Architecture

The first museum we visited was the Frick Gallery and I didn't take a single picture. We were provided with the hand sets to listen to a guided tour but a special feature was about the architecture of the building. Frick had built his home to be an art gallery so it was a two-fer, art and architecture. It's unique in all my museum tours and I recommend it.

Our second and highly anticipated museum was the Solomon Guggenheim. They celebrated their 50th anniversary this year with a Vasily Kandinsky retrospective and no museum is better designed for a retrospective than this one. You simply start at the bottom of the spiral walkway and proceed up. I loved it. Once again I passed on the Met as too overwhelming.

This is the Central Park Reservoir, South Gate House, built in 1864, the same year that Nevada achieved statehood.

The reservoir itself has been renamed. If you read Caleb Carr's book, The Alienist, you will remember the reservoir as a part of the historical story. Times have changed. There's also a Dianna Ross Playground.

Looking past the gate house and across the reservoir, you can see the twin towers of the San Remo in the distance. Joggers like to run the perimeter of the reservoir which is almost a 10k, and we saw plenty of runners. We also saw a lot of pedicabs with Turk and Armenian drivers, asking if we'd like a guided tour around the park. It's truly a cosmopolitan city.

This is the old Police Head-
quarters in SoHo, built in 1910. It was sold in 1983 to a real estate developer who turned it into a 55-condo unit. It's locked away from the public but I'm okay with that since they're using it and keeping it up.
This is the Jefferson Market
Courthouse "Old Jeff," at one time voted one of the five most beautiful buildings in America. It became infamous as the setting for the murder trial of Stanford White in 1906, but was slated for the wrecking ball in 1972. Greenwich Village was able to raise enough for its stay of execution, and today it is a branch of the public library system.
And the water towers. They are such a ubiquitous part of the Manhattan landscape. I have looked for a piece of artwork featuring them on every trip we've made and to no avail, so I tried to take as many pictures as I could with my little point-and-shoot. I have more architecture pictures so if that's not your thing, you might want to skip my next post~

Macy's

One of my destin-
ations was Macy's at Herald Square. This the main aisle of the main floor. Just inside the front door an employee at an information booth gave us with a map for all ten floors - you need it. He also supplied us with some interesting tidbits like the store occupies an entire city block and there are 6.2 million square feet on those ten floors with over 6,000 employees.


He also told us that the star logo dates from the 1850s when Rowland Macy founded the original store. He had been a sea captain and once when completely lost at sea, a star appeared to him and using it, he was able to navigate back to shore. He had the star tattooed on his arm and adopted the star as the store logo. Now you know.

I love the architecture of New York's buildings. The exterior of the original Macy's is in the Palladian style but the expansion is Art Deco. It still has the original escalators, which we took all the way up to the 9th floor and all the way back down. The basement, called The Cellar, has a bar and grill. Amy asked what I bought at Macy's. A beer.
We were arrested on our trip back down the escalators by loud Chinese-sounding music. An upcoming show was putting on a performance in the Childrens department in advertisement. The dragon leaped around and shook with furry as the delighted children squealed and applauded.
The musicians and dancers concluded the program and the shoppers and store returned to normal. Well, not quite right away. It was quite unexpected and we were surrounded by animated conversation, to which we contributed.
We resumed our descent through the bewildering maze of merchandise. The yellow strip at the bottom is the teeth which are about 8" long and intimidating. Now I remember why I used to be afraid of escalators when I was a little girl. Click for big.

We didn't have access to the Internet all the while we were in New York. We got home Thursday afternoon so after I finished all the laundry on Friday, I finally logged in and posted my first blog. Immediately our DSL went down - we just got it back this morning. I've never stopped to think about what the Internet means to me, but after nearly two weeks without it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Last night when I wanted to look up Mariano Rivera to see where he was born, how old he is and his baseball history - well, tough luck. It's good to have my old friend back.

The Big Apple

We got back from Manhattan yesterday afternoon after an all-day flight that took us through four airports. I don't know where to start so thought I'd start with the first photo I took, from the dining room window looking over the Hudson River to New Jersey and a tiny bit of Washington Bridge on the upper right.

Ian's brother and sister-in-law bought this apartment years ago when Neil was back in New York a lot. We are fortunate that they have been so generous with us. It was rather bittersweet that we observed the 5th anniversiary of Neil's death date while we were there. He absolutely loved New York.
I was fascinated by all the shipping activity on the Hudson and took a lot of photos that I won't attempt to blog, but I will bore you with NYC for another week or until I get the laundry done and my house clean. On this particular day, the forecast for rain was 100%. I have never experienced that forecast before. It rained all day and we took our umbrellas out into that forecast. I also have never poured water from a folded umbrella before.
Though he couldn't swipe a subway pass on the first time to save his life, Ian fell in love with the subway system.

A whole culture exists below ground in this maze called the subway - shops, clothing stores, and the odd ball street entertainer. With so many art institutes nearby, many are genuine artists. We heard a baritone singing "Ave Maria" and I thoroughly expected to see a large black man (think "Old Man River") and so I was surprised to finally come upon a small Korean man with this huge voice. Little Sharon was with us and teased me about being a racist.
There's a reason why it's called Rush Hour. There's room on the subway cars for everyone waiting for that train, every last one.

In her book, The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Banks records the Burma Shavesque poem on the overhead beams at the Time Square transfer point: "Overslept. So Tired. If late, Get fired. Why bother: Why the pain? Just go home. Do it again." I had seen it a few years ago and now it's there but now in a permanent form and I was thrilled to see it.

Fixin' to Get Ready

I took Becky's advice and Navajo plied the silk and am pleased to see the colors are preserved. I'm spinning the teal blue a little thicker as a two-ply. I think this is a much better solution than plying the two together.
After all the hats I've made, I've never kept one for myself and only have the very first one I made many years ago. I've gotten better since then. I finally made one for me and I think I'm probably going to need it in New York.


Ian stopped by the house yesterday to give Lexie her hat, which she is modeling for him with the sweater. We decided that we like the sweater so much that I can do it again, but this time in purple or lilac. The pattern was for worsted and I improvised for sport weight so I'll just use worsted next time.

When Ian came home he had presents for me from Alexia and Kiernan. They made birthday cards for me, and they are my most favorite of all. Kiernan included his football card which he is very proud of.

We leave for NYC in the morning and I'm thinking red, as in Big Apple. Ketchup with you later, he he.

Honest Scrap

Some time ago Bonita at Basically Bonita gave me that above award. I was completely unaware of Bonita's blog until I received this from her. The moment I started reading her blog, I fell in love with it. I think that's the point of the awards - to help us discover other bloggers who share our passions. Please wander over and see what she's up to. Lots!!

Awards take some time so I've put it off, but now I'm doing laundry and packing for New York, so this seems to perfect sit-down activity.

The rules of accepting this are as follows:

1. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs to give this award to that you feel to be brilliant in content and design.

2. Show the 7 winner’s links on your blog and leave them a comment informing them that they have been given the “Honest Scrap.”

3. List 10 honest things about yourself that people may not know.

So, seven blogs that I feel to be brilliant in content and design? Well, I can’t tag Leigh because Bonita already did. I think all the blogs I read are brilliant - that's why I read them, so I've chosen some of those who have helped me develop as a fiberist.

1. Becky, my fellow Nevadan and friend, is a shepherd in the middle of the state, an Etsy store shopkeeper and the best spinner I know. Because of her isolation, she taught herself to spin on a drop spindle!

2. Boulderneigh - Michelle raises Shetland sheep, the most perfect of all breeds, and has promised me a black fleece for next year. We finally actually met last month and she had to turn her life on its ear to do so. She writes of sheep, horses and the Pacific Northwest.

3. Fun with Fiber - Barb retired and opened a weaving studio immediately thereafter. Because of physical limitations, she's unable to weave as much as she would like, but did that stop her? Nope. She volunteered to help Syne Mitchell edit audio interviews for the Weave-Cast podcast, even though she'd never done it before in her life. I heard her work and she did great!

4. Fibertopia - Valerie's is one of the blogs I've read the longest and has helped me in a crunch many a time. She is a wonderful weaver and also reads great books. I look at her Library Thing link for book suggestions.

5. Life Looms Large - Sue and the following blogs are new to me this year. Sue lives completely across the continent, and she weaves and weaves and weaves. She also shares what she weaves and I learn from what she shares.

6. Crazy as a Loom - Hilary also lives two time zones from me. She retired from nursing to run a weaving studio and also weaves on commission. She makes beautiful things, and she loves cats - what is it about us and cats?!!

7. Camp Runamuck - Theresa is an accomplished weaver and has also helped me figure out things when I get stuck, even loaning me an instructional DVD. She and her firefighter husband have a small menagerie and she lives in my time zone!

Let’s see -10 honest things that people may not know about me, and let me say that this part is a piece of cake, compared to picking seven blogs:

1. My parents were so old when I was born, that my father was born in the 19th century.

2. My parents lived in Fairbanks but I was born in Seattle, because at the time Fairbanks hadn't any hospitals. Too bad, because I would love to say that I wasn't made in the USA - Alaska didn't become a state until later.

3. I grew up on a small organic farm in East San Diego County.

4. I didn't walk uphill both ways in my bare feet to go to school, but I did walk a mile to catch the school bus.

5. The place where I bought my first soap-making supplies, Summers Past Farms, was my high school bus stop. It was ratty back then, but it's still owned by the same family who made a purse out of a sow's ear.

6. My mother taught me to knit when I was nine, and she was taught by the Red Cross as part of the WWI war effort - knitting socks for the boys overseas.

7. I ran a 10-K fun run in costume and got my picture in the newspaper. I was a bride. For those of you runners, think about running fast down a steep hill in a full-length dress. I was terrified.

8. I don't like chocolate.

9. I started drinking coffee with my father after he got home work while I was still in high school and only like it dark, black and strong.

10. At 61 years of age, I'm still a tent camper.

How honest is that?! I even leaked my age :)

Soap Bars

The soap block has been cut into bars and they're ready to go upstairs to make my studio smell good. I tried letting it cure in the garage, but the mice nibbled on them. Disgusting.

Some of your commented on lye so I wanted to explain that lye is what makes fat become hard soap. It's a reaction that occurs between sodium hydroxide and fats called saponification and far too complex for me to understand other than it makes soap and that's good enough for me.

I thought you might like to see what October looks like in the high desert.



We live on Fetlock Drive, and the irony of a dirt road with a sign calling it a drive is not lost on me.


I had to live here for a long time, then move and way and move back, before I learned to appreciate and love this strange beauty.

The last blooming rabbit brush in our yard. I'm off to make one last batch of soap.

Making Soap

I made soap this morning and while this isn't the tutorial that was requested, I thought I'd show you what I'm doing. All of my supplies are stored in the garage so the weighing and mixing of lye is done before I bring it on the house. I've dissolved the lye in this pan with a Goodwill spoon that I only use for this purpose.
I get everything ready in advance because once the soap is at trace, i.e., ready to pour, it must be poured or it will seize up. Soap made with fragrance oils is more temperamental but since I only use essential oils, I feel pretty much in control of the pour. My mold is lined and on a double layer of placemats to keep the bottom of the soap from cooling too quickly from the counter tile. My electric stiring stick is plugged in and ready to go.
At this point all my oils have dissolved and need to be cooled. I put the pan in the sink with ice cubes to bring down the temperature. I like to pour in the lye at a temperature range from 86-92 degrees, which is a little low for most people. I like it because the soap goes to trace more quickly, sometimes in as little as three minutes. I consider soap to be at trace when it's the consistency of a #3 white sauce.

You can see why everything needs to be ready. I use a designated meat thermometer to check on the temp. Today I worked at 90 degrees.

This batch is going to be my Mint Chocolate Bar, so here are my pre-
measured essential oils, half spearmint and half peppermint, and also the cocoa powder.

It's the lye's turn to get cooled down. I use a long beer-
making thermo-
meter here. Make no mistake -lye is dangerous. It's dangerous to inhale and dangerous to your skin. It just requires careful treatment and proper precaution. I dissolve it in the garage and quickly move it away to another area to cool. I always stir slowly to avoid splashing and I never do two things at once. When I'm making soap, I am making soap.
Ian came in just as I was getting close to trace so I asked him to take this picture. You can see the change in the characteristic of the mixture and if you click for big, you can see that it very much looks like a white sauce or pudding.
This soap is made in two stages. I've pour a quart of the mixture into the glass measuring cup and the rest in the mold. It was at this point I realized that I had left out the essential oils and they can't be added now. I'm afraid I was doing two things at once - making soap and thinking about this post.

I fortunately was able to redeem my error because I still needed to add the cocoa powder to the remaining soap. I was able to add the essential oils at the same time too.
This is Mint Chocolate soap. I worked to get the "chocolate" mixture into all the soap. Usually I only marble it on the surface so that it contrasts with the rest of the soap which is nearly marble white. It's going to be different this time.

Now and Then

I'm spinning this silk right now. Linda, Amy, Mim and I had a dye day here just about a year ago and I dyed this with Linda's ProChem dyes, using Sara Lamb's recommended basic colors. At that point I had dyed up all my wool and was envious of the results the others were getting so started dyeing some of the silk I have. I really am not a silk spinner. At this time I don't have anything else to spin - so now it's time to get this into yarn. I've had doubts on what it will look like be when I ply it back on itself. Linda loves to spin silk so I asked her for her thoughts at the Alpaca Festival last weekend.
She said that while the rainbow dyed roving is gorgeous and really fun to spin, she's never been happy when she plies it back on itself. So yesterday I dyed another 2 ounces of silk and will ply the two together. I have absolutely no idea how it will turn out.

We leave for New York a week from today. Our plans are kinda loose, though we do hope to visit with friends. I look forward to bialys, knishes, bagels and a black and white cookie (think Seinfeld) - we have identified recommended shops for all of them. We also have tickets for In the Heights, a Broadway musical and 2009 Tony award, about the Dominicans in Morningside Heights (up by Columbia University). The music is going to be fantastic.

We're going to skip the Met - it's too big, which makes me sad because we're going to miss the Robert Frank photographic exhibit. I may yet change my mind - it's a wonderful story. He was an emigrant who shot pictures of Americans in the 1950s, thanks to a Geggenheim grant. He was arrested in Arkansas as being suspicious and given an hour to leave town. He told them he was on a Guggenheim grant and they demanded, what's Guggenheim. I feel my mind changing already.

The Guggenshim is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a Vasily Kandinsky retrospective. I saw a small collection of his at the Phillips Collection in D.C. and look forward to seeing this in the environment of the spiral path to art discovery. I'm also excited about the exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt: "Ten leading designers have been commissioned to develop new uses for sustainably grown and harvested materials in order to tell a unique story about the life-cycle of materials and the power of conservation and design." Is that cool or what?! MOMA has Monet's "Water Liles" and you see the problem unfolding.

We'll be there at the same time of The New Yorker Festival and that's why Ian chose these dates. Ironically, we won't be attending any of the author panels, though if time allows, I would love to attend T.C. Boyle's author book signing on Saturday. We do have tickets for the Character Actors panel (Second bananas) with Christine Baranski, Joan Cusack, Luis Buzman, Richard Kind and John Turturro. I am really excited. Little Sharon, my step-daughter, will be with us for about half the time. She has found a yarn shop in SoHo that she wants us to visit and we will combine that with a stop at Yonah Schimmel's where I will undo all my Weight Watchers work.

Trip Update

I got these three cones of 8/2 cotton at Woodland. I was just about to buy some cones of gorgeous colors when one of the staff said something about mercerized cotton not being good dishtowels. Wrong stuff - start over.

I wanted colors to tone down the bright colors that I bought last time. I don't have a deep stash of yarns but with these added cones, I can see that I need to think about a better storage system.
I bought these two balls of Cascade to weave with my own yarn. This is the last skein from my oven dyeing binge. At the time of purchase I was thinking stripes and squares, but log cabin has popped back into my mind. I also bought a couple more skeins of sock yarn. I think I'm building a stash.
I finished my socks from the falling leaves pattern. It does require some fiddling. I cast on 60 stitches and ended up dividing unevenly for the instep and heel, adding two stiches on each side of the instep patterns to get the holes, so 34 stitches for the instep and 26 stitches for the heel. They fit and feel great.

I spun about four ounces and this is all the yarn leftover. As Michelle pointed out, it's a good reason to knit toe-up. I hear it but I don't feel it.

I also finished knitting Alexia's sweater. Here's a tip. When you're knitting for a child, don't measure, order yarn and then get burned out on the project so that it takes 8 months to complete it. The sweater size won't change but the child will. I like the sweater and am thinking about doing it again, only in a bigger size and not in this pink. As you can tell from her t-shirt, she loves this color. I need to think about this.




She has asked for a hat to match.

Alpaca Festival

Today was the 6th Annual Alpaca Farm Fiber and Craft Festival at Jeanette Miller's ranch. It's five miles from us in the next valley and since our guild was invited to participate, I had marked it on my calendar months ago. DD Chris asked us after we got back from vacation if there was any chance we could watch Alexia last night. Sure!

Lex was so excited that she skipped from one gate to the next, knowing that she would have to wait for me to catch up with her. I kept reminding her that if she did that with the animals, they would run from her.
Jeanette is very proud of her rescued mustang and is reassuring him, explaining to us about the screen protecting his eyes from the flies. Lexie Lu wanted to know why this horse wears his underwear on his head.

Jeanette's Walker hound Bond, as in James Bond, was very attentive to her and kept giving her kisses. She says he was giving her germs.
Alpacas are so different from llamas. They're friendly - some more so than others.


Alexia and the alpacas got along very. She had been so excited for the last couple of days and then all this morning, I wasn't sure a 5-year-old could curb her enthusiasm, but she did better than fine.
I'm not sure what caused the attraction, but this little black alpaca took to Alexia and followed her around - which was fine with her. He nibbled at her neck and nuzzled her hair.
Lexie had a wonderful time and wants us to get a 'paca. She is bummed because the next festival is years away. I told her no, that's is just one year from now - once a year, like Christmas. I think she wants to come back.
This is David. He's a full-time college student who has raised llamas for 15 years. He sheared Jeanette's entire flock this year as well as some various sheep, including our wethers. He and Toni were recently in Oregon and visited Woodland Woolworks to pick up his wheel and to put her's on lay-away. She said that finding it was pretty just as I had described. Now she has to go back to pick up her wheel. I wonder if she needs company on the drive.....