Lady in Red

Hello Dear Readers,

Took a little break from blogging, now I'm back, so here we go..... I'm still working only part time at Kew (but it looks like that will change soon) so last Thursday I enjoyed a day out with a girlfriend from knitting who took some time off work.  I wanted to check out the Portobello road area, made famous for a lot of Americans in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  It is well known for it's antiques and/or vintage market, the busy day with all the stalls is Friday and Saturday but I thought a quiet Thursday morning was fine for me.
We walked along the shops, just window shopping, seeing a lot of nice antiques.  Further down the road it turns a bit more into name brand high street shops, but with some interesting restaurants (the first vegetarian place in London, for example) down the way.  Along the way I was talking to Lucy about how I was really thinking of buying a nice leather jacket (I know, I know, some people will be confused about a vegan buying a leather jacket, but my issue with fake leather is that it isn't environmentally friendly, and I'd rather use the whole cow anyway than let it go to waste.  Eating vegan is more about reducing my carbon and pesticide footprint than anything else, not that I feel I have to justify myself, I'm just explaining). I have been influenced lately by stylings from Wendy's Lookbook to try to define what I like and how I want to look.  Plus, as it's the Year of Me, I think I need to stop dressing like a graduate student.  I really like the fashions of Emma Swan in Once Upon a Time,  Elena Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries and leather jackets are a key part of their look.  Plus, after seeing photos of myself in my old spring/fall coat, I didn't think it was flattering at all and it's gone into the charity bag as of last night.  Anyway, while talking to Lucy about this we happened to walk right by - a leather jacket shop!  Thirty minutes later, with a little haggling for 20% off the price, in a very uncharacteristic move for me, I walked out with this beauty.

And haven't been able to take it off since!  I would never have thought of red, preferring brown or black, but I felt like it would go with a lot more of my current wardrobe, any color brown boots, black, my navy jeans or a black dress.  Anyway, I'm feeling like a sexy FBI agent, or a cool biker chick when I wear it and since it's been such a cold spring, I think it's going to get a lot of use.

After shopping we walked down to Hyde Park to check out Kensington Palace, where Queen Victoria was brought up and Princess Diana lived.  They have recently renovated it so it was shiny new and stunning.  Afterwards we went to Lush on King's street to stock up on essentials, and made our way back to the palace for Afternoon Tea in the old Orangery.  The building is lovely, really a good afternoon tea feel without the bustle of having it at a hotel or department store.  We had small cucumber sandwiches, scones and a selection of sweet things like shortbread, lemon tart, macaroons and a small layered chocolate cake.   I had a white tea with mine - the whole thing was divine!

I really can't remember the last time I had such an amazing day, Lucy brought out the daredevil shopper in me and I'm very grateful.

Though the weather here has been drizzly and overcast (perfect for leather jackets, btw.) it has made the bright spring greens of London really pop out, as you can see in this shot of the Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace.  Makes me nostalgic for William and Mary's sunken garden.

On the craft front, my good friend Molly sent me quite a few of her worn out t-shirts and clothes to do a little magic on to turn into things for Katelyn.  I was so excited to get the box, the only thing to tear me away from it was the above trip and jacket adventure.  A few frantic sewing days later (apologies to my housemate for the sound of the machine at 7 am on a Friday), here is the majority of stuff in all it's glory.  Three leggings/pants, two adorable dresses and two summer hats (she threw all the other hats I made her out of the stroller already!)

 I love this little dress to the left mostly because it highlights a science fair held at Cambridge, not a feature on most baby clothes and I don't know why.  With an astronomer father and a biologist mother, this girl is bound to have a curiosity about the natural world - whether she wants to or not!  When they were here last month Molly said Katelyn is really into lady-beetles so I sewed two lady-beetle buttons I found in Portobello road.  The dress below I'm very proud of too for my recycling of lace from the bottom of a much loved but now see through camisole top I got many Christmas's ago in a Kohl's Christmas sale.  Sigh.  The tissue thin top also got used for the lining of the slightly thick spandex white top, and the sleeves for the top were turned into leggins for a matchy matchy look.  The only trouble is since I don't have the kid here to try things on I just have to go on faith and measurements that they will fit........ I'm a little bit nervous, but I figured if they don't' fit her, surely Molly will know someone else with a smaller baby, or wait for Molly to grow into things.

 Fun fun fun, would love to have more little kids (not of my own) to sew for as the projects are so quick and fun.  My brain was bursting with possibilities after I got the box, and I still have more ideas left, though less raw materials.

I also made the two hats, and this little crocheted one should be good for our spring, cotton so as not to be too warm, but pretty enough that she hopefully won't mind wearing it every day (until she throws it off that is).  Oh well, baby clothes should be like babies anyway, their ephemeral nature are what make them so special.



Enjoying a "Bank Holiday" weekend this Monday.  Bank Holidays are a bit weird here, they don't commemorate any event as far as I can tell, or mark any pagan or christian ritual, or even come evenly spaced.  There is "early May" bank holiday, and late May, and Early August, and some others throughout, but nothing like Memorial Day, Forth of July or Thanksgiving.  Christmas and Easter are marked, but the other special days like St. George's Day (patron saint of England) or Remembrance Day (war memorial) pass by without a day off to reflect and BBQ.  Anyway, not complaining about a day off,  just observing and celebrating cultural differences.

Cheerio!

Easter weekend

Hello Dear Readers,

Happy belated Easter everyone, Easter is taken pretty seriously here, not as much as Christmas where there isn't even public transportation or movie theaters, but quiet with Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays for most people.  I experimented with my bread machine and made some lovely hot cross buns, which were scarfed down in about two days.  Chris even ate them even though they had raisins.  They came out super fantastic delicious!  Thanks again Molly for that bread machine! 

 

In the afternoon Chris and I used one of my London City Walk cards (thanks again Molly) to explore the village of nearby Wimbledon, which is really in walking distance of our place.  Above is a windmill where apparently Baden-Powell, the creator of the Boy Scouts wrote much of his book, and where you can see me using my new wildflower guide.  We saw Primula veris, Lamium purpureum Taraxacum officinale and Ulex  europaeus, what a handy book!  I've been doing a little volunteer work this week, yesterday at Kew and today at the Museum and tomorrow a friend of mine is bringing a spinning wheel for me to use, so I'm keeping pretty busy.  Not sure when my new job at Kew will start, probably in May but possibly sooner.

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....