Day 9 in England

Saturday, the 23rd of October, 2010

We started the day with breakfast at our hotel, the Copthorne Tara International.  Then we went back to Harrod's for "a couple of things" that we wished we'd gotten the day before.  (Ha!  But 'C' & i knew *exactly* where we were going.  The fellas had to pay attention and hurry to keep up with us!)

It was a Saturday, *and* a sunny day, so the streets were crowded, as was Harrod's.
After our quick stop into Harrod's, we caught the bus to go to "the market at Portabello".  The very first thing i saw was... 

Nope.  I didn't see Allsaints Spitalfields first.  I saw:

Boyfriend &  me in front of AllSaints

ALL THOSE SEWING MACHINES!
But that wasn't all...
There were MORE!

The sewing machines were lining EVERY WALL!  I was A-mazed!!
I was too busy walking around with my mouth hanging open, and then i noticed it was actually a clothing store... with GORGEOUS clothes in it!  Anyway, i was too busy/distracted to even think about stopping an employee to ask why all the sewing machines were there.  Sorry.  I could make up some story for you about how this used to be the garment-making district, and all those machines were used in this building by poor, underpaid women and children...  Whatever!  You make up your own story.  Or, better, go Google that shit and come back and tell me!  =-)

I'm telling you, they were everywhere!

It was a corner building, and the sewing machines were in ALL the windows.

Then Boyfriend stopped and started taking a bunch of pictures.
I think he was putting off actually *walking into* this crowd.  (He's a bit afraid of being in crowds.  Shh! Don't tell anybody. 'Cause he's a manly-man, you know.  He won't admit to many people that he has a problem with being "crowded in".  He feels like it isn't safe, and if he needs an escape route, he won't be able to find one and keep me with him and everything.  Shh.)

Folks out enjoying the gorgeous weather at Market.

We walked through the market (and Boyfriend did good!), and saw all sorts of neat things.  It was a beautiful day!  And i think everybody and his aunts and uncles were out that day!  There were people *everywhere*!
After walking through the Market, we caught a bus back to the Picadilly area, and we walked around there a bit.

See all the people on the sidewalk?!

That's what happens in London on a beautiful Saturday.

Me & Boyfriend in front of the Eros fountain at Picadilly.

Next we walked to Old Bond Street, on the back-side of Harrods.
Oh my goodness.
You know, i'm not much for designer *anything*, but this street?
Top-of-the-line Designer Alley.
I had Boyfriend take all these pictures for my little sister, who *does* know a thing or two about fashion and designer stuff.

 

All the street signs are on the buildings closest to the street corners.

There was Tiffany, Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabana, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Mikimoto, Cartier, Chanel, DKNY, Rolex, MaxMara, Yves Sant Laurent, Mont Blanc, and... a bunch of stuff i've never heard of, but i'll bet my little sister prolly has!  =-)
And the cars that were parked there!  We saw Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Porsche, Bentley and Rolls Royce, along with lots of others...
I'll only bore you with 2 pix from there.  These are for you, Z!  

Yes, that's Prada, but also notice the car.

Dolce & Gabbana

After a full day of walking around, we caught the Tube back to "our" neighborhood to go to TK Maxx to do a bit of shopping.
Yes, i spelled that right. 
*We* call it TJ Maxx, but in England it's called TK Maxx. 
Then we walked "home", had some wine, and decided to catch a taxi to go to "W" & "C"'s favorite spot:

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,

rebuilt in 1667 after the big fire.

Yes, it's older than  three hundred years old!

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is a neat place.  It's old and built and re-built and most of the floors are on different levels.  There's not really a 1st floor and a 2nd floor 'cause they're really all over the place! 

Inside Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Me & "C" feelin' good after a pint but before supper.

(Can you say "Cheap date"?  Yep, that's me.)   =-)

The night was as beautiful as the day, and we walked along the Thames River for a bit of photography before we made our way back to the hotel.

London and the Thames River

The Green Line of the Tube.

You can tell it's the Green Line because the poles you hold onto and the seats are Green.

Clever, huh?

I'll try not to put this off for almost a month again before my next update.

Yes, there's more.
This was the longest vacation i've ever been on, and it was THE BEST!  I'd go back again in a SKINNY MINUTE!  I loved this even better than Hawaii, even though this was so cold.
LOVED!!!

=-)

I Swear It!

I'm NOT ignoring you, i *swear* it!
I'm visiting so many blogs every day, and lovin' 'em, but i just have no "gusto" for my own.  I know you're just dying to hear about the rest of my England trip.  And i promise i'll get on with it soon!

On the quilting front, i've been working (slowly) on the hand quilting for my daughter's baby quilt (And NO, she's NOT pregnant! She just *really* plans ahead!). I'm liking the pace of the hand quilting, and it's looking alright too, so, win-win i guess.
I'm also slowly working on a ROY G BIV type of quilt.  I don't like to take pix 'til i'm done, so i guess you'll just have to keep scratching your head over that one... especially since i really haven't figured out what i'm doing yet!  =-)

I've finished all the embroidery for the Bunny Hill thing i've been working on, but now i'm stuck! I really want to put the blocks together with batik sashing, but i don't know which colors, and i need to figure out how much fabric, etc.  So i guess i'm not finishing that one any time soon. HA!

And remember this quilt?  Well, that Mommy is having another baby, so i went out yesterday and bought fabric (a Layer Cake) for her new one.  She's around 24 weeks pregnant, so that gives me a bit of time.  I had Bunny lay out the squares for me yesterday, but we'll need to work on design a bit more before i'm ready to start sewing.

All that and i've been working out almost every day since just after Thanksgiving!  I've been doing Yoga for a year now, and after T'giving i tried Zumba and
i am hooked!!!
I absolutely LOVE it!!!  It's kinda like my Crack now! I come out of class practically high!  I'm even talking to people now, and that's really unusual for me!
LOVE ZUMBA!!!

Okay, i could go on  more, but i'll not be the cause of eye-rolling today.
(Or maybe i already am.  I dunno.)

I hope YOU are doing well!

=-)

Day Eight of our England Trip

This was on Friday, October 22nd, 2010.
We ate breakfast at our hotel and then rode a bus to Harrod's department store.

OH MY GOODNESS!!!
Talk about a HUGE store!
It was SEVEN FLOORS of STUFF!!!

Harrod's

What kind of STUFF, you ask?!

Well, let me tell you!

A list of the restaurants & cafes in Harrod's

Why, yes, that IS a listing of SEVEN STORIES!

The first floor, or as the Brits call it, the Ground Floor, had things like lingerie, purses, make-up and such.  One of the first things i really saw was this outfit:

 Beautiful lingerie

I saw this piece and fell in love with all the beautiful lace.

Then i went up to it for a closer inspection.

It had a zipper at the neck on the back.  I felt the crotch area for snaps...

Nope.

That means that if you wriggle yourself into this beauty, you'd better not need to go pee because then you'll just have to get almost totally undressed again!

I asked the sales lady about it...

She said, "It doesn't really matter.  We're sold out of that.  Even the one on the model is sold.  Oh, and it's one thousand five hundred pounds."

That was about 2 thousand 3hundred 50 U.S. dollars!!!

...hm.

Oh well.  I didn't want it anyway. 

It's so beautiful, if i wore it i wouldn't want to put anything on over it so everybody could admire its beauty.

And WHERE ON EARTH would i be able to wear something like THAT?!?!

Well... Technically, i do have one or two places where i could wear it, but... Seriously?  We'd have to win the big-time Lottery for me to be able to afford something like that!

There was another mannekin that had some really cute, girly tights on it, but i didn't even bother to ask how much they were.  Besides, they're TOO girly for me.

 Cute "girly" tights on a mannekin



So, we went to lots of other departments.  No need gettin' all depressed about how expensive the cute things were, right?

Boyfriend & me in front of a Xmas display

Keep in mind that England doesn't have Thanksgiving to "get in the way" of Xmas, so they already had all their Xmas stuff out everywhere.

And we think *our* stores start early...

=-)

The Wonderland Cafe' on Harrod's Fourth Floor

(which would be *our* 5th floor)

I want to explain the "floors" thing:

In England, what we call the first floor, they call their "ground floor",

and what we call our second floor, they call their "first floor",

and so on and etcetera.

Don't ask me why.  I never asked anybody, so i don't really know.  I *could* start "supposing" for you, but that would just be my guess, and that's not good.  So if you're curious, maybe you could "Wikipedia that".   Or "Google that".  Or maybe you have a handsome British bloke in your abode (cough*Snooze*cough) who could answer that mystery for you and you could comment in my comments section and we'd all know.  =-)

Anyway, that's that about the floors!

So.

We spent almost FOUR HOURS in Harrod's, admiring all the beautiful things, and we didn't even see HALF the store!

I loved the shoe department (that went on forever), and i'm not really a "shoe person", so you can imagine how truly wonderful that was.

And let me tell you about the Confectioner's Department!

Oh. my. god!!

There were such beautiful sweets!

They had all sorts of chocolates; bon bons, truffles, dark chocolates, milk chocolates, you name it and they had it.  They had marzipans, hard candies, soft candies, rock candies in all colors, and candies that i've never seen before.  It was all SO BEAUTIFUL!  And it was the BUSIEST section in the entire store!!!  There were customers all over the place!  It was kinda difficult to walk around and drool over anything, there were so many people.

You would have loved it though.

Or maybe that was just me.

After almost four hours of wandering around in Harrod's, oohing and aahing over so many things, we finally bought a few souvenirs and left.  (Very few, and i apologize in advance to my family!)

We walked around the block to a pub for lunch.

Next we caught a bus to Neal Street for some "real" shopping.  We asked a couple of "locals" where was a good place to shop and they recommended Neal Street.  It's a really cool pedestrian only section of blocks, with shop after shop after shop.  "C" and I each bought a pair of boots.  I wanted to go clothes shopping, but i felt like i'd tested the guys' patience enough.  =-)

Neal Street for Shopping

After "torturing" the guys, we caught the Tube to Tower Hill for the "Jack the Ripper Tour".

The Moon was just cresting over the Roman Wall

outside the Tower Hill Tube station

where we went for the Jack the Ripper Tour.

Kind of... poetic.  =-)

The Tower of London

across from the Tower Hill Tube station

By the time we were done with the Jack the Ripper tour, our feet hurt & we were getting tired, so we caught the Tube back to our hotel.  We ate supper at the hotel since the pub we'd planned on eating at was FULL (it being Friday night and all)!

It was overcast for most of the day, but

overall, it was a very good day!

A Very Good Day!

=-)

Day Seven (England Continued)

I promise we'll eventually get through the telling of this tale! 
We were gone 13 days, and i'm on Day 7 (technically Day 8 but i didn't think you wanted to hear about the "real" Day 1 since it was allllll about traveling...)
Anyway!

The day began with breakfast at our hotel. Have i mentioned that we loved our hotel?  It was great!
Anyway, next we took the Tube to go see The Tower of London, but just outside the Tube Station there is a wall that the Romans built waaay back in the day:

Roman Wall outside the Tube Station

which is just down from

The Tower of London.

The history here is AMAZING!

This wall is somewhere around 3000 years old!

Next we walked the short distance to The Tower of London and took a tour.  The Tower of London is where many people were be-headed back in the day.  The tour was led by a Yeoman Warder, better known as a "Beefeater" (though no one really knows why they're called that!  There are plenty of tales about it, but nobody knows the REAL truth behind it.).  Our Yeoman Warder was humorous and cute:

Our Yeoman Warder ("Beefeater") Chris,

though he said if you didn't like the tour, then his name is 'Bob'.

The Yeoman Warders and their families live at The Tower of London. 

There was more than one "tower" there,

 and this is one of them.

I guess technically it should be called

The Towers of London...

But it's not.

And nobody wanted to change it on MY say-so...

The Bloody Tower, where people convicted to die (by be-headings mostly) walked through on the way to their deaths.

Just outside The Tower of London.

This was the fortress wall around it.

One of the Yeoman Warders' jobs is to guard the Jewel House.

This is where the Queen's crowns and jewels and other valuables are kept.

The Queen says she leaves them there so "the people" can see them whenever they want.  (hmmm...)

There are so many Crowns in there!

Also the Queen's (King's) Coronation Robe (which weighs

20 pounds!) is guarded there.

Check it out on Wikipedia.  This place is fascinating!

Outside The Tower of London

We went in by a different way, but we exited through here.

Yes, we had to pay to get in.

The Tower Bridge

(spanning the River Thames [pronounced 'tims'])

The fortress wall surrounding the Tower of London (on the left)

and the Tower Bridge (on the right).

Boyfriend and i on the Tower Bridge.

It was chilly and we were getting hungry.

Well, *i* was anyway.  Boyfriend kept hanging around

snapping pix of everything!

(Thanks Honey, really!)

The Tower Bridge

Next we stopped for lunch.  Finally!  =-)
We  ate at a place at the end of the bridge called, oddly enough, Tower House.  I got the Shepherd's Pie (made with lamb).  YUM!!

Shepherd's Pie

After lunch, we caught the bus and  went to the Tate Modern.
That's what everybody calls it, but it's short for 
The Tate Modern Museum of Art.
Love!

Jackson Pollack

Salvador Dali

(We couldn't get a shot "straight on" because there was this little girl,

about 9 years old, perched on the floor in front of it with her sketchbook, copying the egg.  We didn't dare disturb her!)  =-)

Andy Warhol hanging on

an Andy Warhol wallpapered wall

Rodin

(It was MUCH bigger than the cheap imitation copy

that props my bedroom door open.)

I was kinda surprised that this modern museum

doesn't look modern at all from the outside, but rather like

an old industrial factory.

It's right on the Thames.

The picture is taken from the Millennium Bridge that crosses the river.

The Millennium Bridge from inside the Tate Modern.

Me and Boyfriend beside the Millennium Bridge

just before we got on to cross it.

I really like this bridge.

It's one of only two "pedestrian only" bridges

that cross the Thames in London.

After our long day of being on our feet all day, we had supper at a nice restaurant just a couple of blocks from our hotel.
It was good to sit, and really good to have a nice glass of wine.  =-)

Il Portico.

Italian restaurant not far from the Kensingon/High St Tube Station.

VERY good food and servers!

As a "reward" for all the walking we did, we treated ourselves to dessert.

A lava cake with "molten" chocolate inside, and ice cream on the side.

Yummy!

W & C had Creme Brulee

De-lish!

We had "one more" drink at our hotel bar before we mozied upstairs for bed...   Zzzzzzz...

Another wonderful day!

=-)

I Finally Finished Another Quilt!

Like most of the East coast, we had snow on Xmas day!

It's still here, mostly...

and it's still beautiful.

But i don't know how much longer it will continue to be beautiful

for me.  =-)

I made this water lily the same way i made the sunflower on Bunny's quilt, but with more "rows" of petals.

I really like how it turned out.

Each petal is a separate piece of fabric, folded and folded and ironed and sewn down on a base.  The "fronds" in the middle are random length embroidery threads with a randomly placed knot on each one.

Embroidery threads on the lily pads

I really love how the water lily turned out! 

I've been working on this wall hanging "off and on" for quite awhile now (but mostly "off").  It spent a lot of time "just sitting" on my quilting chair.  I had to think about it a lot!  I also had to go out to the quilting store a number of times to purchase stuff for this one.

The different blues came from a fat quarter pack (or 2) from Moda (purchased online).
The green lily pads and the orange fish were made from batiks (purchased from a vendor at a local quilt show).
The pink & yellow were from my stash.
The grey binding was purchased at Hobby Lobby.
The shocking-orange backing was purchased at Hancock Fabrics.  (I didn't have Bunny take pix of the back 'cause it's just a "plain" orange back.  Nothin' fancy.  Just plain.)  =-) 

This quilt just popped into my head one day.  And oddly enough, i automatically knew how i wanted it quilted too, which is totally unusual for me!  The actual quilting is typically the last thing i think about!

I still have to make a sleeve for the back so i can hang it up...

This quilt is 42" x 42".  I had intended for it to be rectangular.  I thought it was a rectangle, but i guess the two "scalloped" ends cause me to merely think it's rectangular.

I embroidered the lines on the lilypads with number 8 variegated green embroidery thread.  I've been looking at Laura Wasilowski's blog and lovin' it!  Thanks for the "embroidery on quilts" inspiration, Laura! =-)

I love this quilt, and i'm actually keeping it for myself!  =-)
That's a first.  I'm going to hang it in my dining room (if i can convince Kitty to let me take her picture down) where i can look at it every day.  I'm tellin' ya, this is gonna be a first! 

I hope you like it as much as i do. 

=-)

I don't usually say this, but...

Merry Christmas!!!

Retro picture:

our first Xmas tree as a married couple

in 1983

I hope all of you are having a WONDERFUL Christmas!!!
May you have all the family and friends (and food) you need!
=-)