London meet up

It's over a week since Jane and I returned from our London jaunt and I haven't told you what we got up to. Or what we purchased.  Lots of beautiful photos, some of which appear below, with Clare's permission, are on Clare's blog.

 

 

 

The purpose of the weekend was for us to meet up with most of the members of the FQR Bumbling Honeys bee. We felt very guilty as Moira had suggested the meet up and then we chose a date she couldn't make. Sorry Moira. Two of the ladies are also in Jane's new bee so it worked for both of us. The date chosen also coincided with the Knit & Stitch show.

 

Thick thick fog meant we didn't get away until Friday night instead of the Friday morning red eye to London City. Neither of us have travelled to London City airport before and the advertising claims it's 10 minutes from landing to the DLR station, and I think they're right.

 

 

Saturday morning we headed to Angel tube station and were very early so attempted a cache in the area and grabbed another dedicated to Norman Wisdom. Turns out lots of the ladies got to London earlier than the planned meet up of 11.30, so next time we'll start earlier. We met outside The Hummingbird Bakery in Islington and chatted. Some ladies I'd met before and recognised and others I didn't recognise, which is par for the course for me. As there were only two stools between a dozen of us in the bakery, we went next door to Jamies and waited for Jojo and chatted. I distributed gifts of Sue's Fudge (not made by me)

 

 

Then refreshed and watered we headed for Ray Stitch. We had chatted for so long that I had not realised the time and we stopped for all of 30 seconds before deciding to go and find lunch. Ottolenghis was full as expected so we had pizza opposite. And chatted more. Kate was telling us about how excluding irritants from her diet has improved her arthritis. I never knew so many foods would irritate arthritis including bananas. Fortunately the restaurant had gluten free options for Kate and Jackie which they said was as tasty as regular pasta.

 



 

 

Jane left us to go and have tea with her parents, which we had originally planned for Sunday, but fog put paid to our plans. Then we went back to ray Stitch for some shopping. Then it was onto Loop, where we left a few more ladies, then the handbag shop. By the time we got to sit down for popcorn ice cream sandwiches with salted caramel sauce we were down to five. We laid plans for a meet up at festival of Quilts as well as a retreat with the chance to try and make a Weekender bag. There was a lot of talking and my throat was getting sore. Teresa and I headed back to Kensington to stroll until she headed back to her train. It was great to meet up with liked minded people and put the world to rights.

 



 

Sunday was Knit & Stitch at Olympia. I had scanned the Friday workshop tickets to e-mail to Claire who attended the workshop, and I left the tickets on the scanner. They were in my bag when I first headed to the airport but I realised on Sunday morning I'd left them behind. Lizzie scanned and e-mailed the tickets to me and the organisers at Olympia were kind enough to reprint the tickets.

 

My purchases for the whole weekend weren't huge and neither was Knit & Stitch. Very disappointing and we only managed to stay for three hours. I bought some sock wool and needles from Loop, The lime and white Carolyn Freidlander fabrics and some poppers from Ray Stitch. The poppers are for a bag for a future workshop as are the lacy zippers. from the show I bought two magazine subscriptions and the fabrics on the right hand side from The Running Chicken.

 

We then headed to St Pancras for lunch, Kensington Hummingbird Bakery for a few goodies to take home and then to the airport. Since coming back I've been out of sorts and have developed a horrid cough. My long arm has been fixed today, so I hope to be back to normal by the weekend.

 

Please come back on Thursday for a Superior Threads giveaway.