A great start to the year

Actually, this was really last year, but who's counting?

A parcel arrived from Emma in France on New Year's Eve just as we were leaving for a day visit to London.

Although I opened it late that evening, I didn't have a chance to really enjoy it until New Year's Day.

In it was the most fantastic set of bags for my knitting, and some lovely Phildar yarn.

Emma has been busy sewing, and knowing my weakness for purple has made me a reversible tote bag, and a small project bag.

This photo hardly shows the Phildar lambswool 51 yarn, which is in the Clematite 0204 colour.

The colour is a subtle variation on purples. I might need to brighten it up with something else.

We had a great day in London, visiting Ian's brother and his family. After lunch at their home, we all travelled in to Charing Cross by train, and walked over to the South Bank. This was at 18.00, so the crowds hadn't started for the fireworks later on.

We all had supper at Tas Pide near the Globe, and then went our separate ways for trains home.

Later Ian and I watched the London fireworks on the TV.

Wednesday saw me travelling down to Luton to meet up with the knitters at the Whitehouse. Jenn was my spoiler in the latest round of Secret Pal, and she has set up a regular Wednesday lunchtime knitting meet up in the centre of Luton. It was lovely to meet with Jenn, Martina and Lizzie. We had a chance to swap some ideas about knitting, crochet and spinning.

Thursday saw me back at the Art Room for some of the back scenes work associated with our move. (I managed to get the old premises vacated and vacuumed on Dec 28th.)

As we hadn't been in properly since Dec 21st, it was cold at 5 C.

I wore long underwear and worked in my jacket to start sorting out all the stuff carried over from the stockroom. some had been put in the compact storage as it was brought down the road. More of it had just been placed on the nearest bit of floor in the new unit.

Much of this 3 day rearrangement meant taking everything off the shelving so that I could adjust the spacing, and then replacing it in the order I think will work for us.

Now all I need to do is list the location of everything.

This won't be such a hard task, as I had already listed most of it at the old unit.

By the third day I was quite comfortable without the jacket.

That was such a change from shivering on the Thursday.

Tomorrow morning we open to the public for the first time this year.

We have changed our opening hours, and will be open from 09.00 - 12.00, 13.00 - 16.00 Mon to Sat.

Wednesday and Thursday evenings we will also be open from 18.00 - 21.00.

At least now we have a landline and internet access in the Art Room, so are much more approachable.

We are busy planning a varied programme for the year, check the website for more information.