cosmicpluto knits!

nyc, part 2

Saturday and Sunday were pretty low-key – I really saw a lot on Friday! Saturday morning breakfast was at Cafe Gitane, a lovely little French cafe near the hotel, on Mott St. I had the baked eggs – yum.

After breakfast, we took the subway up to the Upper East Side and walked around a bit before going to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. They’re under renovation so they only had 2 exhibitions on – Set In Style featured really gorgeous and shiny! jewelry from Van Cleef & Arpels. One thing that was particularly interesting to me was the great iPad integration…no more audiosets, but an iPad and headphones for closeups, videos and details about selected pieces. The other exhibit on was Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, which I found really inspiring and interesting.

Afterwards it was lunch at Hummus Kitchen – not a particularly amazing meal compared to the others, but I was hungry and Really Had to Eat, so it fit the bill perfectly. The mint lemonade slushie was yummy!

And what trip to NYC would be complete without some Central Park action? I bought a piece of cheesecake from Lady M bakery and ate it in the park. It was really too cold to do that for long (which I was sad about), so more walking, walking, walking including checking out FAO Schwartz (crazy busy!), Times Square (whoa – so not my thing) and basically checking out touristy areas really quickly and moving on.

That evening was spent walking around Williamsburg and having actual green vegetables at M Noodle Shop. Their veggie dumplings were really good, and I liked the sesame pancake with veggies too.

Hmmmm I just realized I don’t have a single photo from Sunday! It was a fitting lazy Sunday – lined up at Doughnut Plant for a Valhrona Chocolate and a cinnamon bun, got bagels from Kossar’s Bialys and ate many carbs sitting in the pedestrian park on Allen St. Walked around Chinatown and Little Italy, checked out Dean and Deluca (i love grocery stores!) and I got my black & white cookie from Donut Pub – man those things are huge. After dinner at Angelica’s Kitchen (a great vegetarian place), my companion headed back to Boston so I went to the movies and watched Jane Eyre. I only recently read it so watching the movie was fun (though a bit lonely).

And so I have another photo, a preview of what I did on Tuesday!

bit like a dream

Hey y’all! I just got back from my 6-day jaunt to NYC last night, and it was SUPER AWESOME. I had so much fun, walked allllll around and ate everything in sight. At some points it felt like I would never want to eat again, but we all know how that goes. I’m gonna have to split up my adventure into a few blog posts with lots of photos!

Today: Thursday and Friday.

Left Toronto mid-morning and got to NY Penn Station around 1:30. First thing to do? Eat, of course (pretty much why I went to NYC). We hit up No.7 Sub while still dragging around luggage since it’s near the station! I had General Tso’s Tofu and my companion had the Eggplant Parm. DELICIOUS!

Dropped off stuff at the hotel and went a’walking. The hotel was really well situated on E. Houston, right on the subway and really accessible for walking to different neighbourhoods. Spent some time at the MOMA design store and Sur La Table, just randomly poking around in Soho and Nolita. One cool place I stumbled upon was Kiosk, a really interesting sorta random stuff store up a mysterious staircase. One of the things I really loved about this trip to NYC was seeing really cool design stuff and the love of good design in general.

Had delicious Motorino pizza for dinner then just kept walking the evening away! I think we had Pinkberry on St Marks Pl for dessert.

Seriously the pizza is so good. I went twice in 5 days.

Friday morning breakfast was coffee and beautiful pastries at Ceci-Cela on Spring. I’d say it was the best croissant I’ve had outside France.

Walked walked walked and ended up on the High Line, an elevated railroad track that’s been converted to a beautiful urban park.

There’s a nice sitting area with basically a viewing platform over traffic with a great view.

Ended up at the craziness (and deliciousness) that is Eataly for lunch – took a little while to figure out what was going on. It was super crowded! It’s basically a large marketplace with different areas for different foods (like meats, cheeses, baked goods, pasta) and sit-down eating areas. Lunch at La Verdure (Eataly’s vegetarian/vegetable focused restaurant area) was amazing.

Roasted peppers stuffed with perfect risotto.

One of many cheese cases.

Took the subway across to Brooklyn and wandered for awhile, and ended up spending a few nice relaxing hours chilling with beer at Bierkraft in Park Slope – great beers on tap and tons in bottles too, and there’s a nice communal seating area for drinking your purchased beer!

Chilly stroll along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade at sunset, then we waited outside in the FREEZING COLD (seriously the entire trip was freezing) for 40 minutes to have pizza at Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge – the view was lovely at night, but again, super cold!

And then upon getting out of the subway at Spring St, we found a lovely tiny chocolate shop with a comfy couch that had chocolate cake, hot chocolate and lovely tea. Ahh, perfect.

macro lens goodness

I’m rushing off to work at the store this morning, but I wanted to share some photos with you! My new pattern collection has a title, and it is the Map Collection. I rented a lens this week to shoot the photos with my friend Jasmine as the model, and whew, I love this lens! I don’t know that I love it enough to buy it (it’s pretty huge, heavy and not super versatile) but I would totally rent it again. Headshots has good rental deals.

It’s a Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, and I just love it. It’s great for when you need a little room between you and your subject, but also close up for really details shots. It’s very fast and sharp as well.

The Map Collection will be out very soon (it’s e-book only, not a printed book) – here are a few previews from our photoshoot!

Linehan Road Hat

Ackert Hook Hat

Midlothian Mittens

rhinebeck 2010 in photos

Slightly kicking myself for not taking more, but here we have it!

new and improved, kinda

So this week I decided it was time to just bite the bullet and buy myself a new camera body! I love the lenses I use (Sigma 30mm f/1.4 and 17-70mm f/2.8-something) but I felt like it was time for a body upgrade. The body I was using, a d40, has been discontinued for awhile now and I’ve been ogling a new one for the last few months! I got a Nikon d5000.

This is definitely a fair upgrade – double the megapixels, Live View, takes HD video, great sensor, but still in a more compact body than the spendy-but-awesome d90. There were a few things that made me choose the d5000 over the d90. Price was a big one, the d5000 being more than a couple hundred dollars cheaper. I’m used to the display of the d40 and the d5000 is quite similar, and the size and shape are similar as well. The d5000 is a touch bigger than my old camera, but not as big as the d90. Since I have teeny tiny hands that’s important to me! (Although of course if someone wanted to sell me a d90 for the same price or something I certainly wouldn’t refuse). The d5000 also has an interval timer, meaning you can take more than one timed shot at a time.

One of the biggest things that sold me on the d5000 was the “vari-angle” LCD screen. This means the screen flips out and rotates. Perfect for self-portraits, or in my case most of the time, knitting pattern shots! So cool, right? Well…

The LCD screen hinges from the bottom. Which is great if you want to say, use the live view and the LCD to hold the camera up high and still see what the camera sees. But it’s going to be useless for my self portraits. Can you see why? Yup, it won’t play with a tripod. You can’t put the camera down on something and still see the screen. This was a pretty poor choice on the part of Nikon – the screen should have hinged from the side, making it available at pretty much all times.

So overall I’m happy with the photos, and the displays, and I’m happy I bought this camera. But I really, really wish that the LCD could have been used as I imagined – mounted on a tripod, able to see myself and make sure I was in the photo and what the framing looked like. Oh well. It does take pretty photos! The first thing I noticed was that the colours were much easier to capture and truer to life, straight off the camera. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it yet, but a couple of knitting photos:

(A hat for a swap we’re doing at Rhinebeck! So excited! THREE WEEKS!)

This colour, Madelinetosh’s Composition Book Grey, was pretty tricky for my old camera. With the new one, presto!

I’m trying to get this sweater done in time for Rhinebeck – the sleeves are done, but I keep having to restart the body. Even just now I looked down at it and realized I should’ve done more hem shaping. Once I think of something like that, I can’t just let it pass, so I guess I’m ripping yet again!

a bit of spring

Unsettled weather (I just want a big storm so it’ll clear everything away!), sunshine, flowers.

Hope you’re enjoying the weather whereever you are!