Spring Break Adventure

My son, Evan , and I just returned from a quick trip to New York City for Spring Break.

We had several destinations and events planned but left some time up-in-the-air for adventure.

I had several yarn shops in mind to visit but never made it to them. I did, however, come across these crazy hats in the window of a funny little store on Bleeker St. We went in and heard all about them from the Chinese lady who runs the shop. It is kind of hard to tell from the picture below how interesting they were. They were themed hats- Birds nest hats, Squirrel hats, Rainbow Hats, Jeweled hats, hats with baby dolls sewn all over them, hats that looked like birthday cakes, hats that looked like tea pots and more. She said she learned to knit and crochet in China as a young girl and unraveled store bought sweaters and reknit the yarn. She said she loved making hats and people bought them as art and put them on the wall. I was amazed and fascinated and asked to take pictures. 

She said no but we could take a picture of her. So we did. My brother was with us so he sneaked some more hats in the picture behind our heads. 
We met the hat lady after we met the crazy squirrel lady in Washington Square Park. We didn't get a picture of her feeding the squirrels out of her hands and having them crawl on her. The crazy squirrel lady might like to see the interesting hats the hat lady makes .

Evan then ran into Cruella DeVille- who is definitely a crazy lady.
One of our main reasons for the trip to NYC was to see the guitar playing legend Les Paul play at Iridium in Times Square.He is 93 years old and still plays 2 shows every Monday night. He was amazing. He can play that guitar like nobodys business - and he seems to have a great time entertaining the crowds. The special treat was that Evan brought his guitar named for the man and got to meet Mr. Paul and have him sign his guitar. We were all very happy that night !

Before we left on Wednesday visited Nicky Epstein and had a great lunch in Chinatown. Nicky is as busy as ever and is working on so many projects. She showed us a sneak preview of her next 3 books that are going to be published in May. She is amazing! She keeps coming up with so many great ideas and new projects to knit and crochet. She says she will come back for a workshop when her schedule calms down a bit.

All in all we had a great quick trip. I got NO knitting done until I had to wait in the airport for our flight that was delayed 3 hours. Thank goodness I had my knitting!