small adventures attached by tunnels.

today we decided to get some sightseeing in and brave the subways of new york (not for fear of danger but for fear of confusion). i actually developed a perfunctory ability in navigating the subway surprisingly swiftly. it is pretty confounding, though.

aitor really did me a solid and agreed to accompany me to purl and purl patchwork (for those who don't know, two little boutique shops that comprise the pinnacle of a quilter/crocheter's wet dream). in typical new york fashion, they've taken two awfully small spaces and turned them into perfectly sorted treasure troves of imported fabrics, reproductions and fine yarns. it's enough to make a burgeoning craft hag's head pop off gently.





i did really well at not going crazy (accomplished easily enough in my current state of financial alarm) but i allowed myself a few fat quarters for my english paper piecing quilt. that quilt, by the way, has recently expanded to a six year project in my mind now that i kind of want to make two full quilt tops to make it a fully reversible opus (the one side i started in browns, yellows and oranges and another in purples and blues). we shall see if this idea is indeed too mental to follow through on. on second thought, maybe nine years.

thankfully, aitor found a nearby tobacconist to entertain him while i drooled over yardage.

after all of our goofing in manhattan, we met up with melissa who, in the continuation of her staycation, was attending a lecture series called adult education. beyond just wanting to converge with melissa again, i was interested to see the show with my connection to trampoline hall and all. adult education is a very different undertaking from trampoline hall. i was surprised to find out that with four lecturers it ran just over and hour (no question & answers, it would seem). the lecturers are also much more uniformly comfortable performing than at trampoline hall (two were comics, one a writer and one a radio dj). the result is a show that i would place (on my personal spectrum) somewhere between trampoline hall and the comedy i most enjoy creating/consuming. it is much less of a social experiment than a themed exploration to the pits of the arcane - with affable and funny elements clearly encouraged. we all laughed very hard at beatles rip-off bands, cringed at horrifying tales of baby dolls at f.a.o. schwartz, and even sobered up with discussion of violence, reality and the media. then we laughed more at fans of the musical cats.

all told, a fantastic night out.