Philly fun (and a S update)

This past weekend was my annual trek across the country for educational conferencing (and usually a bit of fun too). This year's destination was Philadelphia and good times were had by all. In addition to all of the good work-related activities (which I won't bore you with here), we explored the city a bit...



we ate some good food, we did some shopping, I helped Em get her knitting skills polished up, and, are you ready, I successfully coerced people into going on a yarn crawl with me! Now I did not think this would be a possibility at all before the trip. But Friday night as we were looking at the conference schedule for Saturday, and as I was helping Em with her knitting, I realized that I needed to get Em a set of needles (so I didn't have to send mine home with here, which I had taken off a project in process). What a good time to go yarn shopping right?!

First stop, Loop.



These pictures do not do the place justice (sorry for the blog-unworthy blurriness).



Bright, open, airy, colorful. A beautiful selection of really nice yarns. The staff were very friendly.



(a wall of koigu... nice).

They had lots of very nice yarns, including some very high end products. I was struck that this place was very much modern. Clean lines, bright, lots of open space. Reminded me of some popular up-scale clothing stores these days. (Interestingly, looking at their web page, they say they carry "hand-dyed and luxury yarns" and I think that's very accurate.)

After a bit of time there, we walked to Rosie's Yarn Cellar.



I thought this place was great! (Also terrible photos... many apologies!)



This place was warm, cozy, just full to the brim with lots of different yarns. Again, the staff were incredibly helpful.



In some ways these guys were the perfect complements of each other. I felt like, going to both, I got all my needs met. Warm and cozy + bright and open. Both had super stock, both had friendly people to help. And amazingly, I don't think I completely exasperated my friends who went along for the ride.

Next time I'll share the purchases I made.

The weekend zipped right by... between all the shopping and conference sessions, the weekend was gone before I knew it. Fortunately yesterday my travels home were also noneventful and now I have a short week. Yeah!!

On other travel fronts, S made it to Maiduguri, Nigeria (which he describes laughingly as a "charming little developing city of 15 million." Sounds like the rest of his trip to Amsterdam was good and he's enjoying Nigeria so far. I'll post more pictures as I get them.