Hello Again!!

If you haven't given up on me - which, I have to say, I'd understand if you had... 

I am happily mostly-settled here in Philadelphia, and have been keeping extremely busy even without knitting much (sigh...). 

I laughed when I saw my last post, talking about quickly running out of furniture. I've just finished furnishing my new apartment, kind of the reverse process from the one I mentioned back in October! Ikea is my friend.

Here's the super-boring view out my kitchen window - if anything was ever asking for a mural or something, this is...

But here's the view from my balcony:

which I actually like a lot - it reminds me a little of Mary Poppins. Also one of the trees you can see is a holly tree!! And there's a cardinal I see a lot. I can't wait until it gets a little warmer (though yesterday was 70 degrees!! but that was weird, everyone says so) and I'm going to grow tomatoes in buckets. :)

Today I went to Chinatown and explored. Some things I found:

• New Year money envelopes, for fun. Last night was Chinese New Year and they had dragons and firecrackers and all kinds of fun at midnight. It's in walking distance of my apartment, if I hadn't had an interview today at 10 I so would have gone!! But, this weekend D and I are going to New York, and we may well check out the Chinatown New Year scene there. So it's okay. 
• Canned Vegetarian Mock Duck - need I say more?
• A sesame ball like this one from an Asian Bakery. yummmm
• whole water chestnuts! I bought four for 30 cents, and ate two just now. :) They are sweet, unlike their canned counterparts. Very fun. 
• Scented red paper for making paper roses. Who knew there was a market for those?