little red hat on a big vacation

About a year ago I was invitied by Shan Shan of Tiny Toadstool to participate in her traveling beret project. Shan Shan lives in Japan and makes outstanding hats and accessories from wool felting and countless hours of hand-stitching. She decided it would be fun to send one of her berets on a trans-continental adventure and asked some flickr friends to take photographs of the hat in their cities. So far it's been to Paris, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, UK and Canada. There is still Australia, Taiwan, China and Japan to go. Rebecca of The Clothes Horse had it in Virginia before it came to me here in Philadelphia.

I had a few more 'blogger-y' outfits in mind for this project, but yesterday turned into such a nice day that I just grabbed the hat and some friends and we went walking in the city casual-like. We did touristy things I hadn't managed to do here before.



The assignment was to take a picture with the beret in front of a symbol of the city. The Liberty Bell is great and all, but the Robert Indiana Love sculpture goes so much better with the hat!





Kelly and Hickey said I had to do the Rocky thing...

And here we are at the Frank Rizzo statue (for non-Philadelphians, he was one of our more controversial mayors)





I was directed to be 'more cutesy'...

The Lipschitz statue






That's not a church, it's a Freemason building. And that's Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press.

We also went to Reading Terminal Market, which I hadn't been to since I was a kid. We ignored the food and went right to the wall of books



They had a copy of Buddenbrooks - I've been 25 pages from finishing this book for 10 years.. I don't want it to end. It's the rise and fall of a family and I just can't bear to see it all go wrong.



The windows at the Fabric Workshop and Museum were so good, and since Shan is a fiber artist it seemed appropriate. Not only did it all go with the hat so nicely, but I wanted 98% of what was on display.





We continued on to Chinatown (Shan Shan is from Quingdao, China) and got soft pretzels along the way.




haha there's Hickey looking like he's going to go rob a bank



This shop has at least a hundred crystal chandeliers hanging inside, all fully lit. I love this picture. (Thanks Kelly for shooting all of these!)
I also love these dragon sculptures that went up at a parking lot on Arch St. in Chinatown last year.



They put little spikes on this wall so's you don't do exactly what I am doing here. Plus it's been windy and my balance isn't great..



What am I wearing? Vintage everything - Cowichan wolf sweater, 70s Navy issue bell bottom jeans, 70s western shirt, Doc Martens oxfords

You can see all the rest of "Hello Tiny Toadstool!", as well as more pics from yesterday's adventure, in our flickr pool. Enjoy!