My commission on line

See steptripstep.co.uk/projects/abigail-lee the jumper is one I knitted.

Graduate Fashion Week

What fun. My friend and I got somewhat confused about where we should go at Earls Court and wombled into the back bit. This man came rushing up to us and with a look on his face that said 'must I deal with you oiks' asked 'can I help you Ladies?' I explained I had done some work for one of the exhibitors and had come to pick up my tickets. With a look of complete disbelief he directed us to the desk. There the snotty woman said there were no tickets for us. By this time I had had enough and got a tad grumpy that resulting in them giving us tickets anyway.

We went up stairs to find ourselves in a Invitation Only Preview Evening for a South American Art Exhibition amongst the Gallery owners, The Press and selected buyers.

The staff were happy to escort us off the Premises and show us the way to London Graduate Fashion Week.

This was great fun. It was a buzz seeing my work on the catwalk.Amongst the outlandish and bizarre were some lovely pieces. Some European schools had stands and the Milan School there stood out with the quality of their construction.

I networked like mad and had a lot of interest in doing work with students next year. One college wants me to go and speak to their students.

An evening well passed my friend and I thought we should go back to the Art Exhibition and quaff champagne which we did. We walked in again and the staff came rushing up to us but WE HAD TICKETS!. Ha! Great fun was had pretending we had some interest in £20,000 paintings and meaningful sculptures.

The tube home did not quite match the evening but still a fab night out.

What do you wear to London Fashion Week?

Love Skype love it. My daughter now has internet in her apartment on Kibbutz Degania in Tiberius. This proved remarkably useful as on Monday I am going to the London Fashion Week Graduate Show where hats I made on commission will make their way down the runway. We were able to fine tune what I am to wear.

This was a big decision. I am too old, too fat and not rich enough to do interesting-it would rapidly be transformed into deranged if I even tried.

So I am going for natural classic-dark blue linen trousers, cream linen top (loose over the stomach)

birkenstocks and wooden jewellery.

This will mean a trip to Topshop for said jewellery. Hannah suggested a nice wooden necklace I found in a charity shop and then remembered it is now in Israel with her. Ah the joys of children.

I will of course report on this.

Two other things.

We went to a friend's 31st party last night (yes by at least a decade we were the aged ones of the evening) and I made a birthday cake. Only thing was the New Zealand bible of laughingly easy cake baking; The Edmonds Cookbook has been kidnapped by a friend. I ended up using a recipe I had never used, replacing cream cheese with marscapone and whats more it came out of the oven more a burnt offering than food. Never being one to waste a perfectly good though burnt cake I scrapped the burnt bits off and covered it in icing.

The birthday boy's boyfriend did a big cake thing-lights out singing happy birthday etc and all I could think was that I had no idea at all what it was going to taste like. Luckily it was fine but the morals of the story is to only bake for people with recipes you know and love and never loan out your favourite cookbooks.

Last rant for the day put your pillows and cushions out in the sunshine for several hours. This dries out all the sweat that accumulates and the sun sterilises them. They come back inside smelling sweet and all puffed up. Trust me on this one. Do you really want to continue to sleep on the pillow version of a manky tee shirt?

Obsessive compulsive knitting

These two items were knitted for a graphic Design student's Graduate Exhibition. Her work was looking at OCD. The jumper has every 5th stitch missed,every 2nd row to help tell the story of a woman with a fear of the number 5. The hat has the 33rd stitch missed in the same way telling the story of another woman's fear of that number.

It was great to do work like this. I used Anne Budd Handy Book of Sweater Patterns-probably the most useful knitting book anywhere and the hat is adapted from a 1970's pattern.

The hat is knitted from machine knitting yarn I plyed together. It came from my friend's mothers stash after her mother died. She left behind a room full of yarn and knitting and sewing paraphernalia. It was great to use her yarn that she had treasured in a new way.

Done

Finished, done, over, complete, ended.

Holidays

We are back from Israel which was wonderful if not a little hard to leave this time.

Once again we stayed in a self catering unit on a community in the Galilean hill surrounded by Arab villages. One day I was in the garden watching the weird and wonderful birds and generally feeling life was pretty good even though I was knitting the evil thing (p.s knitting now completed, ends sewn in and currently doing the Swiss darning-it will one day end).Anyway there was suddenly a barrage of gun fire and no one anywhere panicked at all. I whilst thinking about my will strolled in and attempted to calmly ask the daughter what was happening-apparently it is a tradition at Arab weddings, yes people do sometimes get hurt and I do not think it will become popular here.

We did a day in the completely fabulous Biblical Lands Museum in Israel it is a beautiful fascinating place. Each room is a different time in history and the exhibits go back to prehistoric flint. It is amazing to see the Matriarchal religious figures disappear as Patriarchal religion comes into prominence about the same time commerce develops. Go if you can.

Knit knit knit

The front of the horrid Fair Isle is 20 rows on the left hand side from being finished. The husband is in Israel to be there when our daughter became a 2nd Lieutenant and I took advantage became incredibly anti social and knitted like crazy. My friend Anne lent me her boxed set of The Wire to help me through this knitting nightmare but I have to admit that knitting and listening to the radio is way more efficient.

The Wire is great though...