Part 3: the endless tale of Representing ends

Well, that was no fun. Those Bruins! Zombies would have played better yesterday.

And I was so pleased and excited last summer when the Bruins signed Zdeno Chara, and now the more I see, the less I'm impressed. Not that I blame him for everything, I don't, but he's far from the savior we were hoping for, isn't he? Same old Bruins going down the same old path to the same old nowhere.

Sigh.

Enough depressing hockey. On with the knitting trip! Monica, to answer your question (interactive blogginess, love it!), Stephanie's t-shirt said "All your yarn are belong to us", which I gather is some sort of gaming in-joke? I mean, I find it amusing, but some seemed to find it hilarious. She was going to (and I imagine will) put a link on her blog to where you can buy it on Cafe Press, and $5 of the purchase price goes to MSF/DWB, too. And Monica, thanks for the call-out in the Harlot's comments to my account of all this; I really appreciate it! (And my stats are through the roof, all right. Funny to watch.)

Onward. What made this trip even more fun for me (can I stand it), from the planning stages, was knowing that I could stay with some fantastic cousins who live in the city, and who have for several years been inviting me to come visit. With their permission, I am using their actual names, not initials or aliases, which feels rather daring for some reason (no, I really don't get out enough).

Kate and Quentin Mare (how do you put the accent over the e?) are in The Business--their wedding was on a Monday, when the theaters are dark, so their friends could come--and what fun is it to brag about what your cool city cousins are doing on Broadway if you can't use their names? It may be a small plug, but I can give them a little plug here, anyway.

Kate's a knitter too, but she couldn't come to see the Harlot on Thursday because she was going to the opening of David Hyde Pierce's new play, Curtains, for the very good reason that she worked with him to give him a Boston accent--like a Broadway opening is some kind of excuse, right? Just kidding! It's a really good reason. Actually, I would have liked to see the play myself, except for the conflict. Another time! She teaches at Juilliard, and works with actors on voices and dialects for movies and plays and things; she also worked with Norah Vincent on portraying herself (vocally) as a man. Cool stuff, and considering who she has worked with, I don't think I'm being biased to say she must be damned good at it. The fact that she's super-fun to hang out with is merely an added bonus for me!

Q's going to be on Broadway himself (and not for the first time, thankyouverymuch), in a play called Coram Boy, which apparently did very well in London. It previews here (NY, not Boston) starting next month, and opens in May. I'm sure it will be wonderful, so if you're in NYC or going to be, do check it out, and be sure to look for Handel and/or Dr. Smith, who will be the best one there, I am quite sure (biased? I don't know what you're talking about). And before you ask, yes, I have so seen him act*, I'm not just assuming he must be good because he married my cousin and she has good taste.

*He was on an episode of Law and Order, and was so convincing that although I recognized him when I saw him, he started talking and he sounded so different, I wasn't sure after all that it was him. Wild. I admit, I haven't seen him on stage, but I'm sure he's even better there.

So, having removed myself from the arena, ripped myself away so to speak, it was time to knit northwards, because of course I was knitting on the subway: after an evening like that, how could I not? And thanks to their directions and Google Maps (love 'em!), I found their place without trouble, lending a feeling of proficiency to my lingering adrenaline rush that helped me stay up chatting with them for the next two hours. Whew! I blabbed on and on about the event and knitting, we caught up on family stuff, we just talked and talked. One of their cats was cautious of me, but the other was super-friendly, which was so nice when I was away from my own fur-posse. It was a great evening (at least from my side of the table). Eventually we all more or less fell over, and agreed it was bedtime.

In the morning, Q went off to rehearsal, and Kate and I took their charming daughter into the city. I got to play with the princess while Kate taught a class, and at first we just walked around people-watching, which was kind of fun. Then the baby wanted to go into a store, and guess which one? Any guesses? Pottery Barn, of course. We were in there for over an hour. She had the best time, and she was so good. I could hardly get over it. Far from making a mess, she was actually tidying things up. She would take one of the fabric squares out of the drawer, do something to it (in her pretend world, so I couldn't tell you what), and put it back. But she took one out and when she went to put it back, it didn't belong in that drawer, so she asked an employee where it did belong. He showed her the correct drawer, and she put the square where it should be. What an amazing child.

Eventually we tore ourselves away, and went to Barnes and Noble, where Kate met us after her class. We went to this great place for lunch, I'm sorry I don't know the name of it, but it had this salad bar thing where you tell them what you want from the list of choices, so I ended up with a salad of mixed greens, green peppers, green peas (I love fresh peas!), celery, cucumber, egg white, roasted chicken, and croutons, that was fabulous, as was the roll that came with it. And the eclair I got for dessert, whew. And the salad was so big I only finished half, and took the rest to finish on the train.

Q joined us for lunch, on his way to get his head shaved for the role. I wonder what he'll look like? He didn't have long hair before, but still, it'll be different. I bet he looks good, though. My brother keeps his hair very very short, and it looks good on him. Based on how I look at the hairdresser with my hair slicked back after washing, I think I would look awful. Fortunately, there's no call for me to shave my head, and I don't think I will. Perhaps we have differently shaped heads?

But that's hardly relevant, is it? You want to know about where we went next: the Museum of Arts & Design, for the Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting exhibition. I can only say, wowza. There are some people out there who are so far beyond what I think of when I use the word inventive, or creative ... it's amazing. If you click on the link and look at the photo at the top of the page (photography not being allowed, I couldn't take my own pictures there, not that I blame them), those teeny-tiny gloves? I wrote down what it said about them (paraphrased):

To knit accurately at 1/12 scale, she made needles from stainless steel medical wire used for inserting IV needles.

And I'm having trouble using US size ones on my socks. Humbling. There were some amazing things, including one (I think it might have been crocheted, but maybe it was knit) that was made out of dollar bills cut into strips. And another that was a good-sized, almost conventional-looking sort of doily tablecloth, except that all around the edges were these kind of skulls. Three dimensional. Simply wild.

There was a book about the whole exhibit, which I chose not to spend $45 on, but I wish I had looked at it at least. Oh well. Final word on that: if you're in New York, and at all interested, go.

Afterward, we went across the street to browse the shop at MoMA, which was full of amazing stuff. I simply had to buy one thing. Here's the first side I saw:

And the reverse:
Could you have resisted?

After that, it was time for me to bid Kate and the now-sleeping princess a fond farewell and head back to Mundane-land. Subway to Penn, wait for train to be announced, get on train. But the magic wasn't done with me yet. "Is that seat taken?" No, it wasn't. I moved my stuff* off it, a woman sat next to me and her husband sat across the aisle: an older couple (turns out they have a daughter my age) and ... she's a knitter. We knitted and talked about knitting all the way to New Haven (that's where they were getting off). She hadn't Represented, didn't know of Stephanie, she was just a random knitter that the universe sent my way. Again I ask, What are the odds?

*Including the tote bag I carried the whole trip, which says, "I have two needles. You have two eyes. Don't mess with a woman who knits." I don't know if she saw it or not before she sat down, but she seemed surprised when I got out my knitting, so I think not.

For a final photo, here's Harold, who helped me blog this weekend. By Sunday afternoon, I was reminding them that I had been home as long as I had been away, but they were still milking the abandoned/neglected kitty thing for all it was worth. Harold napped in my sweatshirt in order to be close at hand in case I needed him:


The white is my shirt, the gold my sweatshirt, and the brown is the table, if you're trying to figure out which end is up.

And for some final thoughts: Represent was an amazing experience. I saw one blogger refer to it as a knitters' Woodstock, and another talk about following Stephanie around like Deadheads following the Grateful Dead on tour, and I wasn't laughing at either of them. I haven't been to Rhinebeck or any of the other major fiber festivals, I don't know if that's what this was like, but it's an amazing community--and I don't want to dis crocheters, either, we're all a fiber family here, anyone who wants to be in this group is, as far as I can see. For all the little squabbles about knit vs crochet, straights vs circs, wool vs acrylic, etc, we're all part of something really ... nice, you know? And isn't that great?

Pulling together all my impressions has been quite overwhelming, and I laugh to think I was going to try to do it in one post. I wonder if something like that is part of the reason for the delay in Stephanie's posting. (You notice she couldn't, or didn't, do it all in one post, either.) If I was overwhelmed, how must she be feeling? She had an idea, threw it out to the blog-iverse, and look what happened.

Someone asked her why she wanted to start blogging in the first place, and how she felt about how many readers she has. She said the answer to the second question is nauseous, and she stopped reading her site stats; and that she wanted to blog because everyone else was. Cue the record player: nobody does it better...

Even though I was there, I still look forward to reading what she will write about it. I hope she gives numbers: how many people came, how many books were sold, how many hats and squares were given. She now has some heavy-duty, backed-by-photography evidence of the power of knitters, our numbers, and maybe when she says she needs more than 10 chairs put out for an appearance, they'll believe her! Some good should come of this, other than the hats, the squares for Warm Up America, and the happy knitters all over.