to know, don't go to the pinelands at night ever.

evidence

This past weekend Db and I went up to NH with my fam to go skiing for a particularly notable parental birthday. It was fun, and my parents are badasses. We got rad and we all blew down some double black diamonds (ha!). I took pics but let's be real, we've all seen a million pics of people skiing and most are taken by actual professionals. Something we haven't all seen? MOUSE PRINTS IN THE SNOW. This is two little mice hopping along next to each other! Ridiculous.

The day we were in NH that wasn't spent skiing we went to my family's summer house to check it out and mess around. As soon as we got out of the car we saw fresh turkey tracks leading into the woods, which we tracked totally seriously right down to our shrill gobbling impressions. We saw so many animal tracks, they were everywhere. It's nuts to think that that many animals are always around, you just can't tell. It had snowed the night before so they were all super fresh, too. We saw raccoon, turkey, deer, bear, squirrel, rabbit, probably skunk and my favorite, mouse prints. Time to get one of those animal tracks nature guides.

snow!

I LOVE snow. LOVE IT. I will never ever grow out of it, I even loved it when I had a car to clean off. Today when I threw open the blinds and saw this amazing Philly blizzard I cheesed like an idiot and then put on my snow camouflage outfit with glee (seriously, I was giggling to myself), put on Uzo's cutest sweater and went outside. He's not so into it, I actually carry him around in the snow because he's so low to the ground hence his leash dangling in this picture… but it's fucking cute. I'm going to make as many small trips as I can today just so I can be outside; first one was for a hoagie, next up is The Foodery for a beer then who knows, maybe I'll just walk around aimlessly taking more snow pictures with no destination. Snow in the city is my favorite, I feel just like the little kid in The Snowy Day.

I hope you guys are all having as much fun in it as me!

2014

For the first time ever I didn't walk the length of Narragansett Pier beach with my fam on New Years. It was a drag, but Db and I still had some fun. On our first new year away from RI we went to our neighborhood's very own ball drop, complete with a tee shirt canon and flamethrower, and saw the most epic fireworks we've ever seen in real life. Apparently in Philly the party isn't on New Years Eve so much as everyone parties ALL DAY on New Years Day. It was awesome, and we started off the new year cold and on our bikes just like always. Also like always, a list of my goals for the new year, all fun stuff.

This year I will
- Sew 4 garments and knit 8 things. Sewing something with my Pendleton wool and a dress with my organic bear fabric are for sure. Knitting I've got covered, so many fun projects lined up. Dirty Dozen 3.0!
- Keep up with my USA made, vintage and handmade consumer choices. It's been super enlightening and rewarding since I made it a goal last year and I'm not turning back ever. Also can more produce and cut out the last of the processed foods I eat, I'm not that lazy.
- Do a cyclocross race and be ok with being completely crushed by the other riders and probably having an asthma attack in front of everyone I know. Who cares, it will be fun.
- Approach galleries for representation. It's horrifying, but Dad didn't raise no wimp.
- Learn how to do a handstand! I've always wanted to, so why the hell not.

I know the New Year is like a fake thing, but I love it. Do any of you have goals for the new year? I'd love to hear them, this stuff is fun.

leaf peeping by bike

Oh fall! I used to hate you and now I love you. How lucky is this? Philadelphia has the best parks and they're all really easy to ride to. This past weekend Db and I rode to Wissahickon to leaf peep! The weather was ridiculously awesome, long sleeves and sun the whole day. I wish we could do this every weekend. Here's one of my fave bridges (here it is in summer), and now for a hero shot! I just got a new saddle for my bike and this was its maiden voyage. Brooks England certainly knows how to treat my sorry little ass, it was worth every single penny. I hope you all had a fun weekend too!

1500 mile road trip! - Acadia! -

Sorry for the long breaks in posting! It's been pretty crazy over here for the last 6 weeks, lots of db traveling, visits and other both fun and unfun stuff. Hopefully I'm back on it now, it's taken me almost 2 months to post about our amazing and beautiful road trip!

So here we are, in Acadia National Park, Maine. It was completely awesome. The air smelled so clean and there were trees all the way to the beach! We watched the sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain, saw Thunderhole and rode our bikes to go tidepooling at Wonderland. Come on right? We also had the only "fancy" meal of our trip in Bar Harbor while sitting outside next to a mess of ferns and got to camp in two of the coolest campsites I've ever seen. It was the best possible cherry on top of a really fun adventure vacation and I want to go back... I would live up there for sure.

Sunrise. It was so cold on top of that rock!

Thunderhole being totally unimpressive but making lots of amusing fart noises.

Beach hike!

So into tidepooling! It was the only thing I was like "I want to do this on this trip" about (besides buying some Swans Island yarn haha) and it was VERY awesome. We didn't see any starfish but it didn't disappoint, and I caught crabs! How often do you hear that said with any excitement? I was so amped I used my Fabric Horse utility belt for shades/camera and wore my Mom's fabulous vintage ski shirt, by far my favorite article of clothing. It's windproof but still looks this awesome! I got to crawl around and stick my hands in the water touching weird stuff, it was great.

...This is what we saw. These are unfiltered, the colors were insane.

Then we rode our bikes back along the coast and into the woods to our campsite. We set a fire and looked the stars, we found so many constellations. Camp stove ramen and red wine. AWESOME VACA, I would recommend it to anyone. Acadia is where it's at.

1500 mile road trip! - part 2 -

Next up on our million mile road trip is VT and bikes! We went to Kingdom Trails in East Burke, VT to mountain bike. Db mountain bikes all the time so I was excited to see what it was all about... but also like "Why did I agree to do this? I'm going to crash and fall off a mountain." Also, confession, when I envision 'vacation I've been looking forward to all year' I imagine doing something different than usual ie: being clean, not endangering myself for fun, wearing cute clothes that aren't going to be ruined for sure. This was none of the above... I wore cycling shorts, you know, the kind with the padded butt. Anti-glamour! But it ended up being pretty fun. The first trail we rode down was way too hard for me, I didn't even imagine there were trails that wild, it was serious. I bet it's really fun if you're good at it or have no fear of serious injury. I ended up completely eating shit twice and one of the times I DID fall off the mountain. Db said he's never seen anyone do that before. I got stuck really quick and put my foot out the side that was downhill then just rolled away, it was ridiculous. After we got back (and changed into real clothes!) we nabbed a beer each and drank them in the woods. It was really fun.

Not drunk, just amped. Bikes, beer and woods are a really fun combo.

1500 mile road trip! - part 1 -

A few weeks ago db and I went on an epic New England road trip. We drove all over the damn place and it was awesome. It was also very Blair Witch Project at times as the pic above can second. We did way too much fun stuff for me to recount in one post, so here's part one of Epic Mountainous and Bicycle New England Roadtrip!

NH
To avoid being rained on in a tent we pit stopped in NH at my Grandparents' summer house for the night. I love that place, I didn't want to leave. We went for a dark walk to the lake (top pic) and got to hear two trees fall when it was totally still and pitch black out. Luckily our car was spared, but it was close. We had to saw our way out of the driveway in the morning so we could continue on to Quebec!

QC

Longest foot suspension bridge in the world.              It was in Parc de la Gorge, Coaticook, QC and was sufficiently ridiculous. It was super high and really wobbly, so we jumped around a lot trying to make it shake and then took a faux horrified selfie, of course.
We got to camp in the ferns along a creek. It was a pretty cool campsite, even taking into account the 50+ vultures circling above the campground and the ever present faint scent of rotting flesh. I really want to know what gigantic dead thing was in the woods. We used our camp stove successfully to make fancy organic oatmeal and... rainbow marshmallow hot cocoa. Priorities! It was vacation, they had better be rainbow.
  USA that way! Next up VT...

swans island

This past week db and I went on an epic mountainous and biking road trip around New England and a little Canada. It was absolutely beautiful! While up there we went to Acadia National Park and I could see Swans Island across the water, land of perfect gorgeous wool. If you don't know about Swans Island Company yet, they're an amazing yarn and blanket company in Northport, Maine. Their yarn is organically processed, naturally dyed and made in the USA of merino wool from sheep who also live in Northport.

I've knit with Swans Island before, I got a bright bubblegum pink I turned into legwarmers as my first ever made up pattern years ago. I really liked it but haven't ever seen any outside of Maine. I wanted to get some as a yarn souvenir of our cold backwoods adventure vacation, so we decided to hit up a few stores listed as retailers on our way down the coast. When we were driving down the scenic part of route 1 all of the sudden db spotted a huge sign that said "Swans Island Blankets Showroom". We were going pretty quick and he was like "Do you want to stop?" "YES!", imagine that all crammed together into one word and then a cloud of dust as we veered off the road suddenly into their parking area. The coincidence of the whole thing was crazy, I had their site up on my phone looking for retailers and we just happened to drive by where it all goes down? So awesome.

We had zero idea what we were in for, the place was amazing. We were given the grand tour by Heidi who was great, she showed us all the different blankets and they have a bed on display so you can see what they look like in real bed related context which was funny and smart. They have all their yarns in all the colors and (best part) a side room of "tonal variations" full of yarn which the colors came out not quite exactly right... all of which are still totally beautiful. We even got to go in and see their four looms! Their dye studio is on site also, honestly it was a peek into my dream life.

You guys should check them out, I ended up getting these 6 gorgeous skeins from the tonal variations room and I can't even remember the last time I was this excited about a yarn purchase. I started out playing it cool with just the orange... but you know how it goes. How often do you get to do something like choose from ALL the yarn? And at the source? Plus I can't walk away from a warm mustard yellow, it's the best color. I love everything about this company and their yarns, it was so cool getting to see where it all happens. Best yarn souvenirs ever.