I'm baaaaack!!! Did ya miss me?

It's been awhile. I left last week for Iowa for my friend's baby shower. We had a really nice time although a wee bit colder than home. It pretty much snowed the whole time. Ruth's longtime friends from Belize came up as well and we had a blast goofing off in the snow after the shower. We were like girls in their thirties going on five.

Unfortunately, the snow was powdery and not conducive of good snowman construction. We made do. My friend's mother has this older minivan that she just uses to haul things back and forth from the properties they own. Let's just say we left an anatomically correct present on the hood of her car for her. It was pretty darn funny once she saw it. She's got a great sense of humor so it was a good laugh anyway.

Hello. We are snow bunnies. (Joanne and I)

So I was to fly out on Sunday night. I happen to be on the same flight to Detroit for my connection as her other friend. With the ice storms, we weren't able to get out so we schlepped all of our stuff back to my friend's house for another night. Basically, my friend, Kelley from Nashville, was flying in an hour later than I so there was no time to go home due to my delays on Sunday. By the time I landed, got my bags to the car, and walked back over to her terminal, she had landed. So we got our stuff together and headed for my house in NJ. Kelley is a co-worker, fellow knitter, but most importantly a good friend. We talk or instant message practically everyday. We never had the opportunity to really do something fun. She had vacation time to kill, so did I, and I found out she had never been to NYC and always wanted to go. Perfect! What is better than to show someone NYC all decked out for the holidays, right? Since she still travels for work, she had Hilton points to use and we scored a hotel right in Times Square. I had it in my head to go up on Monday night instead of Tuesday morning so I could show her more. So that's exactly what we did. We covered a lot of ground in the 4 hours we walked around the vicinity of our hotel to Bryant Park, Times Square, the NBC building, and Rockefeller Center.

A little surprise I had planned was that I bought tickets to the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. Kelley is an architecture buff so she had almost as much enjoyment looking around this historic building as the show itself. They did some special footage during the show as it is the Hall's 75th anniversary and 75th anniversary of the Rockettes.

This is a view from the third mezzanine looking down at the lobby and massive chandelier. I have been to Radio City many times growing up only a 40 minute NJ Transit train ride from the city, but I had never had the opportunity to experience Radio City at Christmas. Between that and the Rockefeller tree, I was catapulted into the Christmas spirit.

http://www.commoncents.org/go.cfm/4A29F493-3048-32DA-1849D69F5EE1F1CF

It wasn't until the second night in town that we spotted this. We don't know how we missed it. After the show, we walked back down to Rockefeller Center to get a better picture of the tree than I had the night before. We stumbled upon this. It's called "Common Cents". It's the Penny Harvest Field where there are over 100 million pennies donated by children in support of social change for their communities.

It had a profound impact on Kelley and I. I think to both of us, this may have been one of our favorite parts of the trip. It was nice to see other New Yorkers and tourists alike just emptying their pockets, like us, in support of a good cause.

But then we turned around and look into the Anthropologie window display and look what we see.....I don't know about you, but next snowfall, all of my snowballs will be knitted and cabled too. I think our eyes glazed over when we saw balls of yarn as display especially after the disappointment that was "String". Very snooty, hardly any product, and we weren't even greeted the entire time we were in there (which wasn't very long). Still, do I look like I can't afford cashmere?

It had rained earlier in the evening and a dense fog dropped down. Take a look at this...cool huh?
Would you believe all the times I had gone to the city for business or come here for a show, I never saw people skating at the rink in Rockefeller Center.

Or saw this.....aside from seeing it on TV. Sorry for the blurry photos. It was foggy and misting outside.

And the grandeur that is the Rockefeller Tree. It was gorgeous. Kelley and I never realized how large it was that it had to be tethered to the surrounding buildings in the center.

This little snowflake display was on the Barney's Department Store. They had some lovely window displays below and a musical snowflake show every 10 minutes or so. It played to Christmas Eve/Sarajevo. That's St. Patrick's Cathedral off to the left there.

This Christmas ball display was seen in the fountain diagonal from Radio City. There was another one with the old style Christmas lights but I didn't get a photo of that one.

Below is the Chrysler building during the day as seen from across the street at Grand Central Station.

Now I know what you're all thinking. They went to NY and didn't by yarn? Of course, you know I wouldn't disappoint you. After we got over our disappointment of String, we ended up at Purl Soho the next day. It was a small shop, but very friendly and over-stuffed with product. Ahhhh nirvana.

None of the yarn shops at home carry this one, at least not that I've seen. This is Sheep Shop Yarn Company "sheep number three" which is 30% silk and 70% wool. It's in a nice teal-ish aquamarine blue but I don't think the picture does it justice because you can't see variation in color. I bought 3 skeins at 325 yards each.

Then this is Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino. Let me just say YUM!
More pics to post later and some knitting updates.