Mother's Day

I hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day and/or made much of your mother on Sunday (if you're in the US - I know Mothering Sunday is different in the UK, and Mother's Day happens at the end of May in France; elsewhere, I am uninformed). I had a lovely day with Nick and the girls, including sleeping in (the best present!), french macarons from Bouchon Bakery, and sushi for dinner. Really, pretty great.

But the best part came yesterday, when Nick (who is done teaching for the semester) and I had to leave our apartment while some painters touched up cracks in the ceiling and some water damage in the corner of our bedroom. So, we hied over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see Savage Beauty. (Once when visiting New York in my twenties, I asked a cab driver to take me to "the Met", and he asked me if I meant the museum or the opera house - couldn't he tell that I was "arty"?)

The show, the whole museum, in fact, was crowded. But the show was amazing and completely worth it. My only beef was that some of the pieces were displayed so that you could only see one side, leaving me crazy to know what the front (or back) of the piece looked like. Other pieces were displayed on the fancy, art museum equivalent of lazy susans or displayed in mirror-backed cases so that you could see a reflection or peek around the back.

My favorite pieces included "Oyster", which I've always loved - it is also in my copy of 100 Dresses, the pieces made out of actual sea shells, and the gilded duck feather coat from McQueen's final collection. What was interesting to me was to see that his signature elements were there from the very beginning: the bumster pants, the high collars, the exaggerated hips and shoulders, really, the drama. Beautiful, repellant, thought-provoking, clever, weird.

To make the show complete, I brought home the catalog, which is also a little weird. I read about the production of it some time ago, and it is interesting, but I would have liked something a little less of an art piece, and a little more informative. All the pieces were photographed on live models covered in makeup. Then the photographs were altered to make the pieces look as if they were on mannequins (hinged wrists and waists). But there was only one view of all but a few pieces, and all the information about the pieces (title, show/season, materials, owner) is at the back. I still want to see the back of the buttoned-up jacket from Joan! There is an interesting history of McQueen at the front of the book, as well as an interview with Sarah Burton at the back. But I want moremoremore. I want a documentary or a DVD compilation of all his shows.

I was, however, thrilled to see the pieces from the last collection (colloquially known as Angels and Demons). The aforementioned duck feather coat, as well as the printed angel gown. And I had forgotten about The Girl Who Lived in the Tree collection, which was beautiful and fairy-tale romantic. Again, there was a piece that I wanted to see the back of, but what can you do? The calendar, which has Oyster for May-August and then follows with 18 months of beauty, also came home with me.

To cap off the morning, I had a cupcake and salted caramel milkshake from a truck for lunch (what? the kids were at school) and bought some Madeline Tosh sock yarn (Window Pane and Tomato - awesome turquoise and red/orange - might even do something stranded with the two together) at Annie & Company, a yarn store at Madison and 93rd, which I hadn't managed to get to before now. All in all, a super day.

Work continues on my publication project (knitknitknit), and the pattern writing will commence soon (lots of notes, and the charts need to be edited). Now that I have this pretty new yarn, I'm looking forward to finishing this project and playing!