We are back! We were awake at 3am central time to catch our flight back to the big TX on Wednesday, and hoo boy I’m still recovering. The trip was good, the weather was awesome (almost chilly at times), and the shawl well received on Rob’s grandma’s 90.5th birthday celebration. We also got to go to NY while we were in town and Rob let me drag him to a number of places that make him antsy:

Purl. Purl is very pretty with their lovely window display and so-soft yarns. Everything is smooshed into filled cubbies, so you need to pull out the yarns to see what they are. Which isn’t such a bad thing, since they have the softest selection ever. Soft. Squishy. Yum.

However, you definitely pay the Purl tax for shopping there – Koigu is $13.50 a skein. Damn. I just couldn’t justify paying that much for more sock yarn (although I was quite tempted), but I did break the yarn diet for one lone green skein at 40% off. I also picked up some Nature’s Palette, which isn’t available locally – the green skeins are for me, and the blue for Rob’s mom. She loved the socks I knit her for xmas so much that she wants to relearn to knit (she knit in college) and make her own socks. Yeah, I can help with that.

I probably wouldn’t go to Purl again if I was visiting NY, as their entire inventory (at least the yarns) are available on their website. Which is great for those of us living far away, but not so interesting if you stop by in person. It was nice to see their fabrics up close and personal, though.

I didn’t buy any fabric – Rob was getting impatient, and I don’t really have any sewing projects or yardage requirements in mind for fancy pretty fabric. I figure I’ll order some from them at some point when my sewing skills improve. We ended up having lunch at the cafe between the two Purl shops, and the creepy cats in the window stared at us the whole time we ate.

Kinokuniya. I was on the lookout for some more Japanese stitch dictionaries, but I didn’t see anything worth buying. There was one reasonably priced book but it looked questionable, with some swatches knit in mohair (bad, bad idea). I ended up buying this amigurumi book with cute animals and a crocheted milk carton instead. Does a body good, pass it on.

MOMA. Just kidding about the antsy part, Rob really did want to go here. We used to visit NYC occasionally when we lived in MA, but I’ve only been to the Queens annexy MOMA when they were doing construction on the Manhattan building. It was really nice and only saw about half of it in the 2 hours we were there. MOMA makes me appreciate Houston a teeny bit more, as we’ve seen a few MOMA exhibits in local museums in the last year. Houston definitely has some great contemporary art going on between the Menil, Fine Arts, and Contemporary Art museums.

I ended up bringing Petal to Jersey, so I only really worked on Petal. I finished the front up to the arm shaping and a good chunk of the back. Then I ripped a good chunk of the back because my gauge loosened up while I knit sleepily on planes, buses and automobiles, gah! I also reworked the chart for the Sockpalooza socks to make it sock-workable, more on that when I start the actual socks (T-minus 26 days).