WolfWeave

Last week for spring break, we decided on a quick trip to New York City. We had a wonderful 5 days visiting museums, walking, eating at a wide variety of restaurants, walking, seeing some interesting shows, walking, shopping, and walking. Oh, yes, we also had a taxicab accident—as a result of which I have a black eye!

We arrived on Sunday in time to catch part of the Whitney Museum Biennial 2008–that part at The Park Avenue Armory, which has been partially restored and is quite interesting in itself. The show was a little weird, to say the least. Conceptual, offbeat, modern art–but most of it could have been created by you or me. The pieces seemed derivative, contrived, and juvenile. We watched a performance art piece that was interesting though off-color. That night we sated ourselves with meat at Churrascaria Plataforma. My son and I both thought that “Fogo de Cow” (as we call it) in Chicago was better.

Monday morning we started at The Museum of Modern Art, of course. We were really anxious to see the newest exhibit, “Design and the Elastic Mind”. The exhibit explored the ongoing and futuristic relationship between design, science, and technology. It included “objects, projects, and concepts offered by teams of designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale.” There were a number of projects from researchers at MIT. My favorite piece was this, which was about 4 feet across:

I hope you can read the description:

We also toured a small exhibit of Alexander Calder mobiles, a large exhibit on the reinvention of color over the past 50 years, and visited some of the new acquisitions in the Design Collection:

A wall of foamcore “North Tiles” laminated in wool fabric designed by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec for the Danish textile company Kvadrat, which went on to manufacture these movable walls for the public.

“Tanabata,” designed by Reiko Sudo for the Japanese textile corporation Nuno. “The fabric is heat-treated, folded, and cut to create an accordion-like structure with exceptional elasticity and motion. It is part of Nuno’s enormously popular Origami Pleats line.”

Of course, I also had to visit a few old favorites in the design collection:

the amazing Tiffany lamp (with Frank Lloyd Wright bench behind it) and

incredible Art Nouveau silver jewel box crafted by Archibald Knox in 1900 and

this magnificent Art Nouveau wrought iron fireplace screen.

I managed to squeeze in a quick visit to the Museum of Art and Design across the street in order to see the exhibit “Pricked: Extreme Embroidery.” I’d been looking forward to it but was somewhat disappointed, as many of the pieces seemed either derivative, contrived (again!), or, surprisingly, included very little actual embroidery. On the whole, it was nowhere near as interesting as last year’s “Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting” exhibit (which I only viewed through its catalog). The museum is closing on April 27 in preparation for a move to a new location in September.

Sated with art and the always fun shopping stop at the MOMA Design store, we then headed off to a vegetarian Korean Zen restaurant above a teahouse (with only a short interruption for a taxicab accident—and I have a black eye to prove it—on the way!); after which we went to see Monday Night Magic, which was a fabulous magic show. We saw three different magicians perform and even had a chance during intermission to view close-up magic in the aisles of the theater. My son was hooked—we had to visit 2 magic shops during the week so he could buy some books on card tricks and some special decks of cards.

The next day we toured the Lower East Side, walking around Delancey and Ludlow Streets. We toured The Lower East Side Tenement Museum—an incredible view into the way that immigrant families in the early part of the 20th century lived and worked in the textile industry. It was unbelievable to think that families of 6 or 8 people (often with boarders for extra rent) crowded into 3 tiny rooms and often used the front parlor for their dressmaking business as well. There was no sanitation or running water until 1910 I think and then sanitation meant 2 toilets in the hallway for 8 apartments. It was interesting.

We had to have lunch at the famous Katz’s Delicatessen:

which is always packed with people. They obviously come for

the matzo ball soup and the corned beef/pastrami sandwiches!

We searched out the Streit’s Matzo Factory where you can actually see them making the matzo (and get a warm matzo straight off the assembly line!).

Wandering the streets, we also happened upon a little shop called Economy Candy:

We had fun in there–it was like visiting Willy Wonka’s!

Finally, in stark contrast to the milieu of our day, that evening we had a finely honed organic dinner at Craft, Chef Tom Colicchio’s signature restaurant. The setting was stunning and relaxing; the food was fresh, tasty and unusual; the dessert was incredible!

Wednesday we traveled out to see “(RE)Possessed” at The Jersey City Museum. The exhibit consisted of a gallery environment set for a spiritual African Tea Ceremony, containing crocheted sculptures by Xenobia Bailey:

(I managed to snap these photos before being warned by a guard that no photos were allowed…sorry Xenobia!). From the ceiling hung amazing glass chandelier-sculptures by Dorian Webb, while jazz music by Renee McLean played over the speakers. In cases along the wall were crocheted hats by Xenobia, a porcelain tea set and tea tins with Xenobia’s photo on them, designed by her and produced by Doughba Hamilton Caranda-Martin, full of different tea and cocoa blends (for sale in the gift shop too!). The whole experience was delightful and definitely worth the trip out to Jersey City. The museum also had an interesting cast resin flower sculpture by Carson Fox spread across the stairwell wall and a display of collage/watercolor/journal drawings by Amy Wilson.

Wednesday for lunch we went to a Kosher Moroccan restaurant on the Upper West Side and then visited the famous Zabar’s. What a grocery store! I just had time to meet up with the New York Crochet Guild and one of my friends who is in charge of putting together the New York exhibit of The Coral Reef with the Wertheim sisters. I missed seeing the exhibit when it was in Chicago and was too early to see it in New York but from the bits and pieces that the women were working on that night, it should be fascinating!

That night we ate at a small Italian restaurant before going to a show at The New World Stages. We saw the Australian comedian Tim Minchin, an immensely talented musician and intelligent, witty, self-effacing, dark comedian with a refreshing offbeat sense of humor. He interspersed his stand-up routine with playing the piano, singing songs he had written, and interacting with the audience—since we were in the first row center, this included us! I thought he was terrific.

Finally, on our last day we hit The Met for a quick tour of the special exhibits: Jasper Johns, Gustave Courbet, and “blog.mode: addressing fashion”. We ran through a few of the regular exhibit halls and this textile caught my eye:

Titled “Between Heaven and Earth,” it was created by El Anatsui, an African artist of international renown. Made in Nigeria in 2006, the piece is designed to refer to strip-woven textiles like African kente cloth but is constructed from copper wire and tin recycled from liquor bottle caps. It shimmers like gold, undulates like the finest silk, and is absolutely amazing to see in person.

After The Met, we ate lunch at [E.A.T.[(http://elismanhattan.com/eat.html), Zabar’s restaurant on the Upper East Side, where you can get the same sandwiches for double the price as on the West Side! It provided some interesting people watching.

That afternoon we went to my ultimate destination: Neue Galerie where we immersed ourselves in the life and works of Gustav Klimt. It was fabulous. I had left this until Thursday because this was the opening day of a special exhibit: WIENER WERKSTÄTTE JEWELRY which displayed more than 40 precious objects from public and private collections, including significant pieces by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser. Some of the jewelry included the actual pieces purchased by Klimt for his muse, the fashion designer Emilie Flöge, which were shown being worn in enlarged photographs of her around the room.

We just had time for a quick dinner at Brasserie, a modern French bistro—which turned out to be the best meal we had the whole week—before leaving for the airport. I forgot to mention that somewhere in there we had also walked around SOHO (twice), shopped at Dean & DeLuca (of course), and visited B&H Camera twice (they have a very cool conveyor-belt system to send your purchases to the checkout). All in all, it was a very satisfying visit.

In that heady adrenaline rush of an impulse buy, I ordered the Audrey sweater kit, designed by Brenda Patipa, from Lisa Souza Yarns. I fell in love with the low, square neckline and the subtle lace edgings. It looks like a sweater Virginia Woolf might have worn.

I admit that I was tempted way too easily by the over-zealous but well-meaning enablers of one of my yahoogroups, but impulse buy it was nevertheless. Initially drawn, as always, to my usual aqua/blue/purple range of colorways, I felt this sweater would look better in something more subdued, yet couldn’t quite see myself wearing a pastel. So, after staring at the available colors until I was bleary-eyed, I finally hit on “Mahogany”:

However, I haven’t really been a “brown” person, at least not since the ’70′s, so I wrote to Lisa and asked if this colorway actually had more black than brown in it. She replied that it was a mahogany brown with black, orange, navy and purple, but that she could dye some up with more black if I wanted and see how that worked out. I thought, “Great—more black = less brown.” Well, apparently what she thought I was after was a toning-down of the orangey brightness in the browns because when the skeins arrived yesterday, this is what I found:

I was pretty disappointed. We have emailed back and forth and, to her credit, Lisa did offer to take the skeins back and refund my money. But I feel partially responsible for this fiasco—I mean she did tell me “BROWN” and I should have listened and switched to another color. But I kept thinking she could switch brown to black (or black-er). I also should have followed up on her offer to send me a better photo of an actual dyebath, but didn’t. Thus I am going to keep the yarn, with the hope that the color will grow on me. For her part, Lisa says she will put up a photo that more clearly reflects this yarn’s actual color. It was a lesson for us both…besides, this faded mahogany is sort of the color my hair is starting to become as I grow older and the brown wilts and develops more grey!

As an aside, I have to admit that although not even 3 weeks had elapsed since ordering, when Lisa emailed to tell me my order was ready, it took a few beats for me to remember exactly WHAT it was I had ordered! And then I took a look at this sweater in the cold, clear light of day and thought to myself, “Good god, what WAS I thinking! This sweater has bobbles and lace and a button band—it’s way too advanced for me!” And so I vow…NO MORE IMPULSE PURCHASES!!! Seriously!

I did easily catch on to the concept of making socks with one circular needle using the Magic Loop technique so I decided to abandon the heavy purple sock (see February 2nd, below) and instead jump feet first (so to speak) into making 2 socks on 1 circular needle with actual sock yarn:

The yarn is Socks That Rock Mediumweight, color “Thistle,” 1 skein that I bought at Stitches Midwest in August 2006. The needle is Knitpicks circular size 2.75mm 40″ long. I began with Silver’s “Figure 8″ cast on, and increased according to my foot measurements (after reading the extremely commendable Queen Kahuna’s Crazy Toes & Heels Socks book by Mary Ann Beattie). I then morphed into the RPM sock pattern from Knitty. I plan to revert to Queen Kahuna’s short row heel, if I ever get there, and then continue with the RPM pattern on up to the cuff.

I like knitting socks Magic Loop, especially with the idea that I’ll have a whole pair completed at once. The knitting flows pretty smoothly except for the fact that I keep getting interrupted while I’m counting. The pattern is easy but I charted it out in colored pencil so that I could have each sock revolve in a different direction. Of course, I need to start knitting faster, especially after my little sock yarn buying binge back in November.

Which leads to my next topic: Fiesta Yarns just came out with their new fingering yarn, Baby Boom, a tightly plied superwash merino which comes in 78 fabulous colors, perfect for socks or other items. Of course, now that you can order directly off their new website, I just had to order two pair:

My color choices were Rainforest and Wild Oak.

This leads me to another recent purchase… I had been fascinated by the book Intertwined, an unusual work describing the creation of the new, unusual novelty yarns–those lumpy-bumpy, curly, wooly, super-coiled, wonderfully bizarre yarns that spinners are experimenting with nowadays and that are for sale in various etsy shops. Lexi Boeger, the author, not only describes how to spin these yarns, and includes beautiful artistic photos of them, but has described the thought processes that went into creating each type, even reproducing her journal pages.

Naturally, I spent some time casually cruising shops on etsy, where I had made some previous sock yarn purchases and then investigating some of the spinners on Ravelry who sell their wares. By chance, in one of the crochet groups I already belong to, I found a woman who sells her handspun yarns under her brand “COLORBOMB Creations.” And I fell under the spell of these:

THESE are two colorways of COLORBOMB Creations’ LoopyDoopy™ yarns, specifically the ones known as “LoopyDoopy Minis™.” The blue colorway on top is a Falkland wool in “Cousteau” color and the pink/gold one on the bottom is a merino titled “Spring Thaw.” Are those super-coiled or what???

Well, guess what that led to? Suddenly I found myself, for the first time in over 20 years, with the desire to start spinning again. So I rooted around in the back of my large closet until I unearthed these:

My original spinning wheels from about 30 years ago. The one on the right, an Ashford Traditional, was my first wheel. I learned to spin on it and even demonstrated spinning (even spinning flax from a distaff) in costume at an early Renaissance Fair but was never very comfortable with it. So when the Louet S10 came out a few years later, I purchased one and that is the wheel on the left. Unfortunately, the past 20+ years have not been so kind to them, though the Ashford has held up better. They were dropped down a flight of stairs by the movers during one of our house moves and spent way too much time in damp basements. The Louet has a cracked base, broken screws and a warped wheel. The Ashford is basically sound but missing parts and definitely creaky. I was hoping to try my hand at spinning again but no luck. So now, of course, I have spinning wheel lust and have been investigating new wheels. I’m delaying my impulse gratification, as actually spinning on wheels is necessary before buying and the nearest shops are well over an hour away. So it will be a while before I can try out some wheels. However, from all I’ve read and the groups I’ve joined, so far the Lendrum folding wheel and the Kromski Sonata are in the lead for my affection. Will I stay interested? We shall see!

and what happened to the month of February?

Well, first I was here:

And then I was here:

Lovely, eh? More descriptively, those were taking my mother down to her condominium on Longboat Key, Florida and helping her get settled in without my dad…which turned out to be a pretty stressful time despite the bright sun and warm weather…so my husband then whisked me off for a brief decompressing vacation at Teton Ridge Ranch, which was cold and snowy as a picture postcard but I sat inside by a roaring fire and drank wine and ate wonderful meals and read books and totally vegged out for a long weekend while he went snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

Unfortunately, I didn’t accomplish a bit of knitting all month but am starting to get back on track now, as you shall see in my next post.