So many pictures

We've done a few fun things here in the past week, but let's look at two days in particular.

Last Thursday I went to London to see the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, or as we in the know call it, Ally Pally.

Pic taken from the bus as we left

I met up with a friend I know through the Hot Docs festival. She is a quilter and I am a knitter, but there was more than enough for each of us. There were several displays of finished work. Quilts, huge felted pieces, sewing class output, art installations.

And of course tons of stuff to buy, including things I can't use, like this fibre for spinning. I didn't take many pictures of the things I was interested in buying, because I was too busy fondling and sniffing.

I ended up with a small amount of wool, all tiny skeins of brown sock yarn, which I think will become a scarf. It's often hard to find excellent browns, so just lookit this!

I'm very happy about this, but have a few things to finish first, before I tackle it. Also, I have no ball-winder or swift here and will have to wind it by hand! I do have good yarn-holding chairs, though, so no real hardship.

After a few hours of this, we were wiped out, but it was not yet time to head for home, so we went to the heart of London, the Anthropologie store on the King's Road, to see an exhibit of Kaffe Fassett's work. The amazing thing about this is that one could purchase most of these things!

One could, if one had a lot of money.

I think the little hats were about £200.

So great. I wish I had seen such a show of his from maybe 30 or 35 years ago, when he used 18 reddish yarns to make a red square. But I guess when one is 80, simplifying is allowed.

Plan A at this point had been for me to hop a train back to Cambridge. Stephen and I had planned to see some sights on Saturday, so it would be back on the train again. But, a friend of mine here had an Airbnb that she had booked, couldn't use, and couldn't get a refund for! So I took that, stayed over Thursday night, and Stephen came down on Friday instead of Saturday. I'm loving the child-free, sorta-retired sabbatical lifestyle.

This was the ho-hum view from the room:

Way over to the left is Regent's Park, so I walked over there in the morning with my Waitrose bun and takeaway coffee, in the rain.

Lovely fall foliage.

I recognized this immediately from the show W1A. It's the BBC building, now complete with Extinction Rebellion protestors and some police. This was maybe 9 am, very quiet. 

I continued down Regent Street, past some pretty snazzy clothing stores and some pretty fancy-pants offices. They are getting their Christmas lights this week! 

Meanwhile, Stephen was on his way on the train from Cambridge. We met up in Trafalgar Square... with a crowd of more Extinction Rebellion folk, who had set up camp there. Really, I should read the news more... 

We continued on our touristy way. You may not recognize this landmark -- Big Ben, covered in very high tech scaffolding. 

No protestors at present at the Parliament Buildings, but I'm sure they were just taking a wee break. 

We walked across a bridge. I'm knitting with a lot of grey right now and think I must knit with a lot more. Look at all these lines!

And now I must leave you. We have made it to the first of our two galleries, and I could easily show you dozens more pictures, but perhaps we'll leave that for another day. 

The staircase down from the front hall of the Tate Britain.