Represent

Cast Off
"Freak Out the Muggles" Event Book Launch

http://www.fitnyc.edu/aspx/Content.aspx?menu=FutureGlobal:Museum

Represent!

This page is here to keep all of the stuff about the representing tour organized. (Since I usually fail to be organized for more than a few moments in a row, this is a noble effort.) Right now it's about NYC on the 22nd, but I'll keep it current for anything for any city as soon as NYC is over.
If you have a plan for NYC (or any other city on the tour) feel free to email me and let me know. email goes to stephanieATyarnharlotDOTca (Change the AT and DOT to their symbols.) Party on dudes!

The party:

March 22nd - NYC - Represent at The Fashion Institute of Technology in the Haft Auditorium, which is in the C building on 27th street just off of 7th avenue. 6:00pm

The sock picture:
Bring your travelling sock (every sock is a travelling sock this day) to

Central Park, Strawberry Fields (Where the "Imagine" mosaic is) at 12 noon on the 22nd. I thought about doing it at "Sheep Meadow" but it's not open yet. I think Strawberry Fields is our best bet. We shall be very quiet and well behaved, since it is a "quiet zone". If there are too many of us to be reasonably quiet (or if we have trouble being well behaved), then we'll shuffle off nearby, maybe the fountain at Cherry Hill?

Yarn Crawls:

Amber is a goddess, and has put together an awesome map of NYC yarn shops HERE. On her website she is pulling together suggested routes for those who would like to fly solo, these include:

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The ladies who lunch route

For: Ladies and Gentlemen who need cashmere. Ladies and Gentlemen who will enjoy the thrill of strolling by the windows of high fashion at skyscraper prices on the Upper East Side. Ladies and Gentlemen who want to end up at the Metropolitan Museum. Ladies Who Lunch.

The Driving Tour, aka The-Manhattanites-Have-No-Idea-What-They’re-Missing
For: Those who are in Queens or Long Island, looking for the slow road into town. Alternatively, someone with a yarn-loving, car-driving friend in town and you want to hit the places with the Mega-Inventory. In New York, the further you are from Times Square/Wall Street, the cheaper the real estate, the bigger the yarn stores. And the bigger stores can afford to carry more yarn and less-expensive yarn.

The Intrepid Brooklynite Tour
For: Those of us who know our way around a bus. And everybody else who’s been curious about what’s so cool about Brooklyn. Seriously, I can’t believe you don’t know yet.

Should you wish to join up with a yarny tour guide, the volunteers are getting back to me about where and when to meet them. Watch this space.
I'll list the tour guides here:

Tour Guide: Lizbon - Who writes that her crawl will be: "Friday the 23rd or Sat the 24th. I have posted on my website to this effect. My crawl will include the East and West Village shops (and one in Soho): Purl (Soho), Downtown Yarns, Knit NY, and maybe Gotta Knit and The Point, depending on people's stamina. It will be a walking tour (except for the The Point, which could entail a bus or subway)"
-leave Lizbon a comment on her blog if you would like to meet up.

Tour Guide Jenn has a plan here. Leave her a comment if you would like to join her.

Tour Guide : Liz is doing a baby friendly crawl.

Tour Guide: Katy is doing a Weekend tour for anyone who is staying in town that long. She's calling it "I'd rather stay in Manhattan" and it will cover

The Point (they have coffee & bagels)
Purl
School Products
Habu
*Lunch Break*
Yarn Connection
Knitty City
Yarn Company, if there is still time and then somewhere that serves adult beverages & food.

Drop a comment at her blog if you want to go.

Tour Guide: Johanna is doing a tour of part of FIT (with permission from FIT- of course)

4:10 pm SHARP: Meet me and Ann Denton, who teaches knitting at FIT, in the entrance to FIT's Building C on the north side of 27th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. (Look for the big C near the door.) Prof. Denton is the only one who can get us through Security and into the building, so after 4:15 it will not be possible to get in and catch up with the tour. Unfortunately, we cannot wait for late-comers, so it's important to be on time. We will spend roughly half an hour in the FIT Knitting Lab, seeing how the commercial machine knitting process works. We won't see any hand knitting at FIT today other than what we bring with us, but that will, of course, be about as much excitement as most of us can handle.

After we have seen the lab, Prof. Denton will take us to look in on the final part of a machine knitting class taught by Prof. Arnetta Kenney, also in Building C. That class will end at 5 o'clock.

There are a number of small restaurants in the area where people can get a snack or quick meal before your 6 o'clock presentation. Some fashion-minded people may want to spend the time at the

FIT Museum (admission is free) on the southwest corner of 27th St. and 7th Avenue. Currently the museum has three shows: "She's Like a Rainbow: Colors in Fashion", "Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness", and "Lilly Dache: Glamour at the Drop of a Hat". I have only seen one of these shows, but all the FIT Museum's shows are pretty teriffic.

and you can contact them on their blogs or by email. If you would like to be a tour guide, send me an email or a comment.

What to do with your car
A thousand thanks to Amy for coming up with this:

Strawberry Fields is best accessed at the W 72nd St entrance to Central Park. That's the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There are many parking garages all around. The ones closest to the park on W 72nd street will be the most expensive. If you want to park in a garage, do yourself a favor and park closer to Riverside Drive and then walk over to the park. It's a nice walk, though the sidewalks are quite slushy and salty.

If you value the current state of your car's exterior, here's a website that gives some tips on how to preserve that. Additionally, if you have a really cruddy car, you might laugh as much as we did when we saw this site.

http://www.parkingbydesign.com/

If you don't want to part with over $40 to park your car for half a day, here's some ideas on how and where to park for free. It's not easy, but remember you can use that money for yarn.

For, Thursday, drivers will have to contend with Manhattan's alternate side parking rules. For most of the side streets (ie, not the avenues) this means that if you find a spot on the north side of the street, there will be a 90 minute to 2-hour period of time during the day when it will not be legal to park there.

The exact timing of this interval depends on the actual block. I live on W 80th and our interval is 11 to 12:30. I believe that the intervals change every 10 blocks and they get later as you go north. Thus, my guess is that the W 70's have the forbidden interval around 9 - 11. But, always, always, read all posted signs.

Often in the case of lousy weather, these rules get suspended. Indeed they are currently suspended through Wednesday. You can check on-line if they have extended it to include Thursday at this site:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/scrintro.html#emerg

Scroll down to the emergency suspensions bit and look for Thursday's date, but I wouldn't count on it. Things have melted here and the streets are dirty.

So, what do you do?

First choose a quiet, one-way side street between Central Park West and Broadway relatively close to one of the UWS's LYS. Sit in the car knitting until someone moves their car. Snatch that spot without hesitation. (If you are on the south side of the street - congratulations. You can probably walk away from your locked car all day without worry, but read the second step below just in case.)

Second, read all posted signs. Walk around some and check for all kinds of posted signs. You're doing this to figure out exactly what interval of time your car might be verbotten in its new spot. If it will be an illegal spot at some point in the morning, and especially if you are already in that time interval, look around for a significant number of people double-parked in their cars on the opposite side of the street. If so, you might have stumbled on one of the blocks where it is unofficially okay to double park your car for the duration of the forbidden time. [Warning: 1 or 2 double-parked cars is utterly insufficient evidence, especially if any of them are trucks or have commercial plates. This is NYC. When in doubt, just ask someone. Contrary to popular perceptions, most New Yorkers are nice.]

If so, you can safely double park it without fear of ticket. But, be smart, don't think this means you can "double park" in front of a hydrant, across a crosswalk or in front of a driveway. That just makes no sense.

So, double park your car across from your new spot, lock it up and go into the LYS. Be sure to set an alarm on your cell phone for about 30 - 45 minutes before the forbidden time ends. This is because all the other double-parkers will be racing back to claim spots and then to sit in their cars until it's okay.

Herein lies the real weirdness of NYC parking - it might be okay to leave your car double parked for nearly 2 hours, but it will definitely not be okay to park your car on the newly cleaned and now empty side of the street and leave it even 5 minutes early. So, just sit back, knit and fantasize about all the knitting projects that mountain of yarn you just left aside for yourself in the LYS will make.

If you are not looking at a lot of double-parking folks, then you need to do something else with your car for the duration of that time. My suggestion is to put it at a meter on one of the avenues. The trick to this is to be patient and stay in one place. Go around the corner to the nearest avenue; pick a block that has many meters (ie not too many bus stops, etc) and just wait until someone pulls out. They will pull out and then you will be there to snap up their spot. Circling doesn't work here.

On the upper west side meters cost 25 cents for 10 minutes. This is a lot, it's true, but it's way cheaper than a parking garage in the same area. So, suck it up, bring some quarters and take a metered spot until about 45 minutes before you can put the car back on the open side of the street and you're good. Again, be sure to set an alarm on your cell phone so that you get back in time to move it. And, again, make that alarm ring to give you 45 minutes to re-park the car. (See above for suggested activities for that period of time while you're in your car.)

Once you find a free spot, do not give it up all day long. Use public transportation to get around the city. Even if you are tempted to move your car in order to be closer to FIT or to downtown LYS - do not yield to that temptation. FIT is closer to midtown, on-street parking is even harder there and downtown is even harder. If you need help with public transit planning, look at this site:

http://www.mta.info/

Two important things: Park south of 80th street if you want to make it to the sock-in-progress photo at noon because above 80th St, the forbidden time extends until 12:30 and you'll never make it back in time.

And, figure out how to set alarms on your cell phone -- otherwise there is no way you will leave your yarn-induced trance at any of the fine LYS of the Upper West Side.

Finally, you can pay NYC parking tickets on-line. (expired meter and parking too soon after cleaning costs $65 - when you are south of 96th St. North of there, it's cheaper. And, yes, depending on the parking lot you choose, $65 could end up cheaper.)

http://nycserv.nyc.gov/NYCServInquiry/NYCSERVMain

Hats:

The hats are a way of turning our numbers into something awesomely helpful. If you are coming to an event (I updated the tour page, Cleveland, Lexington and Northampton have been added, and Jayme-the-wonder-publicist gave me some details about times and places and that sort of thing.) you can bring the hat, or mail it to an event closer to you. If you are not going to have an event closer to you then you can mail the hat to be your little do-gooding representative in NYC.

Two places to mail it (Many fine and wonderful people volunteered for this. I love them, but am only listing these few because they were willing to publish their addresses, which, frankly is way, way easier for me. My apologies, and know that I love you.)

Mail your hats to:

K Gormley
10th Floor
826 Broadway
New York, New York
10003
(She says not to forget the "10th floor")

or you can mail or drop off the hats at Knitty City
208 W. 79th St.
New York, NY
10024

I'll likely need a volunteer to help K and Pearl move the hats from those locations to the event at FIT, and then to give them to NY Cares the next day. Anyone?

Afterparties (Or before parties, or next day parties, or....)

I'm going to leave these casual. If you are having a get together at a restaurant or bar afterwards (This especially freaks the muggles. Knitters gathering in large public groups with alcohol? Very upsetting.) and you want to hang out with other knitters, send me an email or comment with the details and I'll post it here. Then the knitters can contact you and you can warn the bar/restaurant appropriately. ( I wouldn't tell them knittters were coming. I would just make reservations for a "group". Let the element of surprise work for you.)

Cathy is on a yarn diet, but not a beer diet. If you want to knit and drink in an NYC pub before (during) or after the event, then leave Cathy a comment, or make use of her list of knitter friendly restaurants and go alone.

Lizbon has a downloadable restaurant guide for the hungry knitter.

Other ways to fill NYC up with knitters and freak the muggles out?

If you have an idea or an event, let me know and I'll list it here.

(Assuming it isn't morally or socially reprehensible, like "smoke crack nude and knit in public" or something like that. )

1.

It's a purl man has a plan. He's going to the Today show and he wants you to come.

2. The Subversive Lace and Radical Knitting Exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design. Don't come all the way to NYC and miss this.

3. The Sock Tsarina has a Bluestocking plan. She writes:

"Bluestocking: n. A derisive term originally applied to a group of 18th-century women with literary/intellectual interests. Later informally broadened to include women with a political or social agenda, women with ambitions beyond their traditional station. Uppity women. Proto-feminists, as it were.

Blue Stocking: n. A sexy, saucy, slightly silly sock with a more than passing resemblance to the fishnet stockings of yesteryear; a tribute to Knitters’ Suffrage and the Power of Knitters. To women who Own Their Knitting. To Knitters Who Represent."

Representing in Australia? Since I'm unlikely to get there...the Canberra Stitch 'n Bitch is having their own party. ( I like the way these knitters think.)

Good enough? Anybody got anything else? Did you remember to pre-board by emailing Jayme if you're coming a long way or can't wait in line? (email to : publicityATstoreyDOTcom replacing the AT with @ and the DOT with a ".")

Next events:

Pittsburgh:
We have a hat lady for Pittsburgh. Please mail your hats (or bring them to the event) to:

Diane Laughlin
-email me for Diane's address.

Cleveland
Hats can go to:

Lisa Fournier
17010 Chatfield Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44111