Stitching and Knitting Show

Good evening, sorry it's been a while, it has been a very busy week!

We have been looking at secondary schools this past few weeks and it has taken up a huge amount of time. The last school open evening is on Thursday and if I am totally honest, I'm rather glad. We can get back to some sense of normality in the evenings. It's lovely looking around the schools but these evenings turn into rather dragged out affairs which involve getting home late with hungry hyper kids who then need to be calmed down enough for them to finally get to bed. School open evenings also mean very little evening crocheting time for me!

I had a lovely day out on Friday with my good friend Julia at the Stitching and Knitting show at Alexandra Palace.

We caught the train up to London and the tube to Wood Green station. We then caught the courtesy coach up the hill (along with hundreds of other women) to the grand Alexandra Palace.

I imagine in its hay day Alexandra Palace was very grand. It still had a very grand hall and beautiful stained glass windows.

The show was well worth a visit. We spent the morning browsing around the main hall, which was the main shopping arena for the show. I managed a few purchases, well quite a few actually. I invested in some gorgeous Debbie Bliss yarn for my next crochet project (not sure what that is yet!), bought some yarn for Daisy for her next little crochet adventure (she is going great guns on her granny square blanket). I also bought some fabric and some felt for some Christmas projects I have planned (these are top secret as they will form part of my advent swap).

I did feel a bit like a kid in a sweet shop, there was lots of lovely fabric and yarn to choose from. The show was fairly diverse and covered all sorts of crafts. Lots of stalls for quilting, jewellery making, beading. I managed to buy some decopatch paper which is almost impossible to come by unless you order online. I bought some MDF letters a while ago, planning to decopatch them but have not found anywhere locally that sells the pretty patterned tissue paper. I'm not keen ordering on-line as I like to see it in the flesh so to speak. We have made a start on decopatching our letters. Alex is doing a union jack/London inspired letter A, Daisy has chosen three different patterned tissue to decorate her letter D and I was left with the letter M (our surname initial) to decopatch in a swirly gold tissue. I will post a picture when they are finished.

Apart from shopping at the Show there was also some great exhibits. After our lovely lunch of tasty pumpkin and sweet potato soup and a sandwich, we headed to look around the exhibits. I only had my Iphone with me but did manage a few pics.

I loved this embroidered piece, lets just say that a lot of the ladies at the show where over a certain age!




A lot of the exhibitors would not allow their work photographed. However, the creator of these mini master pieces didn't seem to mind photographs being taken. There were about 8 miniature hats all mad from fabric but made to look like mini gastronomic feasts.



A summer pudding!




Summer berries on a fabric meringue nest.

A satin prawn made from ribbons sat on a bed of swirly salad leaves.

We left the show at 3pm and decided to whizz over to Liberty's for a mooch around and a much needed cup of tea and cake (or course).

Liberty's was as gorgeous as ever. We headed straight up to the fabrics and oohed and aahed over the gorgeous racks. We both fell in love with some Liberty print silks, only £35 per meter! I did manage a half a metre of some Christmas print fabrics which I plan to turn into some Christmas bunting very soon.

We headed into the little tea room styled cafe it was sort of retro with a modern twist if that makes any sense. We ordered two pots of tea and a couple of slices of cake. The tea was real loose leaf tea and tasted wonderful and the cake, mine was a ginger loaf slice, Julia's a lemon loaf was equally gorgeous. We made sure we drank every last drop of the tea. It was pricey but much needed after our busy day. We finally headed home on the train very tired but happy after our lovely day out.

Saturday was also manic as we had the school ball in the evening to look forward to. As ever I was very unprepared and left it until Saturday afternoon to go looking for some new makeup and a wrap/shawl type affair to go with my dress. Luckily I found the perfect wrap (well its a scarf actually) in White Stuff and then had my makeup selected by two very camp but very knowing guys in Space NK. They knew exactly what colour lippy would go with my dark purple dress and managed to sell me a co-ordinating mascara and eye shadows. I left the shop with my little bag of goodies and my purse much lighter.

The ball was a great success, I think a good time was had by all. I consumed a fair amount of wine but didn't get outrageously drunk and felt fairly good the next day. Mr P and I had a lovely long lie-in the next morning (the little ones were shipped off to the in-laws overnight) and enjoyed a gorgeous fry up which is just the job after a fairly heavy night out! I fear some of my friends didn't get off so lightly. One lady turned up at school this morning with her shoulder all strapped up, she has a dislodged shoulder joint! She managed to fall out of the of the minibus when she was being dropped off!

I am helping on a school trip on Friday with Daisy's class. We are off to Hampton Court, which should be great. I haven't been for years.

Off to knitting and crochet group tomorrow which is always a really pleasant evening.

Well I will love you and leave you, still feeling whacked from the weekend. I feel the need to do a couple of rows of ripple before I turn out the lights.

Till next time.

Alison xx