Holiday

I'll be taking a short break from blogging for the holidays to catch up with family, friends, sleeping and knitting. Hope you will all have a lovely Christmas and a great New Year.

I will see you all in the New Year!

Treats

We had another busy weekend. We went to visit our friends the Edwards, and more importantly their lovely baby J on Saturday. They are in the middle of moving house, so Jaxs helped move some of the large and bulky furniture. I helped look after the baby and carry some lighter items.

On Sunday, we helped move some of the large furniture and then we visited Gracie who invited us to her pre-Christmas Roast. Boy, did we have great meal and I was so stuffed afterwards. Alex's (Gracie's other half) made a great black forest trifle and Gracie made a great Oreo cheesecake. Thanks darlings for a great meal!!

[A non-alcoholic version especially made for my Rascal]

As promised, I have posted some photos of the goodies we bought at the Wemake Craft Fair:

Here is the colouring pencil holder we brought from Florence. Isn't is lovely.


Here, my Rascal is using the colouring pencils to draw pictures inside the Christmas cards for her friends.

A card Sculpture bought from Cool4Cats. The are a huge King Kong climbing up a tower sculpture at the show, my Rascal absolutely loves it.

A pretty crocheted flower hair band.

I have two more days of work then I break up for Christmas, yay! Anyway, have a great week everyone.

One of my Favourite Places: Greenwich

Did everyone have a nice weekend? I spent Saturday shopping and eating dim sum with my parents followed by Chinese Steam boat at friends in the evening. On Sunday I met up with Kyoko at Greenwich and then spent some time relaxing at her place. My daughter was a bit scared of Kumo and Wata (Kyoko's cats) at first, but she liked them afterwards.


Talking about Greenwich, this is one of my favourite places. I use to go to Chinese School on Sundays where I met Gracie and Big Viv. I got my first job there as a group leader at a summer camp for children. I actually got paid to go ice skating, swimming and on day trips with children, how cool was that.
Greenwich University (Trinity College of Music) Greenwich Park in the background.

Jax and I use to go on dates around Greenwich and we take our Rascal with us now (she loves cycling there). For some reason we like to go through the under river footpath.

Greenwich is also a lovely place to knit for all seasons. In the summer, I like to knit in the park and in the winter I like to knit in one of the cafes (drinking a soy decaf latte).

Not forgetting the lovely Greenwich market that sell lovely handmade goodies. Hee Hee Hee, I sound like a tour guide (I did get an A* in Travel and Tourism GCSE). I haven't forgotten to blog about what we bought at the craft fair, I just need to take some photos in day light. :) Have a lovely week everyone.

Wemake Craft Fair and I made a Purse

Most of the Jubilee Line was working this weekend and it made our trip to the Wemake Craft Fair, at Chelsea Town Hall, so much easier. Gracie and I decided not to sell any cakes this year, due to personal reasons, so I took my Rascal there to do some shopping instead. The hall is so grand, people must have thought we were a bit strange; I couldn't help taking a photos of the ceiling and my daughter decided to take photos of people's shoes (yes, she did the same thing last year).


We stopped by at Jo, Helen and Florence's stand first and they kindly let us put our bulky coats behind the stand. We also met Lisa there too. Before going to the fair, I've been chatting non-stop to my daughter about them. How they all make lovely accessories for children and the home. So she was a little shy when she met them.


The Make Lounge had a Christmas Decoration workshop on the stage, so my daughter (with some help from moi) made a star out of felt and buttons.

We had such a good day and we bought a few things there this time. My daughter has taken her goodies to show my Inlaws so I will blog about this later with some photos (one of them I will need to make). I was so inspired by what I saw, that I felt a bit bad for taking so long to make the purse that I was working on for a good few weeks now. But, I had some sewing time this afternoon and finished it off and here it is:

Pattern: Kyoko's Cotton and Cloud Round Cosmetic Purse

A Cowl

Hello, I'm back in Blogland. I've been very busy lately. I've finished knitting two Christmas presents, yay! I still need to make one more and then complement them with other gifts. I've also met up with a childhood friend from Australia, could you believe that we have not seen each other in person for 23 years. So there was a lot to catch up on.

As the weather has turned colder, I bought out the scarflette that I made when I started to knit again, which is just under two years ago. The button was getting a bit fiddley, so I turned it into a cowl the other day. It is so much easier to put on now, I just throw it over my head and it is still nice and warm.

Here is how I wear it:

Worn wrap around twice

Worn over the shoulders.

Wrapped around

Just thrown around the head.

I've only got 2 more weeks to the end of my ballroom class and it has been great. There will be an improver's class next year in January for 12 weeks. I'm not sure whether I should attend. What do you think?

London Bridge and the Paso Doble

Did everyone have a fun Halloween? Have a look here to see what we got up to.

Anyway, a few weeks ago my husband twisted his foot and damaging some ligaments while getting out of bed. The poor guy was in a lot of pain, but I couldn't help laughing. I'm such a bad wife. Hee Hee Hee.....I did make it up by driving him to hospital and pushing him around in a wheelchair. He was on crutches for a week and half, but he can walk (very slowly) now.

Last week hubs wanted to rest and some peace and quiet so I took our Rascal on a bus trip to London Bridge. It may appear to be place for business people and tourist, but there are many things for children to do there. We went to the the Fashion and Textile Museum first which is the bright pink and orange building along Bermondsey Street. There we saw the Foael and Tuffin made in England exhibition.

Don't you love the swinging 60s. I recognised a few clothes that were similar to what my Mum use to wear. We also so some cool fabrics, knitting accessories and sketch books:

They also have knitting workshops there too, but they are quite expensive.

We then popped over to More London, Hayes Galleria (see photo below) and the Unicorn Theatre, which is a theatre specifically for children. The model of the unicorn by the entrance is amazing. We didn't buy any tickets to see a show, but will definitely do so one day as it is so close to where we live.

A short update from my ballroom dance class: we learnt the basic steps of the Paso Doble. It is such and dramatic dance and a bit embarrassing to do.....Hee Hee Hee......but I think my dance partner and I made a good first attempt.

and no, he didn't drag me across the floor like John Sergent......so funny....photo from Strictly Come Dancing

I don't believe that we have covered the basic steps of the five ballroom dances; Slow Waltz, Foxtrot, Quick Step Viennese Waltz, Tango and the five Latin dances; Cha Cha Cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive and Paso Doble. We have a break from dancing next week and then we will be adding more footwork/steps to the dances.....I can't wait!

Wishing I could sew and tango.....

While at the Knitting and Stitching show I saw a so many people at the Sewing Today stand. So I went to look for myself. There were so many sewing patterns selling for £5 for 4. I bought some dress patterns because they looked so pretty. The silly thing is that I did not know that the dress patterns come in different sizes. Two of the patterns where for the correct size A (6-8-10-12-14) and BB (8-10-12-14).

The other two were totally the wrong size FF (16-18-20-22) and EE (14-16-18-20). Since I'm just going to just look at the covers and photos (I can't sew clothes) I guess it doesn't matter too much.

On the knitting side I've started knitting some Christmas presents, so I can't put the photos on the blog yet, well not until after Christmas.

On the dancing side, well we learnt the Tango and the Jive this week. I love the Tango, its so dramatic and yet graceful. I like the fact that you don't have to look at your partner, it's less embarrassing. The Jive is so bouncy, not my favourite dance, but a good workout. Next time we do the Jive, I'll make sure to wear trainers and not my high heels. All good fun.

Inspiration at Ally Pally

On Saturday Kyoko and I had a great time at the Knitting and Stitching Show last year so we decided that we were going to do exactly the same thing as last year. So we packed our lunch and headed off to Alexander Palace at the same time as last year. Hee Hee Hee! Yes, we, well me actually, are like knitting babies as we take comfort in routine. The only thing we did differently was to head straight to the Jamieson stand to drop off some of Kyoko's knitting purse pattern. They are great and selling really fast, check it out here.

Then we walked around in the same order as last year to ensure that we get to see everything. There were so many things to see this year and we met familiar faces as well. We popped over to the Loop stand to say 'hello' to Susan and Claire. They had some gorgeous baby knitting patterns there. Here are some photos I took on the day (yep, I remembered to bring my camera this time):

The knitted mast by the entrance, isn't it amazing.

Catch of the day

I fell in love with this cowl.

I didn't know you could do that with fabric.

I also bought some clothes patterns, I will blog about this later, the days are getting shorter so there is less time to take photos in natural day light. Once the photos are done, then I'll blog about it.

Oh well, until next year Ally Pally......

Knitting and Cha Cha Cha-ing

Thank you for all your advice on adding stitches to create the sleeve on the cardigan. In the end, I read the instructions a few more times and silly me, I forgot to look at the diagram they had on the other page. After looking at the diagram, it clicked. All I had to do was cast on extra stitches using the two needle method (I think), fingers cross it will be ok.

Now, what is with this Cha Cha Cha-ing. Well, I've recently (actually three weeks ago) started a 12 week Beginner's Ballroom Dancing course at Pineapple Studios. I'm going by myself as my Hubs wants to wait until he's fit enough, so he has agreed that he will not complain if I dance with another guy. Luckily there were a quite a few single guys there, so I teamed up with my dance partner called Mike. The class is very fun and very basic really, we are only learning the steps so we won't be dancing like this yet:

[Photo from Strictly Come Dancing]

I've also start Salsa as well so it's a good thing Pineapple Studios and Dancia International are all located in Covent Garden. Here are the latin dance shoes I bought from Dancia (mind my ugly feet).

Better get back to the knitting.

Adidas 5K Run

Hello! I'm still here, it's been a bit chaotic at home during the school holidays (hence lack of blog posts during this summer), but now my Rascal has gone back to school I get to have my evening back....hee hee hee.....I'm such a bad mum. I took a day off work this Monday to take her to school. She has been looking forward to going back to school throughout the summer holiday. Her new teacher is lovely and her friends were all hugging her.........so sweet. When I came to pick her up from school, she had so much to say, especially about making a windmill form cardboard boxes.

I watched day time TV that day, something I haven't done for a long time. They were talking about children's homework involving making thing out of felt, card boards, fabrics. One of the presenter said that they do not have any of those things at home, she would have to go to Tescos and buy some cornflakes pour it out of the box in order to get some cardboard. I was thinking, I have all those things at home because I like making things (i.e. I'm a big kid). My Rascal and I have is planning on making a jet out of a Dove body wash container, this is our project at the moment.

Back to the main point of the blog post. Kyoko, Gracie and I participated in Adidas 5k Run last Sunday. Kyoko ran for WWF, Gracie for Sparks and I ran for Great Ormand Street Hospital, all for a good cause. Kyoko was very good and completed the run in 26 minutes running all the way. I've been relying on my dance classes (will blog about this later) to keep me fit for the run, and I completed the run in 36 minutes.

I was very dopey that day because we left Gracie behind. Sorry darling, I still feel bad about it. What happened was that I thought Gracie had joined the race already so I thought she'd be at the front of the race. Kyoko and I were keeping an eye out for Gracie, then at the finish line I realised that the race was split into three groups. The group at the front of us were the professional/fast runners, we had got into the semi fast runners group and Gracie was actually behind us in the 35 minutes plus group. Arggggg......I think all is forgiven as she still texts me.

It was such a lovely race, the atmosphere was great, the weather was great, the runners were great and the crowds were great. It was such a great time, here are some photos of the day.

We finished the Run with Dim Sum. Yum....

Mimi

It's starting to get cooler here in London, although I've heard that is going to get warmer later on in the week.

As mentioned in my last blog post, here is the project that I'm currently working on.

The pattern was in Lets Knit magazine last year and I fell in love with this cropped jacket pattern, Mimi, from Begere de France. I meant to knit last winter so I can wear it in the summer but now I should hopefully be finised by next spring. I bought the yarn from Disswool where I found out that the Esterellle in Calpico has been discontinued so the lady helped me find altertive colour which I prefered more than the one in the original pattern.

I've only manged to knit part of the left front, I'm not too sure how to cast on extra stitches for the sleeve (the cardigan is knitted in one piece). Any tips will be wellcome. Hee Hee Hee. Yep, I'm kind of stuck. I also want to learn how sew up the side of the cropped jacket using the mattress stitch. Still so much to learn.

and the Winner is.....

On Friday I put the names of fellow bloggers into envelope and my colleague picked out Maria. Congratulations. I will e-mail you my e-mail address and we can arrange to get the book sent out to you. Here are the photos that I promised in my last blog post.


It is such a lovely book that I want to make everything and it is clear that Claire put a lot of time and effort in writing such lovely and practical children's knitting clothes patterns.

I also managed to take some photos of the prize that Kyoko and I won at the book launch:

The Debbie Bliss Eco Fair Trade Collection pattern book and 10 yarns in cream and here is the pattern that I have chosen.

I'm working on a knitting project at the moment and I will show you my WIP in my next blog post. So this will have to wait.

Hope you all have a lovely week and those of you in London, enjoy the good weather while it last.

Book Signing and Giveaway!!

Despite the torrential rain last night, Kyoko and I went to Claire Montgomerie book signing of her new book 'Easy Kids Knits' at Loop. When we arrive, we found the shop full of happy knitters each holding a book. I bought two signed copy, one for myself, and I would like to give the other signed book to a lucky (more about being lucky later) blogger. So to enter the giveaway just leave a message on this blog post and I will draw a name in on Friday 14 August 2009.

Thank Kyoko for the photo: Me with Claire (me with flat and frizzy hair after the getting drench despite having an umbrella)

It is such lovely book, just like the author Claire who spent hours knitting for the book for the past year. The knitting pattern age group goes from 3 to 10 so I have got some time to knit something for my daughter aged 5, as you probably know by now that I take months/even years to do anything. When we brought the book we both got a raffle ticket for the prize draw and then went to have dinner at Ottolenghi and planned to go back to Loop to look at some yarns afterwards.

Photo taken by Kyoko

The food was great and dessert was very yummy . We both had the Passion fruit Meringue Tart which is highly recommended! When we were finishing our dessert, we got a phone call from Sarah saying that we have both won the raffle prize! We were both shocked and very happy of course. There were only two prizes and imaging Kyoko and I both winning?! So we were both giggling like school girls and left Ottolenghi to collect our prize of 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Eco range and her Eco Knitting pattern book. How lucky. Thanks Sarah and Claire!!

I will post some photos of the signed book and all other stuff tonight, so keep posted.