The Adventures of Country Mouse

Country Mouse is back in the country! I had a wonderful time in the Big City meeting City Mouse Cynical Knitting Gal from Chicago. I'll admit that I was a little nervous about going into Philly, and then a LOT nervous right before I got off the PATCO train. For a fleeting moment, I considered calling CKG and telling her I couldn't do it, and just staying on the train and riding right back to the (relative) safety of New Jersey.

That was just a fleeting moment of weakness, though, and I got off the train and found my way up to ground level and just started walking like I knew where I was going. Luckily, I was headed in the right direction (I had a 50/50 chance of being right) and kept walking until I came to Rittenhouse Square - a lovely park! There were dogs everywhere. It seemed as though I saw every breed except for brittanys. That's probably a good thing, though, because at that point I was so highly strung that if I saw a brittany I probably would have accosted the dog and smothered it with hugs and kissed just to be near something familiar. Then the owner would have called the police and I would have been carted off to jail and I never would have made it to the place where CKG and I were to meet, which is here:

Rosie's Yarn Cellar on Locust Street, just west of Rittenhouse Square. Sadly, that is the only picture I took in the city. Rosie's truly is a cellar - small, and cramped, but good things come in small packages! There was yarn everywhere. It was really warm in there - uncomfortably warm - so after some fingering of yarns, we made our purchases and then set out to find somewhere to have a bite of lunch. Nearby was a place called the Irish Pub (I think) and they had veggie burgers! Jackpot! (I mentioned to my mom that I was happy they had veggie burgers, and she said it's not surprising-- lots of restaurants in the city are catering to "weirdos who don't eat meat". Those were her exact words...) We spent quite a bit of time there talking about knitting and dogs and more knitting and more dogs, then wandered around Philly some more and found a cafe type place and sat and drank coffee & tea and talked more about knitting and dogs.

Then we wandered back toward my subway station, and I descended into the bowels of the city once again and got on a train back to New Jersey. ,It was great to meet CKG in person after blog commenting and emailing back and forth for a couple of years. I had an absolutely wonderful time, scary parts and all!