Knitwit's Rambles

My attempt to actually have a knitting blog, and to update it regularly. We'll see how well that works.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Back from the Big City and Been Very Busy

Ha, try saying that title five times fast!

Well it's been a while. I actually wrote most of this post a couple weeks ago, after I got back from nym NYC trip, but I was so sleep-deprived that week (in the four days we were in NYC, I only got about 10-12 hours of sleep, whee!) that I didn't have the energy to do the resizing and uploading of photos that I wanted to do for the post. Since then I've been really busy/wiped-out by work as we've been really busy, and we had the summer reading parties last week, and when I got home I wasn't exactly capable of stringing together sentences. ;-) So here we have a very big catch-up post! Or, well, part of one. I think I'll mainly focus on the trip and knitting related to that, then do a catch-up on the last couple weeks since then sometime this weekend.

Had a great time in New York despite the sleep deprivation, visiting a lot of different places (the UN, Times Square--in day and at night--Central Park, the World Trade Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grand Central Station, the New York Public Library, Union Square and a dozen other places that are skipping my mind at the moment) eating in some great restaraunts and even getting to meet a couple people that live in New York that I've known through the net for a while. The only real problem on the entire trip was the heat, which I was expecting but couldn't really prepare for. It was so unbelieveably hot, and standing on subway platforms waiting for our train (which could take 10 minutes) was brutal. I can see why those that can flee the city in the summer months.

For those that have been following the saga of the manpurse, it WAS finished in time, though the strap was still rather damp during our flight. It was also way too long and as I didn't have time to fix it while I was there, I didn't really wear it in the city, but it did serve a good purpose as my carry-on on both flights. Also for those who persist on asking on knitting groups about whether you can take knitting needles planes, I took my Koigu sock-in-progress on bamboo needles and at Pearson though I was selected for a random search, the attendant didn't seem to pay any attention to my needles (she didn't even open my solid metal iPod case), and at La Guardia, they didn't even open my bag after sending it through the x-ray machine. Of course, that was when we got back, three days before the incident in London. Now the list of what can be brought has changed, which means people are going to be asking that question on knitting lists more often than they already were.

Of course while I was there I was hoping to get to a yarn store or two that I'd written down before the trip, as there are a few things that were advertised on a few yarn store websites that I've never seen up here. I didn't get to go to any until the last day of our trip, though, and then only one, as I was travelling with non-knitters, and there was just so much else we wanted to do. There was a great little yarn store only a few blocks from our hotel, though: Knitty City, at 208 W. 79th St., in the Upper West Side, that I got to visit though. I got a skein of Cherry Tree Hill supersock there (wanted to get more but I was nearing the end of my budget) and I loved the store. The staff were friendly and welcoming and if I lived in the area, it would so be my LYS. Have I mentioned before how jealous I am of everyone that lives where they have a knitting community?

Anyway, it's a good thing no one took my needles away at the airport because on the way back, we were stuck on the plane, on the tarmac for two hours. We had jsut gotten loaded and it was time to leave the gate when the pilot reported that we had a hydraulic problem and maintenance needed to see if they could fix it--if they couldn't, we couldn't fly. Then after the problem was fixed and the paperwork finally completed and signed by the right people, we had to wait for a number of other flights to take off, as there was bad weather in the area that was delaying a lot of other flights. We got back two hours late, and I didn't get home until a quarter to one in the morning. And did I mention the part where I had to be at work at nine a.m. the next day?

But anyway, am home and finally rested and had a great time. I can't wait to go back. Only this time...not in August.

...And for some reason Blogger doesn't want to put the photos in the post, so will do a separate photo post tomorrow.

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