A day at the races....

Hello Readers,

Saturday was the big Woman's Head Race, or as Pat 'affectionately' calls it, Pooh Sticks. It was a pretty chilly day, but it wasn't raining! :-) That's what you are supposed to say about the weather here, at least it isn't raining, or at least it isn't cloudy, or at least it isn't etc.... We walked down to the old Harrod's Furniture Depository and swung around the gates to the old condemned dock to watch them go by.
That's me leaning way out on the railing, and standing to my right is Patrick.

At least 300 boats in this race! In a head race you have all the boats in front of the starting line, and they get released in 15 second intervals and it's a timed race, so you don't really know how you did until the end, but it's more interesting to watch because the boats keep coming and coming and coming.

The team we were cheering for was Thames Boat Club, which had three boats in the race.
ummmmm, i think this is the one with Patrick's girlfriend in it, sitting 6th from the front....you have to look REALLY hard. They came in 4 th out of the 16 boats in their division, not too shabby.

After the race came the party! It was Oscars themed, so many people dressed either as if they were going to the Oscars, or as people who had won an Oscar (there was even a Nemo, and a Mary Poppins) One girl came as the red carpet, but of course some people had to go for the gold.... I'll see if I can rustle up some pictures for it.

Off to do my morning shopping/chores. So busy in my 'unemployment'

Spring has Sprung

Hello Readers,

Late breaking addition to my birthday goodness. My friend Madeleine who I worked with in Amarillo is English, and she had her mother sent me this wonderful yarn for my b-day, hooray!

She also included a postcard from Bath, which is someplace Chris and I are planning to go in the near future. Assembly rooms, the Crescent, Sally Lunn cakes and of course, lots of Jane Austin goodness.

Yesterday outside the kitchen window I saw my first robin this spring! He stayed put long enough for me to take a picture through the window, but as soon as I opened it he went away.

He is a bit camouflaged in this pictures, but he is sitting on the rail near the center of the photo. I saw him again this morning though hanging around my bird-feeder, so it seems to be working! There is a great website for identifying birds in the UK and I plan to make good use of it this summer. I've already seen about 3 species hanging around in our neighbor's back gardens that adjoin ours, it is shaping up to be a good summer.

Today is the woman's head race on the Thames, and our roommate Sally and Patrick's girlfriend Sarah (of cake face stuffing fame on this blog) are racing. We are going to go down to the water and watch them, pictures to follow!

Hello Dear Readers,

Thanks for all the wonderful birthday wishes yesterday! I set out to have a great day and that's what I did. Apologies to those with no interest in Art History as this is a very link heavy arty post, but you can glaze over the links if you don't care.

I started off going into work with Chris to see what he does all day. I took the train into Victoria Station and went into the great glass building that is his office.

I headed around the corner to......


that's right, the queen's house. Not sure if she was home, but plenty of tourists there watching guards swapping guns in a very British, formal way. I rounded Victoria circle and headed down The Mall with the help of my handy laminated "Streetwise London" (thanks Toni Garrett!) towards.....

Trafalgar Square, specifically to the National Gallery to catch the 11:30 free hour long tour of part of the collection. It was so fantastic, all the fun of my days studying art history without any of the exams or actual studying! After discussing the architecture of the newish Sainsbury Wing, we covered The Annunciation and it's companion piece Seven Saints, a brief stop to admire the double sided Durer then Rubens' A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, rounding it out with Madame de Pompadour, where I correctly identified her as doing embroidery, not writing (how did I know?). After the tour I took the opportunity to play one of my City Walk London cards number 36 to tour the Embankment/Leicester Square (theater district) area. Among the sites I found the narrowest "street" in London:


I didn't even try to walk through, it seemed like an invitation to disaster. I also found a rather large (especially for London) bead shop and made a mental note to bring certain visitors there (Mary, Madeleine), or at least incentiveise them to come visit me! I wandered into a dance shop where they sell my favorite ballroom shoes (Freed of London), looked at the Victoria Embankment Gardens, and had "vegetarian" fish and chips for lunch on Leicester street and generally had a good what I'll call "wander around" (read: walk briskly through the streets searching for fish and chips with my nose in the map, wondering how London seems to defy my usually excellent navigation skills).

At 2:30 I went back to the gallery for the second tour of the day, viewing the San Pier Maggioro Altarpiece and comparing it to the San Benedetto Altarpiece painted 30 years later. We visited a room with some experimental hangings where the pieces were arranged not by artist or century, but rather a grouping of works that all dealt with the human figure. Or, as our tour guide put it, our (read: male patron's) obsession with looking at "Nudie Ladies" under the guise of being high art,and for good measure sticking some reference to Greek mythology to make the nudity ok. We looked at Titian's Diana and Actaeon compared to the later Death of Actaeon and debated whether the punishment of accidentally viewing a nudie Dianna merited the punishment of being torn apart by your own dogs.....

Finally we discussed Turner's Ulysses Deriding Polyphenus. Or as one old lady in our tour put it, Odysseus giving Polyphenus the finger. Five points to anyone who can actually find Polyphenus the one-eyed giant who is hidden in this work, and five more points if you can see the horse heads pulling the chariot of dawn. This painting has particular resonance with me because as someone who is always traveling (not just vacation traveling, but you know, 16 moves in 28 years kind of traveling through life) I really identify with Odysseus/Ulysses. Also, our nephew (Chris's sister's kid) is named Odysseus and his christening is coming up. Maybe I should get him a print of this for his wall, it's never to early to appreciate good art. The National Gallery even has a program for 2 year olds!

To round out the day I spent some time on the phone with Molly, Cat and Jeff, Chris's mom, and my Gramma, phew! Then Pat and Chris came home and delivered lots of lovely goodies. From Chris came a selection of shampoos (plus carrying case), soaps and face washes from LUSH wrapped in a nice scarf which is THE fashion accessory here in London, so it will be put to good use.


Patrick thoughtfully got me a card with knitted animals enjoying a birthday cake and 1000 m of lace-weight cashmere/silk blend wool in baby blue. It's so nice I said I just wanted to let it sit in my stash with my other skein of cashmere and just look at it....touch it.....put it against my cheek.......... sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Patrick said he knew I would say that but that I HAVE to use to make something for myself. He also gave me a gift certificate which I have been instructed to use to buy a Knit Kit for myself. Between that and my interchangeable needles I have the perfect knitting travel kit, just add local yarn and I'm good to go! I'm taking any and all requests for knitted objects so I can use my fun toys!

So that was about it. Wow, what a long post.......but it was a long day, and good. Here's hoping to many happy returns.

Tuesday is Knitting Night

Hello Readers,

Tuesday nights are pretty exciting for me, I get on a big red double-decker bus and go from Putney to the glorious Hammersmith Bus station for Knitting night at Cafe Nero! I took some action shots of the group last night:



the group is doing a KAL of the French Press Felted slippers, but last night three of use were doing baby blankets, so maybe it should have been a baby blanket-a-thon! The group is a lot of fun, I'm so glad to have people to hang out with other than my housemates, I think if I didn't have them I would go crazy......the remind me of my old knitting group(s). :-)
And here is said giant pink baby blanket, in progress...

The gray is for the boarder, in the end it should look something like this one by Brooklyn Tweed, but in pink and gray.

It was also my brother's girlfriend's birthday yesterday, and I got to go to Waitrose (local version of Whole Foods) and pick out this FANTASTIC cake, and carry it home with me. I felt so important going down the street with my cake box, and what a cute cake!
MMMMmmmmm, birthday girl's privilege to face-plant in the cake...

But Pat's just got a big mouth.....


Ok, off to Putney High street to see about a job at The Body Shop... I know, it's a bit of a cop out, but I would like to move in to our own apartment eventually, and biology jobs are a bit thin on the ground. Wish me luck.

A Grand Day Out in Gilford

Hello All,

Last weekend Chris and I went to visit his cousin Christiana in Gilford (yes, Chris has many cousins, and many are in England). It's a really quaint little town just south of us, and we got to take the train and everything. I LOVE the transportation here!

Here is a picture of Chris and I on the High Street. We, well, I, did a little yarn shopping (I'm making a giant pink baby blanket in acrylic! Help me Steph!! What was I thinking?) then met Christiana at the Slug and Lettuce (how cute a name is that for a restaurant!). After making another diversion to another yarn shop, we walked on the high street and enjoyed the street musicians playing American sounding blues..


and in true Cypriot style spent the rest of the afternoon in a coffee shop. My Greek gets phenomenally better after hanging out with a bunch of Cypriots, and their extensive use of hand gestures helps a lot! We went to Christiana's house for some more drinks, then Chris and I bolted for the train, just stepping on as the doors were closing. Still loving the public transport.


Today I went out for a while and saw two pretty neat things. The first was a crow actively dropping a nut onto the hard rocks of the river shore to crack it. Something I've read about a lot in biology, but the first time I've observed it for myself. On the same walk I also got to go through that quintessential British trail sight, a kissing gate! No one to kiss when I was there, but it was fun anyway.

We are looking to do something fun next weekend as well, and I'm going into the city some time this week to have fun too, so more to report later.

What's this?

Hello Dear Readers,

I imagine you all reading this to the tune of "What's this" from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas....

What's this?

This is my little green space in the backyard, growing lavender, cyclamen, rosemary and cilantro. I also got some suet for the bird feeder (top left) and wooden cloths pins for the laundry line (you can see some of my washing under the bird feeder).

What's this?


This is the fancy shmancy McDonald's on the High Street with plush arm chairs and a fancy interior. I might just have to eat there just to experience it.

What's this?
Why look at that, it looks like an EEA2 Residence Card application with all the necessary documents and a big envelope to send it all in!!

And what's this???!!?!
The Post Office for the sending of said EEA2 Residence Card application! Yes, the final step for me being able to live semi-permanently in the UK. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Hopefully it won't take as long as it has for some people.

And what's this?

Long awaited fingerless gloves for me. There is so much that I need my fingers for here, transportation, getting cash out, keys to the apartment, but it's still chilly enough that I need to wear something on my hands. Also something to work on at knitting night, since my other big project (weaving a rug) is not quite portable.

Getting back on my feet after suffering from a cold the past few days....looking forward to going to Gilford this weekend to visit another one of Chris's cousins living in the UK.

Cracking the Enigma

Hey gang,

What a fun weekend. I finished Patrick's hat (well it's fun if you are a knitter! and here is the Ravelry link if you are)


On Sunday Chris and I trekked up near Milton-Keynes to visit Bletchley Park where the Brits cracked the Enigma code during WWII. We went with his cousin (also called Christodoulos, but Dakis to the family) and his wife Rowena, who is British by birth but like me has moved around quite a bit and now calls Cyprus home. It was really amazing to see Alan Turing's code breaking machines in action, and the fantastically creative solutions they were able to come up with to crack the codes.

We have passes for a year so I think we'll be going back up there again to see more of the code breaking history. They are even rebuilding one of the computers (named Colossus) they used just from a few blueprints and photos, I would love to be a computer engineer in on that project. It also happened that this weekend was the LGBT heritage weekend (Alan Turing happened to be gay) and we heard two lectures about him, though there wasn't nearly enough math in it for Chris. We wanted some equations, dammit. What I want to know is, what about the hidden Lefty history of the world? The lefty community has been a silent 11% minority long enoough, I want to see Lefty history month celebrated, who's with me?

We went to the "Flying Fox" pub afterward for lunch (not a Freehouse I'm afraid Molly) and I had this yummy nut roast with Yorkshire Pudding (which is actually more like a bread bowl......very tricky to eat delicately). How English to finish up a rainy day walking around historic grounds than with Sunday dinner at the pub. It was really fun to visit "family" over here. I guess I've finally traveled so much I'm starting to cross back on myself! That, and London is a pretty popular place to live and visit. Open invitation still stands!