a post mainly about Philipsburg

I have a four day weekend - woo hoo!!

It comes with a heavy price though; seven full days of work spread out over two weeks -a full day is 10 or 11 hours...I normally only work four and a half hours/day!- I have worked three of those seven, just four left. whew

Scott also had a four day weekend, so we've been enjoying our time off together. On Friday we had a mini road trip up to Philipsburg, MT. My high school English teacher always told us to travel as much as possible, to always see as much as we can, even if it's just the next town. It certainly makes me appreciate Montana: the open skies, the valleys and mountains, the wide fields of alfalfa, and stacks of hay rolls.



I knit on my Hermione socks ..didn't make much progress :)





We walked around downtown of course, but also walked up the hill into a residential area. We were really lucky that it didn't rain on us because it was in the forecast! There were quite a few houses for sale, so we picked up a listing and walked to many of them. It was fun to imagine living in each (well, some were really run down and needed a lot of work) - a few were so cute! I'm not sure I would want to live in such a small town; Missoula is nice because it's not too small, but definitely not too big. (According to Wikipedia, the 2010 census had Philipsburg at a population of 820 [compared to Missoula's 109,299 in 2010]).




from bottom left clockwise: this dog at Philipsburg Brewing Company was comfortable laying anywhere, we had a pale ale and a porter, candy at the Sweet Palace!, and lunch at UpNSmokin -excellent pulled pork sandwiches! Scott had a jalapeno and cheddar dog with pulled pork on top. We went on a recommendation and it was definitely worth it!

The late poet Richard Hugo wrote Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg. I really hope you listen to it, he was such an amazing writer.


Yesterday I finished spinning this:



and washed and dried and skeined it:

I built a two yard niddy noddy too! So easy. I looked at several tutorials but basically you need one 16" piece of PVC, four 6" pieces of PVC, two tee connectors, and three or four end caps. One tutorial said to use 18" so I originally had someone at Ace cut it that size, but it made my skein much longer than two yards. At 16" it's perfect! The total cost for materials was around $3.15.

Today I am enjoying Agatha Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, a Miss Marple mystery! I have Andi to thank for turning me onto the Miss Marple tv series, and the book is just as great!



and that is the wee start for a Hitchhiker for my aunt in MadTosh.

Plans for Monday are not set yet, but I would not mind spending the entire day, reading in bed ♥

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend :)