New York Minknit

Here are some traveling project shots in the new Greek and Roman Galleries. I was predisposed to dislike these galleries because they replaced the old cafeteria, which was beautiful and a nice spot for homework reading in college. The new cafeteria is depressing and underground, and has none of the glamour of the old cafeteria. The new galleries are nice, I just miss the cafeteria.

 (The gimmick with these photos is that the galleries have two statues of Hercules, a young Hercules and an old Hercules. The young Hercules is holding the hide of a slain lion and the old Hercules is wearing the lion as a hooded cape. I am trying to pose my knitting like the lion skin. The fourth picture is just a picture of me holding the shawl near a noseless bust.)

 The old cafeteria was where the kids bathed in The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Also, I recently learned, it was decorated by Dorothy Draper, which might be why it was kind of old-lady fabulous. Here’s a photo of

me at the Dorothy Draper show at the Museum of City of New York earlier this year.

On a somewhat random tangent, as I come upon my tenth anniversary of moving to New York, I’ve been thinking a lot about how it’s easy to be angry at the city. Sometimes, it’s hard to live here, and it can be frustrating and kind of a trial. But I’ve also been thinking about how much I wanted to live in New York as a kid. Books like that Mixed-Up Files book gave me such a glamorous notion of the city, and on a regular basis, it still feels like a treat. I remember a couple of weeks after graduating college, I went to the Met to hang out, and then, feeling a little depressed due to my then-unemployed state, I went to Payard to have lunch at the bar. My lunch was so nice and posh, my bartender so dashingly good-looking, and my newly met lunch companion so flamboyant and generous that I felt quite cheered up.

I loved Crazy Aunt Purl’s post today, and it reminded me of that story. Sometimes, in an effort to save for the future, I forget the niceness of now. Thanks New York, for putting the New York in the New York Minknit.