The holiday season- (catchup 1)

First of all, Happy New Year, everyone! It's 2023!!! Also, it's Kristiana's birthday today as well! Happy Birthday to one of the blog's most loyal readers. New opportunities for new beginnings...... and a new chance for me to be consistent with the blog :) I apologize for my lack of posts this past month..... The last post I made I can see was December 7. I will do my best to fill in the gaps, but from now on, I'll be better about my Wednesday posts.

I was deliberating how to go about this, and maybe it's better if I just do one extra long and juicy post. I'm mostly going off of pictures I have, so these will mainly be highlights (because those are the times I'm more likely going to take a picture).

Overall this has been a good month :) I was looking forward to the holiday cheer and spirit in New York, and I was not disappointed. Despite the sun setting at 4pm every day (happy winter solstice by the way!), some of the holiday decorations around the city offset the gloominess. Work hasn't been too overwhelming and it's been nice to have some time off to look forward to (now I am at the end unfortunately :( but we have Monday off so I can look forward to a shorter week haha).

December 7-14

• I went to a prop sale for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with Mary and Zach. (Mary works on that show). There was a lot of stuff, from clothes to furniture to toys. It was like a garage sale pretty much, and the prices were really good! I got buttons, knitting needles, stationary, a cardigan, a pink vase, and some random bits and bobs. They had a separate sale specifically for clothes, so there was less at the prop sale. This show has a lot of people on it and a lot of costumes, so I can't even imagine how much there really would be.

• Mary and Zach went with me to the Morgan Library/Museum. If you guys haven't been before, I recommend! It's small and easy to go through, but they have a really nice space. They have free Fridays, so that's when we went.At the time they had a live jazz band playing in the lobby area. They had an exhibit at the time of original sketched from The Little Prince. I thought of some blog members who would appreciate that a lot! Afterward we saw the Bryant Park Christmas market and hung out. I got a special snowman strawberry boba matcha drink from iMilky.

• I saw some special guest...... ERIN.... EMMA.... andddddd.... CLARA!!! One last time seeing Erin-she before she goes back to the homeland :'). It was also really cool to see Clara! I haven't seen her since graduating, and it was nice to see what all she has been up to :) It was fun to see Emma as always. Ever since meeting up with her the other time Erin visited, we've reconnected more. I'll speak about it more in a little bit, but we are hanging out more! As foretold by the prophecy. Anyways, with the crew, we got some yummy Mexican food. Have you guys ever seen straight-haired Erin? A rare sight.

[we love erin with all hair styles of course]

[a cool wall hanging from the restaurant we went to! This was a whole series, there were other similar pieces with the 3D face]

• One day, I did a lot of stuff with Kenzie :D At first, it was fun because we unexpectedly saw and caught the Train of Many Colors. This is a subway train put on the tracks for Christmastime for certain times by the NY Transit Museum. We went to the National Museum of the American Indian. Kenzie was doing some field research for a paper she was writing. This is a Smithsonian museum, but as you might tell from the name even.... it's pretty problematic. It wasn't too big, and some of the exhibits were more thoughtful. But at its conception, the museum housed/houses a collection of items that were from this one guy who was just taking things from Native American tribes... After this museum, Kenzie showed me the museum she had been doing an internship at this past semester. The Seaport Museum has ships they restore and we got to take a tour of one! It was cool because this was a ship that was powered by wind. It was still really huge. Afterwards, we went to a bunch of different shops....I did a good bit of Christmas gift shopping that day. Next semester she's gonna start working at a museum a lot closer to us, which will be nice for her. The Seaport Museum was a good experience I think but just really far to trek to every week.

[we went to this really cute bakery. The desserts were out of this world!!]

[[it was rainy all day and at the end it turned into flurries/the first snow of the season!!]

December 14-21

• For the end of the year, my PI invited us to her home for a tea party! It was really fun and sweet. We had typical teatime fare (tea, scones, cakes, sandwiches) and although I didn't partake, there were cocktails. We played codenames (I had never played but it was actually pretty fun! I would enthusiastically play again), and there was a fire in the fireplace (I didn't think too much about this before but I guess it's somewhat rare in New York buildings). My PI also is an avid knitter and it was cool because she gave me some nice yarn!

[we had these cute cakes :D the little figurines were put around the lab after. I thought it was cute]

• Kenzie was gone visiting her bf in DC so G and I were left to take care of Phineas and Winnie. I just was in charge of the litter box and some evenings I would let them out to play. They generally stay in Kenzie's room (I wouldn't mind them out honestly as long as the furniture was cleaned but Phineas is very mischievous. We don't want him in the kitchen because he will literally get into anything possible. He scratched up this screen we put up between the living room and kitchen. One time he somehow got into the trashcan but it's one that you have to step on so he was stuck in there before Kenzie came home and realized). So I would let them out but I got scared to bring them back into Kenzie's room. Phineas, although mischievous, doesn't bite or scratch. Winnie was scaring me because it seemed like she would bite or scratch....

• That weekend, I met up with Emma! We went with Mary to the Union Square Christmas Market. It turned out to be like the Bryant Park one. Ie overcrowded. It was expected being the weekend and everything... but yeah, I didn't particularly want to wait in line for anything. We got ramen and went to some random shops in Soho. It was a fun time :)

[there was this pigeon lady at Union Square. Some of those pigeons are knit I think, the pretty christmas tree was in a store Mary wanted to look at where they have swimsuits and had a holiday deal. It was amazing because they had free coffee/hot chocolate/pastries!!!]

• My friend, Emma (a different Emma!!), was having a knit and crochet party with her apartment mates. Since starting knitting, I thought it would be fun to have a group like this. I was nervous because there would be strangers, but it turned out to be not bad at all. It was a small group and was calm. Their apartment is also really cute. I was working on hand warmers with the yarn from my PI. The weather had been getting really cold, so this was a much needed article of clothing.

This was a lot of mishmash, but I hope you enjoyed the updates! This is already long, so I think I'll actually make another post for Christmas and New Year's festivities.