An East End Experience...

Sally (the one who used to live downstairs from me, not the one who has been helping me clean ze apartment) and I have established a new "birthday" tradition. She started it. In August, on her birthday, we had lunch on Ellesworth at the Elbow Room and then window shopped in all the cute shops there. The shops are gallery-like and though the prices are out of our range, the items there are tons of fun to just look at.

So for my birthday, since she couldn't come to the party (her husband runs a games night every month and it just so happens tonight is that night) she and I made a "girl date." We went to the Handmade Arcade which has been running for three years now--it's an urban craft show. So, imagine the craft shows you go to with grannies and tea cozies and then put it in a warehouse in Pittsburgh, with young (cute!) men and women as the vendors, selling everything handmade from greeting cards, bracelets, skeins of yarn, hats...it was wonderfully exhausting.

I also ran into some people I knew, which is always fun. I ran into a guy I haven't seen in probably nine years, who worked at Fox Books in Squirrel Hill in the back room. I almost didn't recognize him. It was fun catching up. He was able to fill me in on where some folks we used to work with are these days.

To complete the East End experience, we went to the co-op for lunch, which was perfect, as it was buffet (I was at that point STARVING) and salad bar-ish, good for Sally as she is one of those unusual food needs types. Sally is I guess now my oldest friend. I told her my memory of eating lunch at the co-op almost ten years ago, when I was crushing on a French Horn player who later moved to Texas.

It was all kinds of fun, and I am beat! So I'm spending the rest of this rainy day (how nice to be at home on one of those) puttering around the garret. Right now the next task is the mountain of dishes.

We both agreed that the experience was so...Pittsburgh. An urban craft fair, at Construction Junction. Exactly why we both love living in the city so much.

A Hello Kitty hat--I couldn't resist.