knitting neels

It seems that Boston is famous for having invented its own type of baked bean, resulting in many a cheesy teatowel, apron, magnet, oven gloves and anything else you can think of with BeanTown emblazoned on it. Sadly, we are no longer in Bean Town. We are in Noo Joysey. I have no pictures of Bean Town to show you because I shot in black and white film and all our colour photos are on Alb’s camera. We did lots of fun things, though, including the unofficial Hahvahd Tour, a Duck Tour (upon which I got to drive the boat, nearly crash into the Charles Bridge, and announce that South Dakota was famous for chickens (I was mixing it up with South Carolina and mixing that up with Kentucky)), and a tour up the Prudential building since the John Hancock has been closed since 9/11.

There is a place in Bean Town called Newbury Street and is much like Grafton Street except on a much longer and grander scale. Imagine my surprise when I googled for yarn shops in the area and came up with two on Newbury street! One was awful. The other was lovely and I stayed a long time, squeezing, smelling and chatting. I’m not really on a wool mission this time around so I contented myself with a skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn because I finished my last pair on the flight over.

Your eyes do not deceive you! It is another Pomatomus!

This guy has been accompanying me around Manhattan for the last two days. We travelled down from Boston last Monday afternoon and planned to head into the city on Tuesday, but it rained all day. We stayed at home, took it easy. In other words, I wound up the sock yarn, printed the pattern, cast on, baked M&M cookies, knit some more and got directions to a yarn store near by. When the rain cleared off, I ventured out and spent a very enjoyable 45 minutes rooting around yarns of every description. I didn’t buy any yarn though. I decided to pick up a spindle instead.

I am hooked! I have been doing a little each evening and I have already spun up half of the roving (Fleece Artist merino, blue faced leicester, mmmm). It is the perfect antidote as it is a fibreish activity but not knitting. I just need to wind off this stuff before I can get cracking on the rest and ply the two lots together. Yay!

(As for Manhattan, in two days, we’ve done: Statten Island Ferry, World Trade Centre site (depressing hole in the ground), lunch in Chinatown (probably the best $3 meal I’ll have in my entire life), photos in Grand Central Station (best way to frighten a photographer: stand still in the middle of his 15 second exposure shot when you’re supposed to be gone to the loo), Chrysler building, Museum of Modern Art, Photography Centre (closed), Contemporary Art Museum in Queens, Museum of Art and Design (one man’s collection of hundreds of miniature chairs… thank god we didn’t pay full price), a trip to Pearl River Chinese market and a row, and many, many, people have been watched on the subway.)