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!

Craft-sational!

Hello Dear Readers,

I've been on a real craft jag recently, probably to do with the yarn swap/ fabric giveaway that happened at my knitting group, plus one of my roomates gave me an old sheet they had worn a hole in (yes! yards and yards of whole cloth!)

On the knitting front, I finished a vest for Odie out of two skiens that I got from the yarn swap. I just saw them and thought, yes, those are pefect for a vest for a little boy! I used up the two skeins exactly with about 6 inches to spare.

I also needed a project to work on while I was teaching knitting on Sunday, and I happened to get a lovely skein of pink yarn at he swap as well. I had wanted to make these fingerless gloves for a while and I just had a bolt of inspiration. I looked up the pattern and lo and behold, I actually had the yarn CALLED FOR IN THE PATTERN. Which NEVER happens with me, I always do a lot of modifications, but this seems like it was meant to be (plus I already lost one of the fingerless gloves on the last pair I made, so I need a new pair, it was kismet).

Finally for the sewing, I scored a ton of awesome material at a giveaway plus the sheet. I made this quilt out of Last Minute Patchwork Gifts for Odie which was a ton of fun (and incidentally my first go at machine quilting.)

I wasn't sure what was going to happen to it at first but Chris said he actually liked this quilt (for once) and suggested that Odie could use it as his quilt away from home when he goes to "grandma's" house. Perfect.


I also knocked out this pin cushion
which is a pattern from Last Minute Patchwork Gifts as well. What an awesome book. I don't really have a home for it yet either, but I thought it might be fun to have a blog contest, what do you think? Anyone interested in "winning" this hand made exclusive Heather one-of-a-kind leave a message in the comments ..... lets see...... leave a message stating the first project you will use with your new pin cushion. and I'll pick a winner somehow. And they're off! Contest ends...... July 1? :-) Now we'll see if it works! Hey if you don't sew leave a message stating what you would do with it anyway, re-gift, use as a very very soft hacky sack, prop up a wobbly table, whatever.

P.S. Saw Prince of Persia last weekend courtsey of my brother for free tickets. Anyone else seen it? thoughts?

Kew Gardens

Hello dear Readers,

Busy weekend last weekend. Last Saturday (which just so happened to be World Wide Knit In Public day , no I'm not making that up) Chris's cousin Christiana came to see us in London before going home to Cyprus for the summer. We took her out to Kew gardens so she can see where I work and also cause it's a damn cool place!

We walked around the herbarium where I work, then went out into the gardens. They replaced all the tulips with cacti in this display, it really works for summer.
We hiked up to the top of the tree top walk way, Chris is really getting over his fear of heights (though he squoze my hand very tightly when not taking pictures).


We wandered into the Princess of Wales conservatory where they grow orchids and other tropical plants. Here I am inspecting an orchid for that famous 180 degree twisting of the flower....


There was also a butterfly display on at the POW where you could really walk right up to them while they feasted on melon and pineapple.

Here they are in their pupation cases, hatching out and letting their wings dry. There were some amazing huge moths as well, but unfortunately we didn't get very good pictures. It was an exhausting day all around, and I took as many opportunities as possible to SIT DOWN as you will see in this video.




But all in all a nice day, and decent weather for it too. When we came back we had a little dinner and relaxed and sent her off on the train around 8:00.

This weekend has been a lot quieter, with a lot more crafting going on for me (photos to follow). I also had my first adult ballet class on Saturday. I kept up more than I thought I would, but not as much as I would have liked. I defiantly need to get some shoes if I'm going to do this some more! I also taught knitting again today and had 5 new students which is great news. No roommates this weekend either so I took the opportunity to do laundry and have a good clean.

Not that much else to report, looking forward to my parents coming in two weeks, and still really enjoying working at Kew. I'm learning so much every day, which is one of my favorite things to do!

Cheerio!

Crafty, like a fox

Hello Dear Readers,

Been working on a few little craft projects here and there, they buzz around in my brain until I get the sewing machine/needles/whatever out and do them. One of the girls in our knitting group was leaving for New Zealand and consequently was unloading her craft stuff. I scored a lot of nice things, including a meter of lovely wool fabric which I turned into a blanket.
She also gave me these buttons which I pointed out were actually grasses, kind of nice since I'm working in grasses at Kew right now.

I also got some misc. fabric, some of which I put into this little birdie I've been wanting to make for a while from Last Minute Patchwork Gifts.
It's a fantastic book with lots of good ideas. This one I filled with lavender so it smells divine.
Speaking of lavender, my garden is going pretty well. The lavender has bolted and so has the cilantro I rescued from my roommate which is now putting on seeds for coriander.
Something else I made was this little elephant for my nephew. I love being an auntie!

Patrick gave me an old pair of jeans from one of his office mates and I cut them up to make a small blanket to sit on at work since we go out into the garden for lunch. With the leftovers I made this little guy.

It's so nice to have a little kid to have an excuse to make toys for, though I'm sure he probably has more toys than he knows what to do with. Of course I will always make toys for adults if they ask me, but then they never squeal with delight when I give it to them :-).
Chris and I had a nice time last night on our Friday night date yoga class. The instructor is a bit militant but I'm really starting to like it, she's all about proper alignment. And standing on you. and pulling on you. and pushing. But it feels like you are really doing something! Today Chris's cousin from Gilford is coming up and I think we'll try to go into the gardens. More pictures to follow.


P.S. Something else I got in the swap was the Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. I know, I know I have a problem.......

Camden town

Hello Dear Readers,

What a fun weekend! Friday night I went out with some friends from Kew (including a friend of yours Kat.....;-)) and three of us girls polished off two pitchers of Pimms which apparently is THE summer drink in England. Got a little tipsy (nowhere near drunk though) but had a nice time hanging out on a gorgeous Friday evening on the terrace of the pub near the gardens.

Saturday (besides Dr. Who, the highlight of every Sat (Van Gough! I cried! So good!)) I spent the morning with some buddies from knitting group at the Victoria and Albert museum's quilt exhibit. Awesomeness! No photos were 'allowed' but I will direct you to my friend Rowan's blog because she snuck some in..... Very inspirational, makes me want to do another one, but then I don't need much of an excuse.

Sunday I taught my first knitting class at The Sewing Rooms, which was pretty cool. Imagine, getting paid to get other people to knit! It's almost like stealing! After that I headed to Camden town with some girls from Kew. What an amazing market, so much to see! Here is my friend Nina, thought you can't really see nearly as much hustle and bustle as there was.

I had a D tox smoothie (mint, cucumber, apple juice and melon), and bought a fantastic wooden pick to hold my hair in a twist while bending over plant specimens.
Camden town is an old horse hospital that was converted into a giant market place, here you can see the old stall doors from the hospital.
There are sculptures and statues of horses and vets all over the place, this one was really neat, though a bit nerve wracking to stand under and look up, you felt as if you were going to be trampled to death.
we had to check out Cyberdog, a bizarre kind of steam punk/rave/goth store that took itself VERY seriously. I was all ready to take a photo of some steampunk style goggles for my friend Steph when a woman wearing day-glow yellow cut out dress, long dread locks, makeup to put Boy George to shame and more piercings than I could count put her hand over the lens and said you aren't allowed to take photos. Right. Cause the flash might interfere with the strobe lights? You can't quite see but near the top of the door on the back wall are two platforms with a girl and guy dancing on. Rumor is they get them high on acid before they go to dance better. What an experience. Some of the sales staff were wearing Borg style headsets that went over their eyes. Yeah.
Here is a shot of the three girls, Hannah, Nina and sorry, Nina's friend who's name I'm not sure of (Lucy maybe?). We had a good time, though I was quite tired out afterwords and had to face the hour tube ride home. At least I got to sit down. SO much to do in London, you need a lifetime to see it all.

Hope everyone is having a good time, shout-out to my friend Susan who had a birthday on the 30th (and became Dr. Clark) and to Devin who had a birthday on the 5th.

Feed the birds.......tuppence a bag.....

Hello Dear Readers,

What a fun time last weekend! My good friend from grad school had a birthday which was a great excuse to go into the city. We went to Kensington gardens (despite overcast skies) and had a lovely walk in the park.We just happened on some people who were feeding the birds by the wayside and decided to give it a try ourselves.....

Chris took some video, hopefully this will play on your computers:
There was also this crazy goose that Molly and I bravely and nonchalantly (so it wouldn't know what we were doing) snuck up on and sat next too. I'm perched at the very edge of the pond in case it decides to attack!


We also had a little picnic on the lawn and visited a shop with a GIANT rubber ducky. that drew Chris into the shop like a moth to a flame.

Afterwords we walked down Kensington High Street past a group of Palestinian protesters (gotta love London, always something going on) and headed to 222 Veggie Vegan, a most delicious vegan restaurant. We each ordered something different and had a good time passing bites around. We also all splurged on dessert (Hey, it was Molly's birthday, she couldn't celebrate alone!) and treated ourselves to a bottle of wine. Sigh. Just the memory makes me feel all warm and happy inside. What fun and inspirational people, the kind of friends that you just think, wow, I learn so much from them. Hopefully we can return the visit this summer and do a little punt boating on the river Cam.

More fun and games this weekend, but you'll have to wait till tomorrow to read it.

Bugs at Kew

Hello Dear Readers,

Here is a lovely photo tour of the new butterfly exhibit at Kew that I went to see at lunch last week. Enjoy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8709314.stm

P.S. Spent a lovely day yesterday with my good friends Molly and George, will blog about it soon, but I have a yarn swap at knitting night tonight so it might not be till Wed. Hope everyone enjoyed Memorial Day.