I’m home and desperately trying to dig my way through the pile of stuff that didn’t get done while we were on the road. There is hope. The pile is smaller!

I shot this while standing in Times Square last week (hard to believe that it was only a week ago). What an amazing place. Noisy, crowded, busy people going everywhere at once, taxis doing their best not to kill you, eye-candy everywhere you look – NYC is well worth a visit. Enjoy this (short) show:

I had a few moments in the hotel room to blog surf. I checked the Artgirlz blog to catch up on posts I missed. I found their post on the color turquoise and it made me oh-s0-happy! I especially love this photo with the stripes in reflected in the pool water.

There are so many good blogs out there and you are reading this so you know that. I’d like to encourage you to talk to your friends and see if they, too, are blog surfing. If not, tell them what you like about it and encourage them to join the fun. They will thank you for it later.

We’re nearly home and I’m looking through a few of the photos I took thinking that you all might be interested. These matted photos below were part of a much bigger piece of art. I liked the way the photos float inside the openings in the matt, sometimes on torn black paper. Nice look.

I have no idea what this is. Looks like a huge upside-down water glass. It was on top of the MOMA.
A big part of our trip included a stop in Baltimore where Jeff (our youngest son) lives.

There are lions guarding the entrance to the NYC Public Library. These guys are resting where the ones in front of the Art Institute of Chicago are in mid-step… but they are about the same size. Notice the pigeon on this fellow’s head.

We did more people watching in Times Square. It is my sincere hope that I am not nearly as interesting to look at as many of the folks we saw are.

If the trash is from a store with pretty boxes, it can be a little bit festive… This pile made me think of Christmas.

There is an installation piece at the MOMA by Song Dong called “Waste Not”. Turns out that these items all came from his now-deceased mother’s house. That is the skeleton of her house with the items. Seriously, if this doesn’t get you get rid of the junk in your house, what will?

I enjoyed the look of the empty toothpaste tubes but I am not going to make my own set at home.

And I shopped for fabric in the garment district! I am very lucky that Steve was with me and carried my purchases all day long. I found out where to go from a page on Paula Nadelstern’s web site. The shop in the photo below is N. Y. Elegant Fabrics (not on Paula’s site but it’s near the shops that were). Oh my, it was huge and full of luscious stuff. I did buy some cotton (great big red dots on white), and some etched fuschia velvet. It made me wish I had time to make more garments.

We got to NYC in time to see a bit of the Gay Pride parade. It was colorful and festive and no one minded having their pictures taken.

We went to see the very fine exhibit of Paula Nadelstern’s quilts at the American Folk Art Museum. The quilts were marvelous and the setting was perfect for them. Go see this exhibit if you get a chance. Next we went to the MOMA. The art was good, but I had almost as much fun people-watching. These three ladies looked nice together…

I love this photo…

On our way from Vermont to Connecticut, we stopped at the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Store. I’ve been buying my chocolate from them for a while now and it was really fun to stop and find even more great baking tools. We found the hot pads we’ve been hunting for for years – oh happy day.

Then we went down the road to Simon Pearce. I had not heard of Simon Pearce before but this is a well-respected source for hand-blown glass in the northeast. These are photos of the outside of their home base. The waterfall you see generates much of the power that they use.


I loved the wear pattern on this rock…

Steve took the photos above from this covered bridge…

I did try to resist, but I just didn’t do a good job of it. We bought one glass bowl, the smaller Corinth bowl. It’s going to look lovely on our dining room table. Steve thought so too – although later he said that really, as long as I loved it, that was good enough. I think our table without a bowl would suit him just fine. But we decided that if we managed to stimulate the economy a little bit on this trip that that would be OK so there you go.