D-Day

Saturday was the 65th anniversary of D-Day, so a few of us celebrated by going to the Blitz Party. I’ve mentioned going there once before, but that was back in March, when we were experiencing a cold snap, and I mean cold. We ended up chickening out and getting a taxi home, which I never do.

Now that it’s June, the weather was a lot better, although a little colder than it has been – perfect for wearing those seamed nylons and not overheating. The venue has also changed again – now it’s much much closer to Old Street and easier to find. It was absolutely rammed inside, I kind of wish they’d sold fewer tickets so there was a bit more room for dancing. The cocktails were excellent – one of my favourites being “The Blitz” which is made with vodka, elderflower cordial, lemon zest and champagne.

Everyone was dressed beautifully with the men in uniform or suits, with plenty of pencil moustaches in evidence as well! The women all had the most amazing hair and beautiful dresses.

I have a photo of me before we left home:

Putting the outfit together was fun – I bought the hat first from JBPackrat on Etsy (no link as it’s down for maintenance, but go there – very affordable vintage accessories!). Here’s a better picture of it:

One of my hatpins was handmade by the wonderful Sarah W, and I bought one from Radio Days Vintage on Lower Marsh.

The dress is from The Observatory in Greenwich, which has far more sensible prices than any of the central London vintage shops.

Recycled polyester slip from M&S – I’ve been really strict on the whole shopping ethically thing this year, so when I went to M&S and they only had polyester slips I didn’t really want to buy one. They had some slinky poly that felt ok though. So then I went on the web and found out the slinky feeling stuff was actually recycled polyester, and no new petroleum products had gone into its manufacture. That ticked enough boxes for me to buy it – but I wonder why there’s no garment label saying it’s recycled?

Seamed holdups from House of Fraser, and finally the shoes:

are Clarks, but purchased at the British Heart Foundation shop in Camden.

Reunion

Well, last weekend was a busy one, with lots of visitors! Carmen was visiting from Switzerland, and Dan and his girlfriend Jovi were down from Warrington and Liverpool respectively. On Sunday we went to Kew Gardens. Here are some pictures from our outing:

Dan and Jovi

Carmen (who I hadn’t seen for five years! But it didn’t feel like that long)

Steampunk tree roots under the treetop walkway

Treetop walkway

Hibiscus in the Palm House

Afterwards we met up with a whole bunch of other UCanDance or engineering people who also just happened to be in town (apart from the three or four of us who actually live here) at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Soho.

Many more pictures up on Flickr, click on the link in the sidebar to have a look.

But lastly, time for a caption contest! I have no idea what I was talking about in this picture:

So I’ll let you tell me. Nothing too rude please, my parents read this!

Spooky scary

Jen, Meg and I took advantage of some lovely weather to take a walk through Brompton Cemetery the other day. We had to share the place with a great many Chelsea fans returning from a game but despite that it was still peaceful. I had had the foresight to pack my camera and had some fun experimenting. Cemeteries, being rather monochromatic, spooky places, lend themselves quite well to black and white:

(this is an example of “breaking the rules”, but I for one happen to like taking photos into the sun)

Despite the grey there were also wonderful flashes of colour, bathed in the spring afternoon light.

Fun fact about Brompton Cemetery that you will already know if you read the Wikipedia article linked above: Beatrix Potter got many of her character names from headstones in the cemetery. I didn’t learn this from Wikipedia but from watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow the other day!

Sprung

Spring is such a literal word, conjuring up images of long-dormant bulbs miraculously coming back to life and bursting through the soil, or or lambs cavorting in a meadow.

London is waking up. The sun is shining its joyous rays down upon us, and the earth is stirring.

It’s lovely to be able to take photos in natural light again!

Guerilla knitting

Well, I was nearly on Richard and Judy last week. They put out a call for ten knitters, and they were even going to pay us! Getting paid to knit would be like a dream come true, getting paid to knit on the telly? Even better!

And then it turned out they were looking for granny types, not hip young things like us (we’re the epitome of cool, doncha know? Top Shop magazine turned up at Stitch and Bitch this week, we’ve obviously made it).

So anyway, that was a bit disappointing. But then on Friday there was another call put out, for guerilla knitter-types to join Magda from Knitta on a wee jaunt around London to prettify (and subversify) our lovely city. And then it turned out that Magda had been flown over here by none other than Richard and Judy! Apparently they had managed to find three granny knitters, although why they wanted grannies for a piece about guerilla knitting is still a mystery…

Out came the tension swatches, the failed scarves, the acrylic blobs, and squares hastily knitted for the occasion. Then down the South Bank we trooped!

A railing near the skate park under the Royal Festival Hall was the first thing to receive our warm fuzzies:

while Magda gave a bike lock her special attention:

Later, a signpost got the treatment:

Sadly at this point I had to leave, but if you wander around the Millennium Bridge and St Paul’s you may see some other works of art!

It was neat watching people’s reactions to our work, and watching the tourists pose for photos after we were done!

Strangely, on the same day, on the other side of the world, a similar thing was happening… So wherever you are, don’t be surprised if you see a little bit of knitted love on your nearest tree, street sign, or bollard.

Snow!

These pics are a bit late. I took them on Monday on my walk in Regent’s Park. It’s snowed again overnight but has only settled on the roof. It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow but I’m going out tomorrow night so I really hope the night buses are still running!

Blizzard!

This is what happens:

When it looks like this outside:

Yay!

Karmageddon

Well, a whole week has gone by and I still haven’t blogged about last weekend. You may recall me talking about reading the book “Join Me” by Danny Wallace a few weeks ago. Well, the biggest day in the Joinee calendar is “Karmageddon”. Basically it’s a big march through Central London where people give out free hugs and little goodies (mostly sweets, but I had Christmas crackers!) to the stressed out shoppers. And then go to the pub!

Here are Jixie and Anna showing us how it’s done:

It was an awesomely fun day, and I even met the Leader himself (Danny, that is) who really is quite dashing in person:

Then I had to shoot off to Kalman’s surprise 30th, where much merriment was to be had, once the guest of honour finally arrived!

Remember, remember the 5th of November

So this is where the training wheels came off. I’m currently on Chapter 2 of the Canon 450 for Dummies book (yes, it is a real book and yes, I did buy it), which is about the automatic modes, so I hadn’t even read up on what button does what in manual. But turns out, if you fiddle around it’s easy enough to figure out.

I spent the fireworks display fiddling around with ISO, aperture and shutter settings to see what I liked best. I probably took about a hundred photos on continuous shooting mode, but here are a couple of my favourites:

Another Rangi reunion!

This time to meet up with Julia, who was passing through and who I haven’t seen for many years. Everyone’s always just the same though. Just… way more grown up!

From left to right, that’s Candice, Katherine, me, Helen and Julia.