I've been trying to come up with an image of objects arranged to represent a color wheel. I've seen color wheels made out of sneakers, flip flops, cocktail umbrellas, hair bows… all very cute. However, I want to make one out of objects that I already I own, which is harder.

So far, I've got this:

I don't arrange flowers well—perhaps this is a similar skill? If I had more time to give it, I'd go out and about to shops and use objects there as props but I really don't have the time it would take. 

I was visiting with a younger friend the other night trying to explain that I have hit an age where I know I will not get to do everything that I would like to do. Even though I hope to live many more years, I am trying to use my days more thoughtfully—less frittering away of time. I do believe that this is not something I'm going to spend any more time on :-).

Yay! It feels nice to mark that off the list.

Oceanic art is that made by native peoples from the Pacific islands, including Hawaii and Easter Island, and Australia. I briefly visited the Oceana room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week and took this photo of carved sheilds mounted on the ceiling:

And a closer look:

There are some good ideas for quilting patterns!

I’m cleaning up my desktop, filing photos into folders where I hope I can find them again. As I look at images from our trip to NYC, I am struck once again by how different it is from Sherman, TX. This is not the view that Steve and I see on a daily basis and it’s interesting for me to imagine what it would be like to actually live in a city this large, with so very many people. For one thing, I would not take so many pictures :-).

I hoped that I would not look like a tourist but our son, Jeff, assured me that I did not look like I lived there. I watched the other women my age on the streets and he was right… I needed a puffy coat for one thing. And surprising to me, many women wore color—pants, shoes, coats, something more than a colorful scarf. My black coat was warm, but not trendy. That said, I was really happy to be warm!

Below, we are standing here by the fountain at Lincoln Center. Jeff can see a part of this fountain from his apartment which I find to be astonishingly cool!

The closest, best grocery store to the kids is Whole Foods. We have a Whole Foods near us. Well, near by Texas standards; it’s 30 miles down the road. We rarely shop there so walking through this one with Jeff was sort of an adventure. One thing is certain, food costs a lot more in NYC than it does in Sherman. 

As we walked the produce aisles, the blue eggs made me stop to pull out my camera. I’d never seen an egg like that before.

Then I noticed both what kind of egg it was and how much it cost. Really?!

These blue speckled eggs are lovely but is each one so good that a person would spend $30 on it? What kind of person spends $30 on one egg? Does an emu egg taste that much better than a chicken egg?

I will never know because no one in our family would never spend $30 on an egg :-).

OK… now I really need to get back to work!

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s huge and great fun! We spent most of our time with the modern art. Again, I’m not sure exactly why this is museum-worthy, but I did love this wall of canvases that make a rainbow. And guess what? This is something that we could all reproduce at home! You can’t say that about most things you see in the Met.

We’ve walked in Central Park…

And Top of the Rock…

We walked on the High Line, even though is was cold and wet…

We’ve shopped, and eaten well. I’ve taken pictures of my feet and picked up lucky pennies (which makes Jeff crazy)…

But mostly we have had a really nice visit with the kids!

And now, it’s time to go home. It’s always nice to go home but it also makes me a little sad to think that it could be a year before we see Jeff in person again. Thank goodness it is so easy to communicate now. I can remember when calling was so expensive that I wrote letters! 

Steve and I have been visiting Jeff in NYC. The Guggenheim was our first museum stop. The building is famous for good reason. We all really enjoyed out time in it.

Christopher Wool is the artist featured in the special exhibit now hanging along the curved walls on the walkway from floor to ceiling level.

What can I say? His works are visible from a distance which is good in this space.

I did like several of the pieces…

However, I enjoyed watching people look at the art more than I actually enjoyed the art itself.

It’s easy to ask yourself exactly what makes this art. Certainly, that thought went through my mind. Maybe this artist was the first to do word art? Probably not.

I liked the starkness of the black and white pieces. A whole lot of his work reminded me not so much of quilts, but of printed fabric. He did base a few pieces on re-workings of his older canvases into new pieces which is an interesting idea.

As I said, I liked many of his pieces but if I had seen them out of this context, I would not have considered them obivious subjects for museum display. Without knowing more, I have to assume that a lot Christopher Wool’s success comes from being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people. Once annointed, his art became ART.

This city is full of eye candy. There are patterns and textures and interesting things to see no matter where you look. Nearly everyone has a camera. The line that separates ART worthy of hanging in a museum from cool pictures that end up on a computer’s desktop is a thin one.

Is this 6′ canvas art?:

Or is it a just an interestly-cropped and tweaked photo of the poles and cords for the ticket line?

Looking at modern art is good for me. It is a reminder that I do not get to decide what art is for anyone except for myself, and that’s enough for me :-).

You may have seen this before, but it's both interesting and fun:

Have I mentioned that my walking partner, Laurie, has joined a group of folks here in town who are hoping to log 1000 miles this year? I think I can do it but I am not officially joining the group because I'm too competitive. I know this about myself and it can get out of hand. That said, I've begun paying more attention to my own actual miles walked. 

I work standing up (except when sewing). I walk a lot through the day but I'm sure I over-estimate how much I walk. So I bought a Fitbit One so that I can get an accurate count of how much I'm moving. The first One I bought turned out to be defective and it made me cranky until the company told me it was the unit, not me. The Fitbit people replaced it for free, with no hassle, and the new one is working very well.

This little device can keep track of a lot—miles and steps walked, floors climbed. There are web and phone dashboards where you can enter other activities like pilates and weight-lifting, food/calories consumed. There's a scale that links to the device but I'm just logging my daily weight manually.

I don't need to lose weight so why am I doing this? Because I'm competitive, that's why. I've decided to compete with myself. It's nice to have that 1000 mile goal, but mostly I want to collect the data on what I really do, not just what I think I do. I have osteoporosis and I really need to do more. It's early yet, but so far I'm finding that I am looking for places to add a few more steps, to take more stairs.

Boy—I would really love to walk up the musical stairs!