Pulled into Purl

The crafty mecca beckons...

I got to enjoy a much needed and long anticipated weekend with some of my best friends from back home in NYC this past weekend. It's a little silly that this is the first time I've been back since living and interning there in 2005, but well worth the wait as I was truly able to relax and enjoy the sights and just exploring with friends. There is always something new to find there no matter how much you think you know the place!

Having a spiritual moment

I could not resist the pull of Purl SoHo and dragged us downtown so I could go drool over all the loveliness it has to offer. With all the drooling I've done from afar, it felt like a bit of a craftastic pilgrimmage of sorts and I probably spent way more time and money and took more photos in there than was at all reasonable. I couldn't help it...so many pretty shiny things in there to get crafty with and I knew I had to share the adventure with you!

Liberty on the bolt! Lions and tigers and bears OMY!

Enjoy the Purl porn my friends and have a very lovely weekend as it looks like it's going to be up this way. More soon when I get a chance to breath in between continued craziness!

Our DC

 When I first moved to DC, I would spend my weekends exploring museums and bookstores by myself (this was before I met my would-be husband) along the mall and up into Dupont Circle and the U street corridor. If you're ever in the area, don't miss Second Story books, Kramer Books and Afterwords Cafe, Red Onion Books, the dutch renaissance wing of the National Gallery, Dumbarton Oaks, or CakeLove...just to name a few of my favorite places!

We're back and several days later, ahem, I've got some purdy photos to share with you...no thanks in part to my computer that needs a day and a half to process each photo edit I make lately, sheesh! I think I ended up with a handful of good ones out of the hundred or so that my trigger happy fingers took as my goal was to snap some artsy fartsy images for memorie's sake that I wouldn't have normally thought to take when we lived there—funny how that works eh?

 Although DC's Chinatown has pretty much been taken over by chains, there are still some hints of soul and the area holds a special place in my heart as it's where my husband lived when we met.

It can be strange to be back in a place that feels so familiar and start seeing it in a new way. For us, this past weekend felt like we almost never left and were able to pick back up with friends and places as if no time had passed. I felt this pang of heartbreak at one point when I had to forcibly remind myself that we couldn't just walk the couple blocks it would take to get back to our old place in Dupont!

Vintage shopping in Old Town Alexandria before the wedding and capping off the day with mai tais and pad thai back on the other side of the Potamac that evening.

All in all, it was a great trip but very much of a whirlwind so we are glad to have been able to satiate our cravings for all the things we've been missing but also glad to be home and relaxing. I'm so thankful that I now have grad school to come back to, a purpose that makes having to leave a place that feels so much more like home very much worth it at last.