Wednesday, October 07, 2009

All Good Days End With Knitting

My parents are visiting right now, so I took the day off work to do some touristy things in Philadelphia with them. Despite the fact that we have lived close to Philadelphia for close to 9 years now, I have done very little exploration of the city - so I was looking forward to this.

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We took the train to Suburban Station, got out, and walked around Philadelphia City Hall and headed down to the Reading Terminal Market to have lunch. My Dad loves markets, so this was a great place for him. If you are ever in Philly, you can get about any food imaginable there.

After lunch we walked down to Independence Hall, where we saw this beautiful murals:

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It's hard to give you the scope of that picture - the building was about 6 stories high. The building next to it had this great trompe-l'oeil facade:

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And in the same lot, there was this third, very life-like mural:

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There are murals like this all over the city - it reminds me a bit of Chemainus, a town on Vancouver Island.

After walking around Independence Hall, we went to the Liberty Bell Center (which, for those of you who don't know, it is free to go to both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center). Here's a picture of Dad, me, and Mom in front of the bell - I am always in awe at the small size of the Liberty Bell.

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We saw the famous Love statue:

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I turned around from the Love statue and saw a woman in a box knitting with the biggest knitting needles I had ever seen!

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I went over and teasingly asked her if she was knitting with size 90 needles - and she replied that they were size 50mm. I didn't ask her how much the needles weighed, but I am sure it was tiring on her arms after a while. If you closer, you can see that she is knitting with roving (which was very soft, by the way) and she had knit the ottoman beside her. Her name is Eugenie Perret, and she and her partner Candy Depew were part of an art installation called The Welcome House, where a different artist does something in the box every day from 10/4 to 10/13. I just lucked out to walk by on the day there was knitting in the box!

5 comments:

Bezzie said...

Ok, so I'm very impressed you got the William Penn Penis shot there in the first picture. Maybe it's just the weirdos I hang out with--but that was the first Philly landmark that they pointed out to me. At the right angle it looks like William is happy, just not holding his glove. Hee hee!

kemtee said...

Ginormous stuff. Maybe I should knit me an ottoman.

Teri said...

Having fun already, I see :)

Discoknits said...

LOVE the giant knitting :0)

freshisle said...

A great tour. Lucky you to catch the giant knitting. Very cool!