Last Friday I met my friend Fran in New York -- well, actually Newark airport. After helping reunite a lost little boy with his parents, we took the train to Penn Station and walked 40 blocks in the cold!
The exercise was a good thing because we ended up at Crumbs, splitting cupcakes and having coffee for lunch. We started with chocolate coconut and then devil dog (chocolate with marshmallow filling), and passed on the Elvis (banana with a smear of peanut butter on top, not fried).
Along the way we wandered into the gift shop of the American Folk Art Museum, which happened to have a quilt exhibit going on. The last time I was in New York with Fran, about 6 years ago, we accidentally ended up in another museum having a quilt exhibit. The exhibit last weekend was small, about a dozen quilts, all scrappy and made in the '30s.
Wish I had pictures to show. Of course the museum website shows some, but not my favorites. (Check out this one. That's a lot of really small squares!) One favorite was made of pieces of knitted garmets including an argyle sweater and a man's bathing costume. Not my idea of a quilt, but so much fun to look at, and I'm sure it is warm. My other favorite was made of miscellaneous blocks of various sizes and scales. Wondering if I can do something like that with all my one-off blocks and piles and piles of half-square triangles. What made that quilt work was the color scheme pulled everything together. The fabrics were all pastels from the same time period. I'll have to play around with my leftovers to see if they'll play nice together.
The reason we were in New York? To see Buddy Miller, Patty Griffins, Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris at the newly renovated Beacon Theater for their "Three Girls and their Buddy" show. Sadly, Buddy wasn't feeling well and didn't perform, but the three girls more than made up for it. What a great show! And the theatre is incredible. The hotel next door is nice, lots of great restaurants nearby (not to mention Crumbs) and a much better vibe than the touristy areas of New York. I think we'll be back for more shows.
We walked around the next morning before heading to different airports and saw Jack McBrayer of "30 Rock" walk past us. Last time I saw Stanley Tucci. Now I'm not going to feel like a trip to New York is complete if I don't see someone famous.
