Just Under the Wire

Hello Dear Readers,

Had another really great weekend (this year seems to have been full of them!).  Adding to the list of my high school friends who have made the trek out here to visit me (Jennifer, Adam and Melch, Matt, Devin, Luke, Amy) Susan sneaks in right at the end of the year!  Hoooray!  She came under the pretense of giving a talk at the Institute of Physics, but I think we can all agree that seeing me is the highlight of the visit!

 Sunday morning I took the tube out to pick her up from Heathrow.  We went up to Great Portland Street to drop her luggage off at the hotel.  Fortunately it was very close to Oxford street so we could spend the day doing a bit of shopping!

 I took her to YumChaa, my favorite tea shop in Berwick Street, then we wandered around such highlights as Liberty, where I fondled the yarn section (as usual, they have ALL the Rowan yarns!)

 And we had fancy tea in their tea room, complete with Christmas themed mini mince pies and a delicious but mysterious jelly (English jelly, Jell-o to Americans) thing with cinnamon flavor.

 We walked around Regent street to see the lights, and of course hit up UniQlo and LUSH!!  Walked to Chinatown, Leicester Square where the Hobbit grand opening was on Friday, Trafalgar Square for some truly weird carols before walking Susan back to her hotel, wet and tired but so happy.

Monday night Susan came to my house for a traditional English dinner of Bangers and Mash.  Don't get excited, that just means sausages (vegan in our case) and mashed potatoes, which I served with a side of stir fried kale.  Yum!  And mango for dessert.

Afterwards we went into the living room to try to get a nice serious photo together, unfortunately we were talking so much and laughing so hard we couldn't really get one.

It looks a bit like that strip of photos you get in a photo booth.  In the third one Susan is recreating a funny high school photo which I don't think I have an electronic copy of (Jennifer?).  I like the last one which is a classic Susan pose where she is clearly explaining something to me in a hilarious manner.  My brother came downstairs and asked what all the laughing and screaming was about but really we couldn't say, it was just funny!

 We did get a semi serious one over here by the fireplace, which is in full Christmas swing now.

My mother and sister sent boxes with gifts, so they are piled up, PLUS the huge mystery present from Chris to me.  No idea.  Also, if you look closely to the right of the American flag is a sweet handmade hand painted Nativity scene Susan's mother, avid reader of this blog (Hello Mrs. Clark!!Thanks for the gift, I love it!) made and sent to me.  It's fantastic!  I'm sure I took a close up photo, but I think it might have been on Susan's camera, which is very similar to mine.

Well, Christmas will be a let down now after Susan's visit, but what can we do? Just get along until the next visit comes around, which I hope will be sooner, rather than later.  Miss you already Susan.

We are spending a quiet Christmas at home, I have Monday through Wednesday off (the day after Christmas, called Boxing Day, is also a national holiday here) so I plan to do ALL the laundry in the house, sheets, towels, heck, maybe even curtains!!  We'll see.  It would just be nice to know that everything was clean starting in the new year.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas, I'll report back soon.

Cheers

Molly and Baby Katelyn

Hello Dear Readers,

This past week my good friend Molly came down for her spring break and brought her daughter Katelyn with her, who is one year old last month.  We spent the first day recovering from their trip, hanging out in Putney and visiting the children's playground that you can only go in if you have a child with you, how frustrating!  I finally got to go in and play on the swings!

 

The next day we had a sunny day, well sunny morning, out at Kew.  There were quite a few birds out on the little lake, and Katelyn was fascinated by them.  We tried to steer her more towards the plants but we may have a budding ornithologist on our hands.

 Later we had a delicious lunch in the garden while I played with the settings on my camera.  Here I am picking up on all the pink, after all she is a girl and girls mean pink, right?

 It started to rain a bit after lunch, and it was close to nap time so we took the train back home, planes trains and automobiles, this is one well traveled girl!

 The next day we really lucked out because it was sunny and not too windy, the best you can hope for in an English Spring so we took the train down to Brighton.  Here we are enjoying a delicious take away vegan cafe (Infinity Foods Cafe for those interested) lunch in front of what someone once described to me as a giant curry palace, but which is in fact a summer palace of George IV.

 That girl managed to smash an entire baked potato into her mouth, go girlfriend! I had half of a great BLT with potato wedges and vegan mayo and a half of Molly's miso tofu and finished her fries, delish!  We left a little before 5 pm and made it home just as the weather changed (i.e. turned to rain).

They left Thursday morning, but not before I got Katelyn to put on her new duds, pants made from an old t-shirt, and her new matching Easter sweater and bonnet!  A warm Easter sweater is what you really need way up north in Cambridgeshire, and a matching bonnet is just so classy.  It was a really nice distraction, and I hope they are able to come again soon!

Life is like a box of chocolates.....

 Hello Dear Readers,


Well for the final catching up, this week I'm home on what I like to think of as "Spring Break".  My contract at the Natural History Museum finished on the 31st of March and I was a free agent.....until today.  I just emailed Kew to let them know that I will accept the position they offered me as Quality Assurance Team Leader ......... part time, until December 2013.  I was hoping for a full time post, but at least this will still allow me to volunteer at Kew on other projects I'm interested, volunteer at the Museum and hopefully something else will come up, either botany or knitting related so stay tuned.


In other happy news, when I was cruising around Ireland in a Renault being driven like a Porsche, I got an email from an old High School friend, Luke.

We went to the Homecoming dance together Sophomore, Junior and Senior years, if I remember correctly, and played in Solo and Ensemble (he was the best clarinet in the county, I was arguably the worst flute player in the school as the Senior who never made it to Wind Ensemble, but hey, I ENJOYED it!).  We both ended up in Biology for careers, though he's in molecular and bioinformatics.  He was in London to attend a conference and came to the house for dinner one night where I served up a very English nut roast, mashed celeriac and cabbage.  Later he came to the museum for a whirlwind tour.  What fun!  And there is a rumor on the wind that another long lost high school friend will be visiting me in May.......I'm the luckiest girl in London.

Speaking of lucky, a few months ago, do you remember this snowfall?  Ok, so I thought it was longer ago (thank goodness for the blog) but the next day we found that someone had pulled one of the posts down for our brick wall.  It was pretty annoying because it made our front area look a bit white trash, a bit council estate as they would say here.  Also, our landlord doesn't really fix anything cosmetic (and sometimes not even necessary, like our shower handle....grr.....) so when we told him about it we didn't expect much.  Our next door neighbor even commented on it, but pointed out that it was on our side so probably our responsibility.









 Well, no job is too big, no task to complicated for me, I am the master problem solver.  If there was a problem, yo, I solve it, and you can even check out the hook while DJ revolves it.  Basically I've been ruminating what to do, it's such a little thing, putting this post on that I don't think our landlord would justify calling someone out, but it takes equipment that would be so expensive to buy all out.  As I was upstairs in the attic brushing my teeth one morning, I looked out on a man......building a brick wall.  BOOM! Out of the room as soon as I could get shoes on and in my most polite way I asked if I could possibly have enough mortar to just fix this post on our wall.
  Chris loves building walls so he was out there quickly with the hammer chiseling off the old mortar.  Calvin, the engineer, needed to supervise us, tell me what I was doing wrong, then do it for me so I can see how it was done.  Patrick, unfortunately, wasn't working that day (remember, it's 8 am) so I went up and jumped on his bed until he came down to lift the post up like it was a caber and he was a burly Irish man (instead of a skinny one, like he is.).  All in all a good day, and there were enough slaves, er, helpers that allowed me to take a few photos for posterity.  The poor bricklayer had to give me two servings of mortar and kept saying he was concerned about having enough to finish his wall, but I've seen it's finished now so I can't have taken too much.  The lesson here folks, it never hurts to ask.  Or to keep your eyes open.  Or to live with a bunch of guys who think they know best and will do your work for you.

Ahhh.

Next week, my Spring Break with Molly and Katelyn, get ready for super artsy photos from my new camera.

Ireland!

Hello Dear Readers,

 So when Adam and Melch were here, one of Adam's goals was to be in Dublin on St. Paddy's Day.  With no plan and no idea, we booked train/ferry tickets to Ireland from Wednesday to Saturday.  The train ride was good, and we got to go past the Welsh station famous for having the longest station name in the UK.  The ferry took about two hours across some calm waters, then we arrived in Dublin to sunshine.






The first thing we did after getting a map and getting our bearings was to walk across town to the Guinness factory, or Heaven, as Adam would have it.  They don't actually brew the beer in the tour building, but they did up until the 1980's I believe, and you can see at our feet the custom narrow rail road tracks they had around the complex to move the beer around.

 I even tried my  hand at pouring the perfect pint, and had a few gulps of it.  Not bad, but still not the thing I would reach for refreshment on a hot day, I prefer a lemonade or best of all, a glass of water.  But it was a fun tour and the best part of all was being up on the top floor in a suspended glass bar with windows all around, able to see the entire skyline of Dublin at sunset.  After Dublin we got a car and drove towards Kilkenny, stopping along the way to see Ireland's tallest waterfall.  We got to Kilkenny in the evening where we ate at what can only be described as a Dadaist Chinese place, I highly recommend it, though I don't remember the name!!  We spent the  night at a hostel in Cork, but slept only until about 6!


The next day we went towards the Ring of Kerry which is a touristy route known for it's arts and crafts stops.  We hit up the highlight of the tour for me, the Kerry Woolen Mills, and I scored 2 lbs of fiber and some lovely yarn which they spin at the factory there.  It was heavenly, I made Chris take the bag away so I didn't keep filling it.

We drove around the country side, eventually making our way towards Galway to see the cliffs of Moher (featured as the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride).  Lots of sheep and green country side and rain in Ireland.

We did end up being back in Dublin for St' Paddy's Day, and Adam got his Guinness and Jameson's in to boot, but then we had to hurry to make our ferry back home to the UK.  I was pretty pooped at this point, from the "You can sleep when you're dead" school of traveling that we practiced the whole time, but thankfully I had my trusty wool with me to lay down and take a nap.

I'm so glad Adam and Melch were here to make us go, otherwise I fear Ireland would have been another one of those places that we always talk about going but never really do because it's so close.  However, I would definitely go back, the people were amazingly friendly and open, and there is so much to see there that we didn't get a chance to do at all.

More news to come about a surprising and welcome visit from an old school friend, a visit from Molly and baby this week, and updates on all my crafty activities, since I'm sure you are curious.....


Cheers!

Playing Tourist

Hello Dear Readers,

The part Chris ordered for his computer finally came in, and tomorrow is my last day working at the museum so I should be doing a lot more blogging in April.  To catch up, two weeks ago my good friends from high school came over and we got to play tourist with them.

We took the Big Bus Tour around the city which I had never done before, it was a really good way to see all the highlights, some things I hadn't even had a chance to see yet.  We had the obligatory South Bank/Big Ben photo op. before going to Waterloo for lunch at "A Hole In the Wall" restaurant under the tube bridge.

We took a cruise along the Thames to see the stuff that can really only been seen on the river like the Globe Theatre, Somerset House, the Mayor's office, the Shard in progress and lots of pubs.  Simon was our captain, he said he's a 6th generation Waterman.  The waterman have a long history in Putney too as they are the ones that used to ferry people back and forth until Putney Bridge was built.  The above bridge of course is the Tower Bridge, made famous recently in the new Sherlock Holmes movies.

Later in the week Adam, Melch and I took a day trip to Stonehenge and Bath.  I was a little worried that I would be disappointed by Stonehenge, but it was totally worth it, I spent the entire hour walking around and had to scurry back to the bus!

We toured around the famous Roman baths and had the obligatory glass of "Bath Healing Waters" which didn't taste of warm rusty nails as much as our bus guide would have us believe.  These are the elegant pump rooms, now a restaurant but used a lot as a plot device in Jane Austin's Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.  We walked around the town a bit which was lovely and sunny in stark contrast to the cloudy morning at Stonehenge.



After this they came to the museum to see behind the scenes where I worked, then we took a whirlwind tour of Ireland!  More stunning photos of that to come (and 2 lbs of raw wool for spinning - win!)

Birthday Round Up

Hello Dear Readers,

I realize it's been super quiet around here, and there are some good reasons for it.  One is that the fan on our laptop has developed a whirr that sounds like a jet engine taking off..... and it's a pain in the arse to do any work on it.  Right I'm hijacking Patrick's computer which has an SD slot for my new camera card, just in time to have gotten a new one as the old camera had a CF and there is only a slot on Chris's noise machine...... The other reason of course was that two Sundays ago was my 30th birthday and I had two of my best friends from High School visiting me for a week.

 On my birthday we went to Kew Gardens to enjoy the amazing spring sunshine and had a little picnic on the river.

 We also spent quite a bit of time walking around the gardens and enjoying the pink flowers, frustrating to no end to Adam who couldn't get a decent shot even with his fancy SLR (according to him anyway, I thought the shots were nice)

After Kew we went to my favourite Vegan place where I always seem to end up for my birthday, 222 Veggie Vegan.  Lots of friend from the museum were there and I played with the panoramic assist on my new camera.  Unfortunately it doesn't stitch the images together, I had to do it myself on PowerPoint, but you get the idea. From left to right is Elisabetta, Olivia, Patrick (English Patrick), Aurelie, Adam, Melch, Sara, Patrick (brother Patrick) and Chris, who got a little cropped out.

Olivia gave me some lovely flowers and gourmet chocolates, I had the flowers in my bedroom which I think is extremely decadent. Patrick gave me beautiful tea flower balls (eat your heart out Cat) and the rest of the girls pitched in to get this amazing gem bangle from Swarovski!  It's probably the prettiest thing I own right now!  I was so touched, for any of you girls who read the blog thank you thank you thank you, it means a lot to me.  I'll think of all the wonderful times we had together at the museum when i wear it, which will be often.

More news to follow soon about Adam and Melch's visit, our whirlwind whistle stop tour to Ireland, and a special surprise visitor from High School - when it rains it pours!

P.S. no news yet on the job front, looking forward to doing a lot more traveling in April since I'll be having a lot more free time....

Little bit of Catch up on a Rainy Day

Hello Dear Readers,

Believe it or not the UK has been in a bit of a drought this year, and we finally have had a full rainy day today, which I'm using to catch up a bit on blogging. We finally got good Internet back in the house (hurray!) and seem to be running at full speed now. On the down side, our little external hard drive fell from a height of just 2 feet the other day while plugged in and now it just makes a pathetic croaking noise. Bummer. Anyone know how to extract data off a defunct hard drive? Anyone? Bueler?

Before we went to Boston my awesome Skippy friend Jennifer Imamura came to visit me in London. Gold star to you Jennifer! We went to Kew one day, the NHM, saw a show at the Globe Theatre and then spent a day running around town. We had amazing tea at Liberty Department Store, and even caught a glimpse of Barak Obama leaving Buckingham Palace. I guess he's part of the cotton candy principle too..... life is just better with skippies around.

In other news, Chris got a new job, which he starts at some undetermined time in the future. It's still with the government, but it's with Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (IRS equivalent for my American friends). So now we are both fully employed at least until next year, how good is that?

I've been doing a lot of practice with my Greek class (I missed two classes going to Boston) Soaking up Dr. Who (I TOTALLY called River Song, ask Chris, I called it!!), eagerly awaiting the start of True Blood, and have been knitting up a storm while listening to A Game of Thrones on my iPod. Shout out to Mad E for turning me onto the series, even if it has taken me 2 years to get to chapter 45.....

Here is a picture of a little dragon I made for my adopted nephew George (the dragon slayer in Christian mythology)

I'm also working on this sweater for my sister. Don't you just love a knit in the round top down that you can just crank out while listening to a good book?

I'm just about to head off to the gym to be punished by a sadistic South African, but in a good way. At least I keep telling myself that, and my upper arms and curiously strong thighs agree.

Cheers

The Angel in Heels

Hello Dear Readers,

Last week was super busy as Chris's mother, aunt and cousin came for a more or less surprise visit (i consider less than a weeks notice a bit of a surprise). They stayed with his Cousin in Guildford for most of the time, but spend Saturday night at our place since all of our housemates were gone.

They came up in the morning and we took them out to Kew. Being typical Cypriot woman (and built for comfort - not for speed) we opted to take the Kew Explorer around which is a tram that takes a 60 min spin around the gardens - at 10 mph. We saw most of the highlights and managed to make it back to the train before it started raining.

Here they are standing at Kew Bridge before we got onto the train.

After that we took them to eat at their first foreign restaurant - the Slug and Lettuce, a little gastro pub chain that's on the high street. The London prices and London portions amazed them, as did the fact that no bread was served with the meal. How do we live here!

Laster that night they wanted to head up to Shepards Bush to go to the huge mall that opened up last fall as Christiana wanted to get some boots. This was annouced at 6 pm, and the mall closes at 9, and it takes a good 45 min to get there, but hey, they were guests. We narroly managed to get the 22 bus to Putney Bridge to get the 220 (note: Cypriot woman are not used to husteling, but the bus driver was VERY nice in waiting for them to mosey across the street). WE settled in to the top of the bus as it started to drizle and made our way up Felsham High street. 1.5 HOURS LATER WE HAD GONE 1.5 MILES!!!! TRaffice for some reason was at a standstill (later we learned that an accident had closed the A4, a major highway, and all traffice was divertey to where we were). After sittin g30 min and going literally nowhere, we decided to get off the bus and try to catch a bus back. As we got off the bus we could see the 220 goin the other way stopped across the street. I ran for it, but, well, as I say, built for comfort not for speed. No matter, we'd just wait for the next one. Me and 5 Greeks. In the dark. In the, now pourning, raing. For 1.5 hours. Again. I thought I would die there. I would never see my bed in Putney again. Finally an Australian girl arrived, fully decked out and dressed up to go out, waiting for the bus. We started chatting about our optinos. Try to run for it in the rain to the nearest tube station? no good, thte tube was too far, and anyway the line that ran to our apartment was closed that day. Call a cab? Someone else had tried 3 times and they were all out. Walk home? Not with 3 slow Cypriot women at night in the rain. Finally she managed to flag down a cab, YES! All 6 of us smashed illeglally into the back and the cabbie nervously took us to the end of our street, and the Australian Angel In Heels (her name was Lauren) went off to her house party in Clapham Junction. What a relief! I don't know what we would have done if she hadn't gotten that cab, because everyone was thinking well we have waited this long, another 220 must come soon, but I don't think it ever did. What a hellish night. Here is a picture of a wet and miserable me, yearning for a cup of hot tea and my bed!

Anyway, the rest of their trip was fine after that, and we took them into the city on Tuesday, did the British Museum, saw the Eye of London, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben etc. I have to say though that I was tired out!! I have had more relatives visit this summer than I have since I moved out of the house after High School! Yesterday though Chris and I took the opportunity of a weekend when I didn't have to work to go explore the historic city of Bath. What a marvelous place! I'll tell you about it later in the week when I'm more rested.

Cheerio!

Bank Holiday Weekend

Hello Dear Readers,

Instead of having labeled holidays like in the US (Labor Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July) the English very neatly and orderly arrange their holidays to be more or less spaced out over the year so everyone gets a rest once in a while. Therefore we have "Bank Holidays" and Monday was our end of summer bank holiday which was lovely. My foot was acting up a little so I spent much of the weekend resting which meant knitting, reading and catching up on good movies.



On Monday we had the pleasure of a visit from some new friends of ours, the girl in the green shirt is Kelly who I met through my knitting class. She is from California and her boyfriend (on the right) is of French/American descent but sort of also Spanish... anyway he went to school in California as well and they both just moved to London a few months ago. It's nice to meet some fellow expats that are more or less in the same situation as Chris and I (US educated, EU citizens and partners trying to settle in the UK). We had afternoon tea together and chatted for a few hours (they meant to stay only a few min, oh well....). My brother also got into the fun of it, and for about 3o min he and Kelly conspired to buy and fix up the house next store, but first devised many elaborate ways of ascertaining whether or not it was currently occupied. Oh dear.

Anyway, lots of knitting going on too but I was too lazy this weekend to get photos done, more to come soon.

Last two weeks of my job at Kew, it's been a really great summer and no matter what happens next I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to work in such a great place. It's kind of like going to Jefferson (the magnet school I went to for High School). It's a place full of people more or less interested in the same thing, so you feel like you can really fit in with most people. Will keep you posted as any job prospects develop there.

Off to bed now, I had knitting group tonight as well, then a 4 way video Skype with my family (yes! conference calls now supports multiple videos!) but I figured I better blog now or I won't get a chance till next weekend.

Cheerio!

Super Secret Knitting and A wonderful guest

Hello Dear Readers,

What a tiring (in a good way) week! Last Wednesday I went with some girls from Kew to see the Bolshoi Ballet do Le Corsaires at the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden. We had 'seats' in the upper slips, the top floor, on the far side of the horseshoe shaped auditorium. We had to stand for a lot of the performance and lean over to see, but it was still FANTASTIC. They were so talented, and the costumes were a feast for the eyes. I stayed out in the city until 1 1pm on a School Night (as it were) but it was fun and well worth it. Except Friday afternoon when I had to leave work early because I was so tired out!

I have also been very busy working on super secret knitting projects, some of which I can now reveal because they are already wending their way to their recipients.

These are some flowers and bugs that some of you that may or may not read this blog will see in a few weeks. It's from a book I picked up at Knit Nation for my friend in Amarillo.

We had seen this book together and both liked it, but when we went back later it was gone! I saw it straight away at Knit Nation and knew it was Kismet.

The flowers are really well done, and there are a large variety of fruits, veggies and insects as well. It's both Knitting and Crochet, and it's the perfect way to use small bits of yarn.

These socks are the Skew pattern from Knitty Winter 2009. I used some yarn Madeleine's mother sent me for my birthday, it was pretty nice to work with, even though it is superwash.

The pattern really turns knitting socks on it's side, literally and figuratively, and they were a really nice mental exercise to work on.

I also had a visitor this week!

The aforementioned Madeleine who is back in Jolly Old England for her friend's wedding. We went shopping on Saturday and had lunch at the food court, it really felt like the good old days, but better because Chris was there too.

Busy busy week, just spending today catching up with chores and spending some time with my brother. Madeleine brought some special food items for me from Amarillo and we are going to make a special dinner together.

Finally, I leave you with a last piece of knitting so super secret, that it cannot yet be revealed except in part....

oooh, the suspense!

Visit Mania!!

Hello Dear Readers,

Been very quiet lately because I was getting ready to have guests (read: cleaning house top to bottom) and then playing hostess for a week!

My mother and sister came to London to see us all! Mom and Cat spent Tuesday hanging out in Putney and then Wednesday I took them into the City, here we are crossing Waterloo Bridge.

We did a lot of the tourist stuff, Covent Garden (think My Fair Lady)...

...and the British Museum.

Went to my brother's office in Holborn (three buildings down from where we stayed with the band in high school) and had lunch at a fish and chips shop in Soho. Fantastic shoe shopping district there by the way....

Thursday mom and Catherine spent the day at Kew Gardens while I was at work. In the evening we stuck around to participate in Summer Swing at the gardens and saw a production of "Dancing in the Streets."

It was a fantastic evening of pickle sandwiches, Stevie Wonder and co. and dancing of course! Also free samples of Grand Marnier and oranges and a general good time.

Mom and Chris headed to Cyprus on Friday while Cat and I spent the day recovering. Saturday the three of us kids had a day in the city together, but I'll post that later this week, right now my brother and I made seven layer Mexican dip and are about to start watching the World Cup (think Super Bowl, but with worse commercials). Go Spain!