Penguin Girl

(regular posting will occur after 09 May)

Apology: Dear NYC, I’m sorry that it’s been really cold these past few days. I know that I was sad that I might not have a chance to wear the River Wrap until the autumn, but this isn’t acceptable weather. It is supposed to be Spring. Yes, rain is ok, I understand the need for it. Unfortunately I actually felt the need to mutter the s-word in my description of how the weather felt late this afternoon. That’s not ok. I’ve happily worn the wrap the past two days and have been very warm but I’d be just as happy if it were folded with some cedar for the next seven or so months.

Moving on, this afternoon I took advantage of my husband’s corporate discount perks to visit two amazing exhibits at MoMA: Color Chart and Design and the Elastic Mind.

I’ll start with Color Chart (sorry, site is in Flash). Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time at Knitty City not creating, but wandering around the store complaining to everyone that I was looking for inspiration. I should have stopped by MoMA instead.. the Color Chart exhibit wasn’t as inspiring as I hoped, but something about the white walls and the squares of colour by artists such as Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter, François Morellet, Sherrie Levine, and Sol LeWitt among others has left me thinking beyond my normal limited colour choices…

Yet Design and the Elastic Mind was exactly the push toward inspiration I was desperately seeking. Some of the items I had seen before (one example), however, many I had not. Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny’s “Honeycomb Vase” is stunning. A NYT review of the exhibit may be found here.

If you have the opportunity I urge you to visit both exhibits. Yes, you can see much of it online, but the experience of seeing all of this innovation organized together left my senses excited.

As a last minute decision, last night I decided to stop by Stephanie’s talk as it really was on my way home. I missed her talk [I’m trying to convince E to drive me up to Webs on the 27th] but arrived in time to get my book signed and see some people, but not everyone I was looking for. I wasn’t really with it as I had a long day and didn’t really /talk/ at all with her when it was actually my turn. Spot kept jumping out of my bag at every opportunity and was constantly muttering something about sock yarn and lace, even though he and I have discussed the contents of my stash and my time commitments for the next few weeks. Sometimes I don’t know what gets into him. I think it’s PG being a bad influence. In any case, I really love these types of events because the community of knitters always inspires me and I make new friends (and push at least ONE person to write a public journal. Last year it was A, this year it’s (hopefully) E. I’m very happy to see both on wordpress). I was sitting in a chair introducing myself to E and hopefully not leaving the impression that I’m completely insane and waiting so I didn’t jump the entire line when a woman and her friend walked by and stopped to compliment the Wrap (Actually, everyone did; I’ve never had so many compliments on a piece of knitting before. Thank you everyone!). I spoke a bit about it and she suddenly asks, “Are you Penny?”. To which I replied at the same time she said, “Melanie!”. It was so wonderful to meet her in real space.. she was there with her friend T who has been her penpal for many years and they finally met in real person as well. I had a wonderful bit of tea with them after getting my book signed and we actually succeeded in crossing paths at MoMA this afternoon.

Lastly, my mum bought a new car. This pleases me as her Corolla is almost 15 years old and the back doors no longer consistently open (or one no longer did and sometimes the other sticks?). The Corolla was a good car, it drove me (I rarely drove it) all over while I was in high school, making weekly trips across the length of the Island for orchestra rehearsals and at least two trips a summer (more like three or four) up to Oneonta for music “camp”. Please say hello to Snowflake (the car). May they enjoy their time together in health and safety. A has a new white scion too, his is the bigger boxy one and I don’t know if it has been named (helicopter taxi might be appropriate). If the weather is ever not grey hopefully we’ll get a photo of the two together. :)

This holiday season the MTA is running special trains on Sundays. On the V line from 2nd Avenue to Queens Plaza, every hour (about on the hour) you can catch a special “nostalgia” train from 10a to 5p. This is an ongoing until 30 December. This past Sunday E and I brought ourselves into the city and waited for this special V to show up.

As it pulled into the station (with a sizeable crowd waiting on the platform) I attempted to photograph it and failed miserably. E suddenly stepped back and I heard unhappy language escaping his lips. Apparently his battery did not properly charge so I must torture you with my terrible photos.

It was kinda fun but I guess the hustle and bustle of a weekend day in NYC in December got to me. I did enjoy the padding on the seat, for two reasons. First, those plastic seats are quite cold on dark winter mornings, secondly is that I don’t have much padding so any little bit makes me happy.

Many of the advertisements made me smile… I find the germs one quite timely. Yuck.

This is why PG is mad at me. I left her home and she isn’t very happy about it and keeps trying (along with Work) to make sure I don’t complete my final project (due tomorrow). *sigh*

Just a quick safety tip today because I’m still thawing from a lunchtime excursion. It’s just REALLY REALLY windy today. My office building’s windows are still in (to my surprise), but others aren’t so lucky.

Please hold onto the railing when going up or down the subway stairs. Especially if they are icy. Hopefully those behind you won’t be rude and push you, but be really careful. If you find yourself starting to slip due to snow or ice attempt to turn it into a trip down a slide and aim for the super slick part.

Be very careful of the stairs on the SE side of 79th on the 1 (on your way to knitty city). I’ve always had a very large problem with that stairwell. It seems that the snow and ice and frozen slush builds up there.

Also be careful of a certain stairwell on the CI bound F train. I slid down it a few years ago, thus prompting this safety reminder message.

Similarly be careful crossing the streets (especially when in the early evening). When it’s dark at 5pm I’ve noticed that cars don’t care and whip around corners without thinking (oh wait they always do that) and thus far I’ve been very very lucky. I also once slid across Coney Island Avenue (by Ave P) … THAT one hurt, I wasn’t rushing I just hit that patch of ice just “right”.

Happy Hanukkah!

This is probably not relevant to any of those who actually read this site, but I’ll write it anyway. I don’t think I’ve written about this yet. The MTA does maintenance on the lines on weekends, late nights, and weekly. They have had an email alert (similar to straphangers alerts) for a while now, but that was only for weekend changes.

They recently added weekday alert notices. These are only for planned outages and which does not help for sudden work or train malfunction or whatever else is happening during the week.

I used to get the straphanger notices. I stopped reading them as I get too much email (I’ve been paring down. It’s a work in progress). I mentally think of these mta notices as “new” and I changed my mangement of that sort of email so it is a little more “in my face” and hopefully I’ll start paying more attention. As some track work was recently conducted on my portion of the F line, I was pleased to find that I actually read these, found them relevant, timely, and easy to read. I think that all of these are useful and I look forward to when I can put in the lines, stations, and times I routinely travel on and receive incredibly customized reports. It would further be awesome to be able to query the system and say “I’m at station X now, what’s doing between here and there?”

I’ll keep dreaming.

Also, if it is relevant to you, did you fill out a report card? I admit that the interface is nasty, but maybe the results will end up useful. What was that about the dreaming? ;)

Obviously i’ve been missing a ton of posts for Tuesdays so I’ll now make Tuesdays a photo spotlight of sorts. We’ll see how long this lasts. ;)