Supremely Divine...

Some more dresses from the Supremes Exhibition. Do you know you can click on them to enlarge for more detail - on some you can even read the signs?

Go to ITunes U - look for V & A Theatre & Performance for an hour long podcast interview with Mary Wilson, who was kind enough to bring the costumes over for the Exhibition.

It's very rare to be able to go to a show and be allowed to take photos these days, so big thanks to the V & A for letting me take these and share them with you.

Motown Memories

I have had many requests - okay, three - from some new friends on a Rav forum to post some pictures of a recent exhibition of Supremes costumes at the V&A Museum. Enjoy.

Let me know if you want to see more.

Time Flies.

Time flies indeed.

The last two months have simply whizzed by, so many good things have happened, alongside things so bad that to relate them here will send me back into a tailspin of depression so deep it has taken this long to climb out of. Sometimes when bad things happen, I merely shrug my shoulders and move on. Whatever is, is. Other things I may never get over, and will have to live with for the rest of my life.

Still, Crappy Temp Job allowed me the opportunity to forget recent troubles and concentrate on something so mind-numbingly boring that it was a welcome relief. or it would have been, had they remembered to pay me. They've booked me for one more week, so hopefully they will have sorted out the problem, before I feel the need to peer at the Line Manager over my glasses and give him the kind of talking-to that could peel the skin off his blazing red cheeks.

Studley, as ever, has been wonderful, trying to find ways to keep my spirits up, even while away working in Finland. When he returned, he displayed the kind of knitter-enabling behaviour that should be cloned by scientists and distributed throughout the members of Ravelry. Thanks to him, I am also the new owner of a iPod Touch.

The other night -when I returned from Knit Nation, actually - I got home to find him in playful mood. He had been to a charity shop, and spied some books he thought I might be interested in.

"I couldn't get you on your phone to find out which books you had, so I rescued them all for you," he said, as he sat me down.

Are you ready for this? Deep breath, then:

Scandinavian Knitwear by Alice Starmore

Designer Collection by Jean Moss

Glorious Knitting by Kaffe Fassett

Family Album, by Kaffe Fassett & Zoe Hunt

The Handknitter's Design Book by Alison Ellen

Knit Design by Betty Barnden & Gabi Tubbs

New Directions in Fair Isle Knitting, by Patty Knox

In all, he had found 12, some of which I already had, but - what a haul! I was already tearing my hair out over where to put my stuff. HW Towers has been undergoing a serious re-organisation of storage space.

More importantly, 12 knitting books - and only one was a paperback - are really heavy! The man went above and beyond the call of duty. This has seriously racked up his Brownie Points.

"I love you, Studley." I could feel myself welling up. "You are mine, and I shall keep you forever."

His eyes twinkled. "That's the plan, Babe".

With Grace.

To the V & A. The plan was to try to take in two exhibitions in one day: the Quilts show, then the exhibition of clothes from that great style icon, Grace Kelly, except that as usual I had left Hand Wash Towers far too late to beat the crowds, so one show had to do. But which one?

I stood in the queue, trying to decide. The quilts were really what I had travelled across town to see, but Grace Kelly's was, at £6, slightly cheaper than the quilts' £10.

In the end, my mind was made up for me when a lovely lady offered me her spare ticket the the GK show, as her friend was at the last minute unable to attend. So in I went. For free.

It's a small show featuring several key pieces, starting with outfits first worn on her engagement to Prince Ranier of Monaco, and ending with clothes worn during her short movie career, mostly designed by Edith Head. Funnily enough, my favourite dress turned out to be the one pictured, which turned out to be a simple black flowered dress made from a McCall's pattern, which Kelly wore on her first official meeting with the Prince in Monaco in 1955. I love this dress because, at the time, her fans and followers could buy the exact pattern and re-create the dress for themselves. I know some pattern companies have been re-issuing some of their vintage and retro patterns, and I hope that this will be available again.

I don't think I'm speaking ill of the dead, but Grace Kelly appeared to have big feet. Lovely shoes, but they were boats.

Most moving moment: I have to say, seeing this picture did make us stop in our tracks.

The lady who gave me the ticket was with me for most of the show, and we ooh-ed and ahh-ed our way round but, somewhere towards the end she disappeared. I had stopped to watch one of the newsreels but, at my height, it is a little hard to lose me in a crowd.

A shame because I had bought her a set of the postcards and had offered to take her for cake and coffee as a thank-you for her kindness. As it was, she bought her tickets with the Senior Citizen discount, so her kindness only left her £4 out of pocket.

Whoever you are kind lady, I wish you good Karma.

So, Tell Me About The Lobster...

I was going to mention this ages ago, but I got really busy over the last few weeks. I realize a lot of my friends think I spend most of my time knitting and eating biscuits, but there is a lot to do at Hand Wash Towers. That mould in the bathroom doesn't go away by itself, you know.

Press Night at the Globe, to see Macbeth, was a jolly night out, made even more interesting by the rather unusual form of audience participation. The groundlings' area around the stage was shrouded in a tautly pulled tent-y thing with holes in it for the audience to put their heads through to watch the play, supposedly to represent the frozen Lake of Cocytus in Dante's Divine Comedy (here's the image, by Gustave Dore). The tent was used also for characters to appear and disappear through, and for the three witches to wreak havoc among the audience.

This production is very, very gory, so much so that the audience were dropping like flies. Studley and I counted four (all men) being wheeled away by the St. John's Ambulance during the course of the play. We found out later at the Press Night party that 15 members of the audience flaked out that night. I call that a success.

I recently bumped into the lovely Ruth Saberton while out shopping, who was busy signing copies of her new book "Katy Carter Wants a Hero". Ruth is a funny lady, with a passion for all things pink, and her book is a good quick summer read, full of good people, bad people and a lobster, a facsimile of which she brings to her signings. He is quite an important character in this story of a London teacher who aspires to be a novelist, whose life is changed forever after a dinner party from hell.

Here's hoping "Katy Carter Wants a Hero" makes it onto TV. It would be perfect.

Guess what? I've got a signed copy of the book to give away.

Share your funniest dinner party stories. Make me laugh 'till I spurt my tea out of my nose, and the book could be yours.

Proof, if proof were needed...

...that something needs to be done. Seriously.

Behind this tower is a wardrobe.

To the right of the tower is my side of the bed.

To the left of the tower is my shoes, all neatly packed away, that I can't quite get to.

At the foot of the tower is more stash which, thankfully, you can't see. Same with the junk on the bed.

All I want is a tidy house, a tidy bedroom, a tidy stash.

A tidy life.

Not going to happen. (Sigh.) On with the motley.

There's a Crocodile in the Water...

...and no-one believed me.

The flight to Basle was thankfully uneventful. Security thoroughly checked my hand-luggage - why yes, as a matter of fact I did pack my bag myself, the Butler being on his day off - and casually waited until we were airborne before reaching for my contraband stash...of knitting.

It must have been my body language or something, but no-one batted an eyelid when I started work on my little sock. Nobody seemed to think it was unusual or dangerous or - perish the thought - forbidden. Either that, or one little sock on a 2.75mm/40cm circular metal needle is considered less of a terrorist threat than say, a lace shawl or (gulp) a sweater on two straight needles. It was the same on the return flight, although the pilot was kind enough to circle Heathrow a couple of times, no doubt to give me time to divide my stitches and make a start on the heel flap.

Then, on from Basle to Freiburg, Germany, me tagging along behind Studley, who was there to work. I was there to see what the dear man does for a living, and to meet his friends (who are all lovely by the way). I must say, the Germans know how to have a good time. Cheers to Chris Cravens, formerly of Preston, currently the DJ at the Swamp, a great bar with a cracking atmosphere, but not for the non-smokers among us. So good was the hospitality, the crocodile in the canal in the centre of town (see above) did come a bit of a surprise. But why is it there? I asked F.

"Because it's funny", was his reply. Fair enough.

I believe no trip to Freiburg is complete without a visit to Das Kartoffelhause. This restaurant is a cathedral to the humble potato. What these people don't know about how to cook a potato is frankly not worth knowing. They boil them, fry them, chip and mash them, bake and croquette them. They headline every dish on the menu: "Potato with Meat, Potato with Fish, and so it goes on.

Portions were generous (as was the service). I ordered a meatloaf which appeared to have the taste and texture of SPAM, if you like that sort of thing. The waitress brought a sauce to go with it (knowing the British have a thing for gravy) which was like a warm brown sauce. Meatloaf is different all over the world, and this was new to me. I like new, I like different. The mash that came with it was to die for.

(Note the unusual gargoyle found on the side of the Munster. Love it.)

The shops were closed for most of our short visit, but on Monday morning bright and early, we found ourselves at the Welt der Handarbeit, Salzstrase 37-39, 79098 Freiburg. A couple of balls of Regia World sock yarn in both GB and GDR national colours later, and we were dashing for our flight.

A huge thanks to F (thinking of you and we send our love) and K (K, we shall always be friends) for looking after us so wonderfully well, to D and U, who could argue the merits of croquette potatoes over roasties all evening, and to the beautiful town of Freiburg. A beautiful town with it's own brewery. What's not for a girl to love?