Happy Multicultural Rabbit

We went along to Chinatown on Sunday for the Year of the Rabbit celebrations.
Our divvy of a prime minister was recently banging on about how multiculturalism has failed in the UK so I wish he could have been there on Sunday to see how many visitors this "failed multiculturalism" attracted to London.

Politics aside this was such a fun day out. It was heaving but years of living in London have made me much better at dealing with crowds and the majority of people were pretty polite. I just laughed at those who weren't. They were obviously soooo much more important than everyone else.

We managed to catch glimpses of the lion dancers blessing the shops with the drums and cymbals chasing away bad spirits.

One of the sponsors was Kung Fu Panda!

As well as the Panda there were wise old men conferring longevity and other attributes to the crowds and a money tree for prosperity.

There were also things to spot if you looked up

and lots of young Chinese women were sporting bunny ears (in a non playboy fashion)

After mooching around we headed into Covent Garden to Wahaca which does great Mexican food using British ingredients.

Another happy rabbity refried bean Sunday in London! Perfect.

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Knit Nation

I've been busy over the last week taking p/hop to the Knit Nation festival in London. It was good fun but I'm still a little dazed from 3 full on days of talking to knitters. It was fab and I've met some brilliant people so I will share it in photo form. Here's our stand, manned by yellowpurplezebra and cybil. Bad pub photos from Friday night with Stitch London Stitchettes, WoollyWormhead, @julietillyflop (who makes fab knitting tea towels ) Babylonglegs, @knitterbird and Bionic Laura (who stayed with me and brought me some gorgeous Aran yarn from Ireland) There was a grout baby and also some tipsy yelling at Ysolda and Sazknits and Jess and Casey the marvellous people who made Ravelry when we spotted them on the way to the tube. On Saturday I made sure I had time to shop and bought some sock yarn from Renaisance Dyeing... ... creepily fabulous stitch markers from The Bothered Owl ... As well as a fab needle roll with Mexican Day of the Dead pattern I also bought some...

Champagne Bubbles

We went for a stroll this afternoon along the Seine where my MIL lives to work off the champagne and cheese from New Year celebrations and build up an appetite for our postponed Christmas meal. It was a good opportunity to take some photos of my latest FO, Bubbles hat by Woolly Wormhead . Compulsory Catalogue Pose I've met Woolly at several shows over the summer and we sat together at several meal times at the infamous Knit Camp as well as getting tipsy at Knit Nation. She's ace and also a great designer. She leads a pretty interesting life, living in a converted double decker bus in Italy. Take a look at her blog which is a good mixture of her day to day life on the bus with her partner and young son and loads of great knitting tips. The Bubbles pattern was great fun to knit and worked up pretty quickly, the cables providing just enough interest to make this a great knit while watching Agatha Christie mysteries on TV in between eating festive leftovers. I used Araucan...

Double trouble continental style!!!

Or why all my fingers feel like thumbs. I want to make my BIL an Uncle Argyle Scarf for Christmas which uses a technique called double knitting, where two sides of fabric are knitted at the same time. Trouble is I don't own Stitch and Bitch Nation and as the scarf is the only thing I'd knit from it I'm not forking out £11 for one pattern. Using the magic of the interweb I found a couple of tutorials for Double Knitting . It's a great video but the continental knitting style looks much easier for double knitting. I sort of got the hand of knitting continental when I tried my hand at fairisle but I had one hand doing the familiar english style so I only had to concentrate on one hand. With this I'm trying to do something unfamiliar with both hands and two stands of yarn. Following the example pattern I've sketched out a smaller pattern for a small facecloth which can be a stocking filler if it turns out OK.

Ginger Knits UK

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