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.