Great exhibition

Spent this morning at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where we headed to see the exhibition "Americans in Paris". Super exhibition, well worth the visit and enjoyed by us both.

Now sitting at Boston, Logan airport awaiting our flight home, which is delayed by two hours. Ugh. It's hot, sticky and noisy. But, in the spirit of Pollyanna (whose author lived in Littleton, where we admired a small bronze outside the town library last week) I'm glad I could keep my lipstick with me as it seems as though lipsticks are exempt from the strict "no gels, liquids etc" rules. We may be hot, sweaty and grubby - but lips will be slick and pink! 

New Hampshire Choices

 

I know, I know....

What did I say? Enough yarn already? Quite, but I didn't say anything about needles...

Whilst somewhere-or-other last week, I bought a copy of Cat Bordhi's Magical knitting book. Only realised too late that it requires exceptionally long needles - 60" recommended. Everywhere I've asked, I've drawn a blank, and I thought that I would be mail-ordering from home. Still, walking past Newbury Yarns today, I thought it worth asking. Bingo. Bought two 60" Addis, a 3.5mm and an 8mm. Oh, and a skein of Mountain Colors Mountain Goat yarn in "meadow" decided that it needed a good home, too.

Homeward bound this time tomorrow. Perhaps it's just as well!

 

Back to civilisation

Just arrived back in the civilised world of Boston, MA after a couple of days in "the wilds" of New Hampshire! Who would have thought that, in this land of plenty, we'd have found almost two whole states with no cellphone connection at all? For the last two days, we had enforced "peace and tranquillity" in an inn in Franconia, where, not only did we have no cellphone or internet, but no tv, telephone or newspapers either. Now, this might be a haven for some, but for those of us with responsibilities at home, particularly in a time of travel disruption - this is a far from relaxing situation to be in.

Anyhow, we are back in touch with the world and all appears to be fine. We might even be able to take a bag on board our flight home on Thursday evening!!

We stopped off at the Canterbury Shaker Village today, en route to Boston. What a fascinating place it was, and what a splendid guide we had to explain things for us. The craftsmanship all around was superb - in the meeting house, sets of small round markers were set into the wooden floor as positions for dancing - whether they were plain wooden dowel, stripy wooden dowel, copper discs, steel nailheads or black ?wood?, all were perfectly set and had remained so since they were placed there more than two centuries ago.

Of course, there was plenty of other evidence of the aesthetic aspects of their plain and simple life. We enjoyed seeing inside the laundry, with the "system" of making sure nothing got lost by applying numbers and letters to everything. The Sisters House with the spinning and weaving tools, knitting machine and examples of their work was interesting, and though we couldn't see a demonstration of making boxes, there were plenty of examples...one of which is in my suitcase! (Made in Canada, Nadine!)

No yarn shops today. I think that, even I have to say that I have enough yarn to be going on with. For now.

Bears

Yes, there was a yarn shop today - a very good one, too. Kaleidoscope Yarns in Essex Junction had another amazing selection of unusual hand-dyes, together with an excellent collection of good quality, plainer "extraordinaries". Nice, friendly service too - a warm welcome does make it easier to spend the pennies!

But we had fun at the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, too. Someone with a great sense of humour there. as we browsed the shop after the tour, we wondered why this bear was labelled "an alien".

We soon found out why:

Oh, there was another cute one:

He's called the "over the hill" bear.