Paris for the day

Finally we did it! We went to Paris, just for the day so don't get too jealous here. It was a fantastic day, though. Right from the - very early - start to the - late - end of it. We managed to meet up with our good friend (and former house mate) H who had finished playing for a masterclass and stayed on for half a day to see us.

After the 4am start and journey on the Eurostar from London to Paris, our (second) start of the day was a breakfast at the riverbank of the Seine, then (after some walking around) lunch at my favourite restaurant - my family has been going to this place since 1978. We spent some time around Sacre Coeur which as you can see in the mosaic (below) involved some knitting and buying very cool materials for sewing (pictures to come soon). A coffee stop on the roof terrace of the Printemps gave us enough time to recover (see picture above - took some time to merge my 5 photos in Photoshop!) and a quick jump to the Champs Elysées finished our trip.
Sunday we were barely able to move! But G's tried out the sewing machine and finished her felted bag adding a lining and a shoulder strap. More sewing is planned for the weekend as well as my final sprint for the Olympic Sock - 35% still to knit - that should be manageable if no disaster strikes. G has finished hers, so she's allowed the sewing and taking pictures of the FOs.

Olympic Weekend

And we're off! Friday night we watched the re-play of the opening ceremony on France2 (one needs to brush up one's languages from time to time) and cast on for our Olympic challenge. The really cool thing was that France2 managed to get the Chinese educational attaché (I think) from the Chinese Embassy in Paris - always referred to as "mon cher Wang" who explained the symbols and history of China (as represented in the ceremony) with great enthusiasm and depth. Words are (almost) wasted to describe this wonderful ceremony, one needed to see it: the drummers and the dancers and the 'run' at the top of the bird's nest to light the Olympic fire - amazing, miraculous, mind-blowing ideas carried out to perfection!

Watching this, G worked out an Olympic pattern which we immediately tried out - and about 1 hour later frogged the whole thing because it didn't work well with the character/colours of the wool. This obviously meant that we restarted the Sock almost from the point go on Saturday morning. (Disaster no1)

I'm leaving out the minor disasters of Saturday morning: upset stomachs of house mate and house guests as well as the return of a jacket for house guest by very pregnant friend of just mentioned house guest who then (as it turned out Sunday afternoon) went straight from us to the hospital to deliver the baby! (Talk about planning out your chores for the day...)

We had planned some knitting time during the day and made our way to Stash Yarns to visit the lovely D. Walking up towards the shop we got caught in the sales.... And then disaster no 2 hit us - rain or as they say here drizzle. This is the understatement of the century! It basically means you get soaked to the bones within minutes by a light, relentless rain. It might have helped to know the exact location of shops around Upper Richmond Road (which we didn't) and so we did get really soaked. (leaving out a lot of grumpy words) Buying clothes in the sales has its advantage: it meant that we could change into something dry when we finally made it into the shop. We had some enjoyable time knitting and chatting to the people in the shop before we made it home (via a hairdresser appointment) - in a dry spell.

Sunday disater no3 struck in the morning when I sliced my thumb on the side of a package of pain killers (I see irony), but an Elastoplast Spray Bandage (bought some time later) made it possible to knit again. Sunday, as can be seen in the picture taken above, had some very rainy spells and the most beautiful rainbow I've seen lately. I managed to make a panorama image in Photoshop from two picture I took while hanging out of the window. Should I take this as a positive sign that we'll make our Olympic challenge?