A Sunny Day in London

For this week's Nice Day Out I'd planned to go to a museum or gallery (or maybe both) up in London but actually the weather was so lovely and sunny I just ended up wandering round exploring the city instead. It was great to just stroll around enjoying the sunshine, with occasional breaks for lunch, cups of tea and some yummy icecream. There'll be plenty of times to visit museums etc when it's raining, right?

First up, I paid a visit to the nice folks at Innocent to deliver my batch of little knitted hats for this year's Big Knit.

 

With the recent changes to the size and weight bands for Royal Mail parcels my little stash of hats was going to cost a silly amount to post, so I thought I'd hand-deliver them instead. It was really nice to hand some hats over to the guys at Innocent in person after years of posting them a batch of hats each autumn, and (rather delightfully) they gave me some free smoothies! Yum.

 

Then I walked to nearby Notting Hill and had a long walk around the area. It's a bit of London I'd not been to before, and it was generally pretty lovely, with endless smart rows of houses and lots of gorgeous little shops and cafes.

Later I took a trip to the Charing Cross Road and popped into the flagship branch of Foyles, which is a huge and wonderful shop (apparently they have the widest range of titles of any bookshop in the UK - soooo many books to choose from!). I was delighted to find a copy of my book on the shelves. Can you spot it?

 

It was extra nice to see it shelved next to some copies of Mollie Makes: Feathered Friends which includes a couple of projects I designed :)

 

I bought myself a copy of Pip Lincolne's Make Hey While The Sun Shines (I've been wanting to buy one of her books for years but couldn't decide which one to buy - it was great being able to flick through a couple in a real live bookshop and choose my favourite)....

... and a City Notebook that includes maps of London and lots of sections for making notes on things seen and done, interesting places, tasty eats, etc. I'm planning to use this as a sort of travel diary for my London day trips, but also to make a note of the names & locations of nice shops & cafes etc for return trips because I'm terrible at remembering that sort of thing.

For example, I must remember to go back to the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin in the Fields which turned out to be the perfect, relaxing place to have a cuppa and (metaphorically) put my feet up before braving the hot Tube & the jam-packed rush hour trains home... and I need to start making note of which trains home in the evening are sardine-tin-like and which aren't as bad!