Still life, imitating art

Here's a view of the Millenium Bridge in London, with St Paul's Cathedral in the background. The picture was taken from my favourite art gallery in London, the Tate Modern. The bridge is featured at the beginning of the Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince movie, which I watched on the flight to and from London.

The boys were very bored walking round, so decided a rest was in order on one of the benches. Here you have my very first art installation "Still life, imitating art", displayed for only 25 seconds on 27th December 2009. It was a rare and fine piece.

Then the security lady asked me to stop taking photographs!

Chasing the 'birds' already......

On our previous family trip to England, Teddy was only 4. He was fascinated with all the sites of London: The Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Tower Bridge, etc, etc. He made the most wonderful scrapbook of our trip.

This trip, we got both he AND Matthew scrapbooks, Matthew being 4 now and able to appreciate the sites too.

And what did they want to do? Chase the pigeons. That's all!The boy's a blur, but you can still make out the smile of mischief.

And so to today's knitting content. I made the boys hats for Christmas (Santa got them all the good stuff). I'd been wanting to knit Koolhaas for the longest time. In fact since about a week after the magazine it was published in went off the shelves. I finally bought it on the Interweave website late last year.

I made one for Teddy's teacher for Christmas and then I made one for whichever of my boys it would fit. That would be Matthew.After finishing this sucker, I want it to be a REALLY long time before I tackle this pattern again. I managed without a cable needle for 2 of the 3(?) cables in the pattern, but I just couldn't get one of them and boy, does that slow you down.

So Teddy got this wonderfully plain ribbed hat instead.Again with the 'matchy and yet not'. While I was knitting them, I kept trying them on the boys and saying I was knitting them for other little boys - they're used to me not knitting for them, so didn't question that at all. They were so surprised and delighted with the hats when they opened their gifts at Christmas, it was really quite touching.

And just because I can, here's another pic of them both together.

The yarn used is Rowan's Cashmerino Aran. It's been in my stash forever, originally intended to make a sweater for one of the boys. Well, this is what you get for marinating boys sweater yarn while they grow so big - not enough for a sweater! I do have enough for a couple of scarves though - wide ribbed that is!

Happy Tuesday :0)

Zimmermann Babies

We flew to England on Christmas night. Our first family trip there for 2 and a half years. Thank you generous in-laws :0)

We stayed through New Year and my birthday and had a jolly good time with our friends and family. My boys all flew back a couple days before me and narrowly missed 'the snow'. Which at the time, just looked like this.....Pretty, but can only be described as a smattering at best. I managed to get to London and back for some shopping/visiting that day (Tuesday) with no travel interruptions at all.

That evening though, the snow started in earnest (well, for England that is, anyway). And by next morning it was looking more like this.....

and this.......

and this......

and it snowed for the rest of the day, closing airports and disrupting trains, etc.

I had planned on visiting some old friends in SW London, but instead, I stayed home and watched the news and the interwebs all day, wondering if I was going to be able to fly home the next day.

I did get to sled down a couple of wee hills that day....
and help Harry build a snowman....

So all was not lost :0)

The next day, Thursday, I trudged across London, no small feat, let me tell you. Those Underground stations are killers with a heavy suitcase, no lifts and a million stairs each. I managed to get to Gatwick airport with no problems though (other than a sore shoulder from bouncing my suitcase up and down those stairs!). The flight was cancelled of course, but at least I'd made it there to find that out!!!

I got straight on the train back to London and called the airline to re-arrange another flight. Marco-the-booking-agent is my new best friend. He booked me on the next flight out of Heathrow and upgraded the trans-atlantic leg to business class. Which looks a bit like this.......

Yes, peeps, my outstretched legs are still about 2 feet from the seat in front of me!!!

Anyway, I do have knitting content involved in this story, aswell as gratuitous snow footage. The friends I couldn't see because of the snow Wednesday, I got to see Thursday and stayed the night with them. Mid-last-year, they had twins. And what does the knitter do when she knows she'll be visiting babies? Why she knits for them, of course :0)

So I present to you, the long awaited, Zimmermann babies, clad in the Baby Surprise Jacket and February Baby Sweater patterns.......
Photo provided by lovely mum, Charlotte. Aren't they gorgeous? The babies AND the sweaters, I mean ;0)

Made with Dream in Color Classy, color Midnight Derby. Matchy, and yet not.

Happy New Year to everyone :0)