Like when JFK was assassinated, I’ll always remember where I was on 9/11. It’s hard to believe it has been almost 12 years.

I felt the memorial was thoughtful. Seeing all the names laser cut in the metal, it’s hard to imagine all these lives were lost in one morning as people were going about their business.

Far away, I woke to go to the toilet, Damian was working late on his laptop whilst the tv was on. We could hardly believe what we were seeing on the news update. And then the second plane. I don’t know when we got to bed.

Last night I had a bit of a crisis. I thought I was turning 37 this year. Thankfully after a bit of maths, i.e. counting on my fingers, I worked out I am in fact only turning 36. Phew. Sometimes I can plan things a little too far ahead.

Today was another cold-ish day, about 5 degrees Celsius in Aussie language. We visited the Natural history museum. We saw lots of dinosaur bones and the planetarium show. I was exhausted by the end of it. I soon perked up as we headed outside to Central Park. Whilst I would have liked to of had a photo of my sock in progress like the yarn harlot over John Lennon’s imagine mosaic in Strawberry fields, it was not to be, my sock was back at the hotel. Instead I got a snap of the mosaic and some flowers some homeless hippies placed on the memorial. I commented to Damian that these homeless guys were mooching off John Lennon. But as he was a hippy at heart, I don’t think he’d mind.

I’m nearing the heel on my second Newton sock. I’m hoping to be able to cast on a new sock before the flight. Perhaps the striped yarn I dyed at the Lion Brand Studio.

More sight seeing tomorrow, it’s going to be 8 degrees, woo hoo!

What started out as the coldest day ever, turned to flurry at about 3pm and actual real snow by the time we left from dinner. It is the first time I’ve seen snow, ever. Now I can say I’ve walked through snow in New York! Gosh my gloshers were awesome.

Today we boarded the Straten Island Ferry and made a round trip. I got a closer look at the statue of Liberty… in the freezing cold.

Next we visited the High line, which is an urban space created from the old elevated railways which ran alongside 10th avenue. It is a great looking walkway which has been tastefully upcycled from the ruins of an old railway bridge. By the time we were done here, it was super cold, and flurrying.

Here’s a pic of Damian heading back after dinner, we managed to not slip on the slush and to get back to our hotel in one piece, a fun and exciting night for us!

On Saturday, it snowed. Well I don’t know that it classifies as snow if the flurry melts before it hits the ground. But it’s the first time I’ve seen it, and I was very excited.

I did a bit of window shopping with Damian today when I came across this store and thought of Melanie 🙂

The city also (believe it or not) celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in a big way. Pub crawls, a parade, random bag pipe music in the street, and seriously drunk people.

Last night Damian took me out to a French restaurant for dinner called the ‘Gentleman Farmer’, it was out standing for service and food. I had French onion soup, rabbit cassoulet and creme brûlée for dessert. Sorry no photos, you’ll have to imagine the deliciousness.

Today, Sunday, was Damian’s first official day of sight-seeing and taking photos. I was his personal tour guide for getting around the city and I think I did a mighty fine job. You’ll have to check out Damian’s blog in a week or two, when he has his films developed back home. The main stops today were the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library and Grand Central station.

We’re having dinner at ‘the Lure’ tonight; Damian’s already been there this week with colleagues so I’m looking forward to another great meal.

My sock came sight-seeing today but it stayed in my bag; it is one well travelled sock so far.

Today I finally got to the top of the Empire State building and it was brilliant, even better than the Rockefeller centre… I was actually very excited to be at the top of such an iconic building, (Sleepless in Seattle, is one of my all time favourite movies).

I’ve recognised that I actually like to ascend to tall heights and I kind of attribute that, to well, something that happened on my grade 5 camp. Unfortunately I won’t be able to scale the Statue of Liberty this time around, the island has been closed for some time due to the hurricane. The audio tour for the Empire State helped bring the buildings to life. I didn’t stop at just the 86th observatory deck, I went all the way to 102.

After lunch, I headed off to the Lion Brand Studio to do a class in dyeing self-striping sock yarn. It was great fun, and I’ll have a great souvenir of my time here when I get around to knitting the dyed sock blank into socks.

Now that concludes my yarn tour of New York. There will be more sight seeing next, but probably not any more of the yarny kind.

I woke up this morning and saw this:

I know, from up here it looks like we’re staying in a slum, at over $300 a night, I assure you we are not. There’s a fair bit of construction going on around, not that noticeable when you’re on the ground, but clearly visible from our studio room.

Returning to what I meant to say: it was cold, the coldest morning so far. 5 degrees. Today was not a good day to go to the top of the Empire state building, tomorrow is going to be better, at least I think so.

I had to rearrange my schedule which included a little more discount clothes shopping and a few yarn stores for good measure.

I was disappointed by the first two stores I visited today. They happen to reside in the same building. In the first store, I wasn’t even acknowledged, the store people were out the back behind a curtain. I could hear them speak in a foreign language, I thought I had made enough noise for them to realise someone was there, but perhaps I’m mistaken. Regardless of this, their range seemed insignificant and wasn’t displayed so well for a company of this calibre. I’ve seen this yarn presented in a much better fashion in Melbourne, shame on them.

The second store, whilst it had some good quality yarn and some unbranded yarn from mills, the store owner didn’t make me feel welcome at all. Whilst I could have purchased, there wasn’t anything I ‘just had to have’, yes we are at that point with the yarn purchasing. I wasn’t sorry to leave these stores empty handed.

I visited ‘Gotta Knit’ next. Lovely store owner, small range of yarns, but boy oh boy did she have some beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn from Pagewood Farm. I couldn’t resist this skein, for $24 I thought it was a bargain. She explained it was part of their trunk show. She said all of her sock yarn she stocks was hand-dyed, because if you’re going to knit socks, it better be out of something amazing (or words to that effect). I liked her.

Then lastly for today, I visited the closest yarn store to our Hotel, Downtown Yarns. This is a very nice store. Beautiful yarn, displayed well and has a friendly store owner and assistant. I only just resisted buying more Koigu, let’s be serious. In return I chose a skein of Frog Tree sock.

I have a couple of fun things to do tomorrow, until then.

I’m finding my way around this city quite nicely now, the map reading and train catching is a piece of cake. What I am struggling with, is my internal compass. So far I’m finding I need to walk a block before I work out I’m going in the wrong direction. It’s very frustrating and I hope things will improve when I have my natural navigator with me come Saturday.

What can I say, I did some verified touristing this morning by taking the Rockefeller tour and a ride to the observation deck. The tour itself was the highlight. It’s always great when you have a tour guide who loves his job and loves his city. Today was his 39 year anniversary of living in the city, so his tour consisted of all his favourite art and architecture around the Rockefeller centre. The stories about the centre are so interesting, I’d highly recommend doing this if you ever go. The trip to the top of the building, was less so. I’m at the top, whoopee wow. Perhaps it’s more inspiring at night? The photos I took look cool, I just didn’t have an oh my gosh moment… Maybe the Empire State building will be better?

Once again I did some yarn store visiting. A girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do. Yarn and Co. was awesome! A light and bright studio with some fantastic yarn and yarn I haven’t seen at the other stores so far. Ooh shiny and new. There are unverified reports I lost my mind. The sales clerk commented on my good taste in yarn 🙂 I got two skeins of the Verdant Gryphon Bugga in green and turquoise, Miss babs in pink and three more colours of Koigu. I was mentally singing Happy Birthday to myself. Hmm…

And then because it’s in the neighbourhood (and I planned it that way), I visited Knitty City next. Once again a lovely store, jammed choco block full of yarn. I didn’t get a lot of attention, which I didn’t mind, carrying a great big bag of yarn from their competitor may have had something to do with it. I still managed to score some Koigu. ‘Score’, is probably the most accurate term to use here. I could have bought more, but I didn’t, I’d already exceeded my daily average of skeins purchased. How does one hide yarn from ones husband when on holiday?

I visited the American Folk Art Museum, I found this a little disappointing it’s quite small and the exhibitions (2) weren’t to my taste, the gift store was inspiring though and the staff were friendly.

Damian tells me it could be snowing on Friday, so I’m off the the Empire state tomorrow, wish me luck.

It rained today. I knew it was going to rain and it’s going to rain tomorrow also. So instead of going to the very top of the empire state building today as originally planned, I opted for Thursday’s itinerary instead.

I just want to say how I kicked metro butt today. Everything went to plan, I caught the right trains, found the right train stations, I knew what I was doing and where I was going. By the end of these two weeks I’m going to know this town like the back of my palm.

First up on Thursday’s itinerary was the Metropolitan museum of modern art, perfect for wet day weather, i guess everyone else had the same idea. I was warned about how big this place is, but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for what I experienced. It is the most amazing museum I’m ever likely to see. So much art on display, and how it is displayed is breath-taking. I recall hearing how our own national gallery in Melbourne, can only show like 10 percent of it’s collection at any one time due to space, after seeing what I saw today, I say build a bigger gallery. As per usual, I was running behind ‘schedule’, I didn’t actually leave the gallery until about 2:30pm. I was delayed slightly because I can verify this museum has at least 3 cloak rooms, 3. it was time for some more yarn store shopping.

I went to Annie’s and Co. which is a delightful store on Madison Ave. It had the whole rainbow of malabrigo, lots of Mongolian cashmere in different weights, art yarns fancy pants sequins and beads yarn, almost $50 for a 50 gm skein! There was lots, lots more of course. The staff were helpful and pleasant. I picked up these beauties. The mad tosh light had only just come in and was walking out the door, I felt obliged to grab a charcoal skein. The watermelon choices are self explanatory!

I then caught the train down to String Yarns. It is a lovely bright store with beautiful yarns displayed elegantly. They have Koigu. Koigu RPMM, Koigu merino/silk and Koigu cashmere. I had to pass on the cashmere, at $50 for a 50 gram skein, sanity prevailed. Unfortunately I saw fit to get 3 skeins of the merino/silk for an unknown shawl, 2 skeins of RPMM and a skein of New Zealand yarn (yep) which made me loose my mind when I touched the knitted sample. It’s called Zealana AIR, and it’s been dyed by Koigu, koiguuu 40% Cashmere, 40% Brushtail Possum Down and 20% Mulberry Silk. Now do you understand?

It was a nine skein total day again. Oh dear.

Now I didn’t really think to be ‘super’ organised with an itinerary as such until I saw Jen’s from her recent time in the city… that made me reassess my planning process. Of the time I have in ny, the first 5 days are solo, then the remainder of the time I’ll mostly spend touring with Damian. Which means, I need to see and do all the things i.e. yarn stores before that time.

The other helpful tip Jen gave me, was a warning and a heads up on the metro system. Let’s just say, the time I spent finding the correct train stations I could have walked to my destination. Hey, you don’t really know who you are until you get lost in ny!

In saying that I have felt pretty safe so far in the city, despite spotting a billboard on my taxi ride from the airport yesterday title ‘Cop-shot’, 10k reward for information about anyone shooting a cop. Any cop? Oh my, that must happen a lot here. There are a ton of police in the city, it certainly keeps everyone in line, but there’s still a lot of grumpy tooting drivers out there though!

So. My itinerary for Day 1 was as follows:

Breakfast at Katz’s Deli, you know the one featured in When Harry met Sally, when Meg has that moment.

I ordered a lox and onion omelette, and I got this! I guess there is no need for lunch then.
It was delicious, perhaps I’ll just have a lox bagel next time.

I then headed down to Century21 (this was a lot harder than it sounds in real life). Century21, is a discount department store chain which has big brands at greatly reduced prices. I bought a few pairs of shoes.

I would have taken them back to the hotel immediately if it were not for Seaport yarns being so close and all. The owner’s husband apologised for the mess in the store, I replied ‘I don’t know what you mean, I see yarn!’ ~ it pretty much looks like my yarn shelf…

And then I attempted to get back to the hotel. Well, lucky breakfast was big, because by the time I had dropped off my purchases it was 4pm! (train stops may have had something to do with it) I still had 4 more things on my list to do for the day, thankfully all those places were within walking distance from the hotel.

Next I visited my kitten’s namesake Purl Soho. It was lovely. The store is presented so beautifully, I’ve heard people say how small it is, so I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t a shoebox. There were a few things I hadn’t seen before but I had heard about. I picked out some Spud & Chloe fine sock. 80% super wash wool 20% silk hello. I chose two colours to make striped socks, but you’ve probably already guessed that. I’ve been obsessed with pink and grey since Katie made that sweater last year; it reminds me of a dress I had when I was in primary school. I also got some koigu, it has happy sf memories associated with it and now it’s a souvenir of ny.

Next was Kate’s paperie. A nice paper shop, but not really different from visiting Zetta Florence in Melbourne. I also past by a couple of other paper stores in soho that I thought were on par with Kate’s and I wondered why the guidebooks only mention this one?

Lastly I visited Loopy Mango. Now I hadn’t heard of this place until I read Jen’s itinerary. I’m so glad I went. As well as having yarn (which was good yarn, but you have to blow my socks off these days for me to buy), they had beautiful items of homewares and crafts and argyle cashmere socks… hem hemm. I may have to go back and visit this place again, I don’t think the jet-lag and the ‘late in the day’ visit did it justice.

At 6 pm I called it a day. I didn’t manage to get to the last yarn store on my list, but I think I may be able to squeeze it in tomorrow.

Tomorrow and Wednesday is meant to be colder, I might have to do some switching around for the things planned, can’t have me shivering at the top of the empire state building now can we.