Crocheted Alexander Hamilton Doll

How do some yarn skeins, crochet hooks, couple of eyes

And some gold beads, worked up in a frenzy of bold speed

(Ignore needs of my family), from pattern slightly altered

Turn into a cool plush doll Founding Father?

I present to you the gift I made my mom for Christmas this year: a crocheted Alexander Hamilton. (Technically a crocheted Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, but whatever. HamiLin?) 

I wish I could say I came up with this idea on my own, but I did not. I used a pattern from Allison Hoffman, although I did make some small changes to it, like making his coat blue instead of beige. I also made some technical yarn-type changes, but I'll spare you the crochet minutiae here. (If you'd like a detailed explanation, you can visit my project on Ravelry.)

The Retro Ornament Throw,
which also got done 

Anyway, I'd wanted to make this project all year, but I didn't start seriously thinking about it until October. At that point, however, I was working on another very involved crochet project (a retro ornament throw for my grandma) that I knew might not get done in time for Christmas, so I wasn't sure HamiLin would happen at all. As fate would have it, I ran out of yarn for the ornament throw and had to wait two weeks for the new yarn to arrive. In the meantime, I went ahead and started the doll, which only took a few days to make, working an hour or two here and there.

I saved the face for last because I was terrified of it. The face is what really makes or breaks one of these things, in my opinion, and I don't know anything about embroidery. (You might remember that last year I used Allison Hoffman's book AmiguruMe to style my own Warren G. Harding doll, but his face wound up looking a bit more like the Shah of Iran than Harding himself. At least I nailed the "world leader" look.) 

Thankfully I discovered that Hoffman had created a YouTube video showing some face embroidery, so armed with that new knowledge (and a curved needle, which I hadn't even known existed), I tackled HamiLin's face.

It took a few attempts, lots of sweating and swearing, and more time than any other part of the doll, but I think I finally got it right. (It's not easy to capture those intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame...)

I wound up finishing HamiLin about two weeks before Christmas, and the suspense of not being able to give it until Christmas Day was killing me, but I made it. 

Mom, with HamiLin and a bottle of Federalist wine

Needless to say, he amazed and astonished.

Hamilton in Chicago, Part 2

If you're anything like me, you're just a wee bit obsessed with Hamilton. I don't blame you.

Back in November my mom and I went to see Hamilton in Chicago, and this past weekend I went to see it again, this time with my oldest son and with my BFF Becky and her husband Sean, who flew in from Baltimore for the day. You might remember Becky from such blog posts as Our Whirlwind Hamilton Tour of New York and The Millard Fillmore Presidential Library.

I wrote a post about my first viewing of Hamilton here. This time, most of the cast members were the same, and my impressions of them were pretty much the same, too, so I won't rehash. There were two changes, though: This time Angelica was played by understudy Aubin Wise instead of Karen Olivo. Becky was bummed because she'd really wanted to see Karen Olivo in the role, but I thought Aubin Wise held her own and did an excellent job.

The other major change was that Wayne Brady played Aaron Burr. I'd known this in advance because it was kind of big news when his casting was announced. I've always liked Brady on Whose Line is it Anyway? and, frankly, I think he's hilarious. I'd never seen him in anything more serious, though, and I wondered how he'd do in a role like Burr.

In five words: Wayne Brady Stole the Show. From the moment he opened his mouth, he was phenomenal.

In a way, he was almost too good. I don't want to say Wayne Brady's Burr overshadowed Miguel Cervantes' Hamilton, but...he did. More than ever before, I wanted to say, "It's okay, Aaron Burr! I forgive you! Forget about Alexander Hamilton. Please, just sing some more!" That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was surprising and left me feeling a bit uneasy...though in a good way.

If you haven't seen Hamilton yet and have a chance to catch it in Chicago while Brady is performing (through April 9), do it! Easier said than done, I know, but it's well worth a try.

NYC History Tour, Part 1: Hamilton/Revolution

Presidentress has been quiet lately, mainly because I've just been busy with stuff and partly because I've been unmotivated. I have a whole list of ideas for presidential blog posts, and I'm in the middle of reading a book I plan to review, but I've fallen into a sort of presidential malaise, which Jimmy Carter would appreciate.

Well, what better way to get amped up again than a whirlwind presidential trip to New York City?

The trip wasn't exactly planned as a presidential thing. Instead it was planned a girls' getaway weekend with my BFF from high school. Our only set-in-stone activities were a Broadway show and a tour at the Tenement Museum (I highly recommend). But then I got in touch with a family friend, a native New Yorker who knows everything about the city and who offered to customize a tour for us. Not all of it was presidential or even tangentially presidential---there was some music, literature, baseball, and Robber Barons thrown in---but it was more than enough for a blog post.

It also involved 21 miles of walking over the course of two days, so we covered a lot of ground.

First up: Hamilton!

No, that's not the Broadway show we saw. Neither of us wanted to mortgage our houses to pay for tickets. But we did the next-best things. (And let's not nitpick over the fact that he wasn't technically a president.)

First we went to Alexander Hamilton's grave at Trinity Church. Angelica, Eliza, and Phillip are there, too. (So is Robert Fulton of steamboat fame.) My New Yorker friend said before the Broadway musical hardly anyone visited that cemetery, but now the place is crazy busy. At least three giant tour groups plus dozens of stragglers swarmed through in the half hour we were there.

Just a couple blocks away is Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president. It also served as the capitol building during the short time the government was based in New York.

The building that stands today was actually constructed in the 1840s after the original was razed in 1812, but it contains a piece of the ground on which Washington stood, the railing he stood behind, and the Bible he used when being sworn into office.

George Washington was Here

I'm not actually touching it

Just a couple blocks from Federal Hall is Fraunces Tavern, which was an important hangout before and during the Revolution (some scenes from the Hamilton musical are set there). Prior to the

Revolution, the Sons of Liberty met at the tavern, and they even staged a pre-Boston-Tea-Party tea party when they forced a British naval captain to apologize for bringing tea into New York. The tavern served as one of Washington's headquarters during the war, and it's where he gave his farewell speech to his officers once the war was over. It also served briefly as a government building before the offices moved to Federal Hall and the tavern turned into a tavern again.

A museum on the second and third floors contains relics and information about the role the tavern played before, during, and after the Revolution. (No photos allowed.) The tavern still serves as a restaurant---and a nice-looking one at that---but we didn't eat there because we had other plans.

On our way to lunch we passed by the Wall Street bull. Remember how I wrote about people rubbing Abraham Lincoln's nose for good luck? Apparently people do the same thing with the bull's balls. (I just missed getting a photo of a woman licking them.)

Stay classy, America.

But back to Hamilton. On the second day of our trip, we took a train to the Hamilton Grange National

Memorial, the house where "the Hamiltons move[d] uptown." Honestly, until I started planning this trip I had no idea that Alexander Hamilton's house still existed, nor had I actually given it any thought. I imagine this place has also enjoyed a tremendous boost from the popularity of the musical.

The house has been moved (twice) a short distance from its original location, but it's in the same general area and even today it has more of a pastoral feel than downtown Manhattan. I mean, it's clearly a city, but it's definitely "quiet uptown" and was probably even more so back then. You can see why it would appeal to someone trying to escape the bustle.

The lower level of the house is a small museum dedicated to Hamilton. The upstairs has a few rooms decorated in period furnishings. It's not a grand house or an extensive museum---we were done within half an hour, probably---but it's worth a a trip to see it.

A short cab ride took us to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the yang to Hamilton's yin. This house was

built in 1765, but the owner was forced to abandon it during the Revolution. The house served asWashington's headquarters for a while, then it later served as British headquarters before eventually being taken over by the new U.S. government. In 1810 a guy named Stephen Jumel purchased it. His wife, Eliza, wound up becoming rich by dealing in real estate, which was almost unheard of back then.

When Stephen died, Eliza married...wait for it...Aaron Burr! When they got married Eliza's property automatically transferred to Burr's ownership and he didn't waste much time before starting to sell off her belongings because that's the kind of guy he was.

So in this one house, we have George Washington's war room just a few steps from Aaron Burr's bedroom. History is so incestuous.

Washington's war room

Burr's bedroom: He's reliable with the ladies

Hidden Mickeys!

We took a self-guided tour of this house like we had with Hamilton's. When we got there, one of the docents rushed us into the octagonal living room to take a quick look before it was closed off for a yoga class. My BFF and I agreed that it would be pretty damn cool to take a yoga class in Aaron Burr's house, but we weren't dressed for it and our bodies hurt from all the walking. I wanted to go back later in the evening for their paranormal event (my New Yorker friend says that the house is considered quite haunted), but it didn't fit in with our plans.

Just across the street from Burr's house is the stairway that used to lead from Coogan's Bluff down to
the Polo Grounds where the New York Giants played before moving to San Francisco. Besides the staircase, there's really nothing left of the Polo Grounds. We walked over a bridge to the site of the new (and the few remains of the old) Yankee Stadium. It was a long bridge, but I had no idea Yankee Stadium was so close to the Polo Grounds. (I could find ways to connect this to presidents, but that will probably have to wait until I begin my "Presidents and Baseball" series, which should be coming...someday.)

Stay tuned for my next post, which is dedicated to random presidents and other such people.

Also, if you haven't already bought it, make sure you get your copy of the "Hamiltome," the book about the musical. It has all the annotated lyrics plus tons of background info. Available at Amazon!

Hamilton: The Musical

Several months ago, a friend told me about Hamilton, a largely hip-hop musical about, obviously, the life of Alexander Hamilton. The show debuted Off-Broadway in February and then on Broadway in August. I thought the idea sounded awesome, of course, but until I heard the soundtrack last week I didn't realize just how awesome it is.

I've listened to the soundtrack five or six times in the past week, and I keep finding various songs from it stuck in my head. The good news is that you can also get these songs stuck in your head---for free! They're all available on YouTube, or you can stream the soundtrack for free if you have Amazon Prime. Or buy it. But listen to it somehow, because the lyrics are intelligent, the music is fantastic, and the songs tell a thorough story on their own, without your needing to see the performance (which I'd love to do sometime, but that involves going to New York).

If you don't have time to listen to all 46 tracks right now, here are some of my favorites.

This is one of the first numbers, taking place on the eve of the Revolution. It's kind of long but it's catchy and sets up a recurring theme. Alexander Hamilton says, "I'm not throwing away my shot," in this case referring to his chance to take part in the uprising. But the idea of not throwing away one's shot recurs through the musical, sometimes figuratively and sometimes more literally, referring to the act of someone shooting his gun far off-target in a duel. (No spoilers!)

My favorite numbers might be the ones performed by King George III, who comes off as a jilted ex-boyfriend. This one, in a more pop-music style than the other songs, is a hilarious love letter to the colonies, claiming that they'll soon realize their mistake and return to him:

Finally (for this post, not for the musical), I like how this number does such a good job expressing the animosity between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Plus it actually makes interesting the debate about whether or not the federal government should assume the states' debt:

Seriously, if more of American history were presented as a rap battle, people wouldn't find it so boring.

Now go listen to the rest.