NYC Snapshots: AKA Dogs, Mirror-Selfies, and Shit I Bought

I've really got to try and take more relevant pictures. I don't like to play tourist and stand outside taking photos of tall buildings and junk...but there's probably a happy medium between that and.... this. But nevertheless...

Hometown Barbeque in Red Hook. I don't know if it was actually amazing, or if it was just really, really good and I was really, really hungry, but either way I recommend it. I do have a picture of the food but I don't think the suave city boys making gross chewing faces in it would appreciate my posting it. So instead, here is their rather charming bathroom.

I met an excitable Boston Terrier named Liam who lived in a curiously long apartment with his two dogfathers. He is the source of the aforementioned dog drool, btw.

I decided at some point that it would be funny to text pictures of dogs to my husband all weekend, just to be annoying. I will spare you most of them. This dude was cute though. Travis suggested I start a tumblr called "Dogs of New York".... I assured him that that must already exist.

Last time I was in NYC I went to Purl Soho, which is a gorgeous shop, but I thought this time I'd mix it up and go to Downtown Yarns. In my light-packing frenzy I hadn't brought any yarn or needles which was obviously foolish. I purchased both. This is Madelinetosh DK in the rather amazing Cosmos colorway.

I also bought this necklace and a random-ish gift shop- I'm fairly sure it's not a real porcupine quill, I think it's burnt wood. Pretty, though.

This is what I look like hiding in the dressing room at Urban Outfitters so I can sit down without being cold or spending money- not an easy thing to do in Manhattan.

An amazing elderberry-lime soda, the best of a great many drinks I purchased in order to use various coffee-shop restrooms. Notice the self-defeating-ness of this strategy. Regardless, I now have the drive to learn to make "mocktails" even though I can't say that word without gagging on the tweeness a little.

On Tuesday I had some time to kill around the garment district so I stopped into Kinokuniya, a huge English/Japanese bookstore with an amazing English-language fashion section (because duh) and a fabulous Japanese-language craft section, including these obscenely adorable needlefelting kits. I didn't buy one...but it took a lot of willpower. (There's another Kinokuniya just outside of Portland, in a big Asian grocery store, but I'd only ever made it over there once or twice and I think it was almost exclusively Japanese.)

This is Vinegar Hill House, which was literally across the street from the apartment my friend and I were renting (which is remarkable because there is NOTHING else in that part of town, heh.) It's hard to see, but above that weird wheel thing is a window made of agate slices. I am completely obsessed with it. Definitely having a pretty rock phase, lately. Also, amazing cornbread.

Plane pup! A satisfying end to my dog-pic-texting (poor Travis.) And no, I don't know why he was allowed to fly all free like that- maybe an anxiety dog? But he behaved like a total champ and deserved that seat to himself.