Sigh…

My buddy left again on Wednesday for another long month in Saudi Arabia.  I miss him already.  Just having him around for all the holiday festivities made everything much brighter.  We tried to cram in as much as we could, not only work on the house, critical stuff, and parties (also critical stuff), and a long overdue trip to see my mom in Maryland, (really critical stuff) but the most important thing to me, was we made it back into NYC so Kevin could see my piece at the World Financial Center Gallery.  We went last Friday, which if you have a calendar from last year in front of you, you would know that it was December 30th, the day before the free for all that is New Year’s Eve on Times Square.  This day should come with a disclaimer as it is not for the faint of heart.  I can’t imagine actually going to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, I’ve lived outside NYC for the last 35 years, and I’ve never done it and have no intention of doing it.

Anyway, traffic was abysmal, it took a couple hours by bus, a ride that should have been 40 minutes.  Once in the city, we headed south towards the WTC site, and walked over to see my piece in the Crossing Lines exhibit.  If you haven’t read my blog post from the beginning of December, this won’t mean much to you.  You can catch up here.  I’ll wait…

We ran through the exhibit (since we were running about an hour and a half behind schedule), Kevin snapped another photo of me with my piece, and we walked over to the Winter Garden, which is still so hauntingly beautiful by both day and night.  He got some wonderful shots with his Nikon d5000.

We wandered out to the water front, that would be the Hudson River, and New Jersey beyond, just at dusk, which was gorgeous.  The view to NJ is beautiful, you can just imagine how spectacular the skyline would be if we were standing on the Jersey side of the Hudson looking back at the tip of Manhattan at twilight.

We headed over through and around the construction site, to the World Trade Center Memorial, it just opened this year, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and it is breath taking.  We got advance tickets, free of course, but you still have to get them online ahead of time and go through TSA type security (at least we didn’t have to take our shoes off, it was cold), and I have to say, as tragic as this event was, and as difficult as it was to come up with some kind of sacred memorial that pleased everyone, this is in my books the eight wonder of the modern world, or is it nine?  What are we up to?

The foot prints of the twin towers, two giant squares, were turned into HUGE waterfalls, and all around the perimeter, etched in marble or granite, some black stone, were the names of everyone who died on 9/11, including the Pentagon and the flight that crashed in PA, all the first responders who died, and those who died in the first attempts to bring down the trade center in 1993.  What was particularly touching was the etched names of women with “their unborn child”.  Sobering, poignant, yet incredibly uplifting.  The deafening sound of the steady waterfalls filled the empty void with something alive yet temporary, like life.

We got onto a northbound E train, and headed over to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. There were massive bodies, hard to move a step in front, I was very glad my husband was 6’3″ tall and I could find him easily in the crowd.  We managed to see the tree, and get some kind tourist to snap a photo of both of us.  Then we crawled out of the melee and headed over to Times Square.  The day before the festivities has it’s own sort of energy, but I have to say, I don’t do crowds, I don’t do bright lights, and I hate excessive noise.  I was close to a meltdown by the time we walked through Times Square and we headed over to the Port Authority and grabbed a bus home.  We got to a Panera close to where we live in NJ and settled in for some quiet chat and decent soup/sandwich combinations and some much needed  comfort.

Anyway, I’m glad we went into NYC last Friday, and I’m glad Kevin got to see my piece.  It was important to me.  And I’m really glad I got to see the WTC memorial.  I will return often.  And I’m glad we picked up a couple of cheap 2012 glasses from a street vendor in Times Square, and wore them to the annual New Year’s Eve party in a neighboring town.  Our friends have a projection TV system, and here we are standing in front of “Times Square” on the projection TV, just after midnight, celebrating the New Year.  I’m so glad I was in a cozy home theater room in our friend’s house in Montville and NOT in the actual Times Square…

And now, a word from our sponsor…

So here is the deal…  I write this blog for free.  I have fun with it, and it serves my need to express myself in a way different than fiber.  I’m thrilled with the 500 plus subscribers that read my blog, and your comments mean the world to me.  But I have to earn a living in here somewhere.  So please bear with me for just a moment while I shamelessly advertise all the opportunities to study with me this year.  I posted my schedule as I have it so far on my website, click here.  There are many opportunities to study Garment Construction with me including a couple new offerings at WEBS, (where I’ll get to visit my daughter at UMass) along with a  5 day workshop in Asheville, NC, my regular annual class at Sievers School of Fiber in Wisconsin, an eight week class at the Newark Museum in NJ, and many new online opportunities at Weavolution.com.  I teach lots of different classes, including warping techniques, inkle weaving, color and inspiration classes, photographing your fiber art, and of course the Weave a Memory class, the technique that gets mentioned lots in this blog. I love the online format, I teach in my bedroom slippers and don’t have to get on an airplane!  I’m also teaching at the Conference of Northern California Handweavers, Convergence, and the American Sewing Guild conference in Houston.  Sign up early and often!

OK,  commercial announcement over…

Now for some pretty for the week.  I am slowly and methodically getting things done in the studio.  Lots of interruptions, all good, like the emergency call this morning, “can we move the dinner party to your house tomorrow night?”.  Crap.  So instead of finishing up beaming my warp, I cleaned my downstairs.  Thanks for helping Larissa and Brianna!  The house needed cleaning anyway, and I feel better when I move around a tidy clean smelling environment.  The remnants of Christmas are gone, and my looms are calling…

Can I say I’ve never loved a warp so much in 35 years of weaving?

And I finished the muslin for the scarf dress I’m hankering to do, but I can’t show you that, since I just shipped it off to Threads Magazine for a small article for them.  Obviously on making a muslin…

So Happy New Year and onto some creative adventures…

Stay tuned…