New York Minknit

Adam and I randomly went to the American Museum of Natural History twice–once last week and once this week. I like the older displays more than the newer flashy stuff. There really is a lot of fascinating stuff in there. Here’s some fiber-related stuff:

I do not feel the call of spinning, but if you do, those are drop spindles on the left, which have something to do with spinning, I think. The AMNH is a little vague on the plaques sometimes, so I’m not sure if those are knitting needles on the right, or just some random wood sticks.

Clearly, I grew up in a city, as I am more fascinated by this vitrine than I would be by actual upstate New York scenery.

If you can’t tell, Adam has been conned into being the official photographer for New York Minknit again. He really has a photographer’s eye, so I’ll keep taking my crappy pictures and trying to improve, and getting Adam to take more pictures in the meantime. I think this one above is particularly good. It has kind a weird alien quality that those Thomas Struth photos never have (on purpose, on Struth’s part, I suppose). (Though I don’t think Adam was thinking about Struth when he shot this, that’s just my pretensiousness rearing its head. In fact, I think he wanted me to move so he could shoot the whole vitrine without any spectators.)

You know, I realized while writing this blog, how many books I read as a kid that were set in New York. (Like my reference to the Baby-Sitter’s Club in this post.) In a weird way, all these books form a mental reference for me now that I live here. I just remembered, while writing this, about this book, The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline, which I read in grade school, set in the American Museum of Natural History. There were more too–I just remembered another one, The Telltale Summer of Tina C., by Lila Perl, which was good too.