City Views, Country Dreams

Good evening from New York.

It is still cold here.  Snow may or may not fall again before sunrise tomorrow.  Strangely, that weather report seems to be all too familiar to me, and perhaps to those of you who've been reading my recent posts.

It was too cold to go to the St. Patrick's Day parade, even though I had made myself a cozy green-hued hat for that occasion.

I've photographed that hat against some Liberty flowered cotton with the notion that I might encourage spring warmth to arrive.

While waiting for that warm weather bus that just does not seem to arrive here, I have been doing more wooly knitting.  I am adding the fair isle cowl to my Foakley Arts etsy shop.  It's knit as a tube and hand stitched together.

In the following photograph you can see the inside and the outside.

Long after Ysolda Teague's Follow Your Arrow mystery knitting project officially concluded, I actually finished my version of the wrap.  It was so much fun to work my way through the clue options and to learn how to read the stitch charts.

The above photograph shows one of the angles of the wrap's wingspan, and the following photograph gives you all an idea of the intricacy of the various stitches.  Can you see those many arrow shapes?

Well, here's another opportunity to follow those arrows!

I wish that all of you could visit The Museum of Modern Art to see the two splendid exhibits that I saw yesterday.  The Gauguin: Metamorphoses show focuses on Gauguin as a printmaker, with lots of his woodblock prints and watercolor transfer monoprints on display.  

There are also quite a few oil paintings and wooden sculptures.  Oh...it's a real treat to also see lots of the actual wood blocks carved to made the prints.  Quite a few of the prints were printed by Gauguin himself in Tahiti.  I know that I will be visiting this exhibit more than once.

The other exhibit that my friend and I saw was also interesting in that it revealed some insight into the artist's process.  Jasper Johns recently produced these drawings, prints and paintings after being inspired by a rather crumpled up photograph of the late artist Lucian Freud.  I would also highly recommend this show.

Back to knitting.  A recent post by Kristen over at Cozy Things showed what fun she had making some crocheted buttons to accent one of her beautifully knitted sweaters.  She reminded me of some similar buttons I made long, long ago in the early 1960s, when I was about 15 or 16, to accent cabled cardigans I'd learned how to make.

I thought that you all might be interested to see one of these now very vintage examples of my early knitting days.  The sweater still fits!

Here's a close up view of those crocheted buttons.

I've got a little more knitting to work on this evening, and may just be watching some television on the side.

Back to work for me tomorrow.  I hope that there will not be any snow to shovel.  

Thank you all for your visits and comments.  I do promise to take you all for a good spring walk around town very soon.  It will be so good to be able to leave my down-filled coat in the closet!