1. Standing in the rain to catch a glimpse of the Olympic women's road race flying through Kingston. It was bucketing. Those girls are hard.
2. Taking Dhari to his first football (that's soccer to my Americans) match, and having it also be an Olympic match where Team GB beat BRAZIL!!!! Brazil, people. Dhari absolutely loved it. Especially the bit right at the very beginning when Team GB scored a goal and 70,000 fans jumped and shouted in celebration. You should have seen his face. Priceless. We then got a load of free stuff from one of the food kiosks because their card machine wasn't working and the lady felt sorry for us because Dhari is cute and I am hugely preggers.
Dhari stayed awake until 10:45pm, which is no mean feat for a 3 1/2 year old.
3. Randomly bumping into two friends at Earls Court for the Olympic women's volleyball yesterday. What a small world!
4. Having the Olympics in London. This is awesome.
5. Bouncy Stonehenge! Official name: Sacrilege. I went. I saw. I bounced.
I can't tell if the little girl in the foreground of this shot is crying, or having the time of her life. Any thoughts?
Yes, ma'am. babybandito got another shout out from EtsyUK. Aside from the totally rockin' blue ticky tocks featured, which of these awesome things make you go, "Squeeeee! That's so cute!"? I love the cowboy cushion on the bottom right, and I also have my eye on a scarf by the same person who made the tulip scarf. Only, the one I like (for Dhari) is a pencil.
I spent the days before the Thames Festival doing the following things:
1. Sewing, sewing, sewing.
2. Starting my new job.
3. Checking the weather forecast every half hour, willing it to change from rain all day to sunshine.
4. Rejoicing when the forecast changed.
5. Daydreaming about selling out of most everything before dinnertime.
On the actual day, I was initially excited by the sheer numbers of people who descended upon the Southbank. Unfortunately, it turned out that not many of them were actually stopping to shop. My stall neighbours and I seemed to be stuck at the edge of a thoroughfare, and the best shopping time seemed to be when it finally decided to rain, and everyone ran to the stalls for shelter. While my daydreams did not manage to come true, I still got to meet a load of lovely folks.
Sharing a table with me were Maria and Andreea of Magic Joys. They had baskets full of adorable little hand-knitted animals. They use all natural materials and have begun working with only organic wool. I loved the foxes, made especially for this Crafty Fox event, and my absolute favourite of all time was the little baby white owl pictured above. Andreea told me that would be the only one ever made like that, as the knobbly wool was very difficult to work with. I love the downy fluffiness of it, makes it seem even more like an owlet. I was planning to purchase it once I made enough sales to pay for my half of the table. Alas, alack!
To my right was Corey, one half of the husband/wife team behind Strange Fruit, a unique greetings card company that aims to design cards to "reflect Britain's colourful population". I love the collage stylings of the cards, and was most taken by a Christmas card featuring two gorgeous girls sporting Santa hats and surly pouts. Corey (a fellow American) also became my "muse", as every time I complained to him about no one buying anything, lo and behold, someone would come by and hand over their hard earned cash for something babybandito. Thanks Corey!
And check this out! Thanks to my stint at the Thames Festival, I've been invited to sell some of my goods at Things British, a new boutique at Kingly Court, off Carnaby Street. I've been wanting to expand my brick and mortar sales beyond Kansas City and South London. Carnaby Street will do just fine. Yessir. Americans, maybe you're sitting there thinking, Hmm, I know of Carnaby Street - where have I heard of that before? And why is Austin Powers music suddenly playing in my head? Or, if you're slightly cooler than me, you'll have made a more rock and roll link to The Jam.
Another highlight of the day? At about 8 pm, Regan popped over the river (as you do) to give me some freshly popped popcorn and a thermos of hot chocolate, because she thought I might be cold and hungry. She is officially the Random Acts of Kindness Queen of my Life. She makes me want to throw shapes.
2. Spending yesterday afternoon engaged in two of my favourite things: crafting and activism.
I met loads of lovely people, including Colin, a hilarious and chatty homeless man who joined in with the stitchery in exchange for tea, sandwiches and cakes! Good atmosphere overall.
3. A gorgeous little shop in Brighton called Fair, that befittingly trades in Fair Trade goods. Being a Fair Trade city, Brighton has a barrel-full of these places, but this one was particularly good. Lots of stuff from People Tree and elsewhere. One highlight was underwear that says on the elastic waistband, "Poverty is Pants". In the end, I bought some giant hoop earrings and a very cool necklace, for the bargain price of £24 (there goes my fun-spend allowance for this week...).
1. A kindly British Gas HomeCare engineer. What a rare, rare thing. He even wished me a "lovely day" and told me to "take care". !
2. Dhari only tried to hop in bed with us once last night! Easy win.
3. Embracing the WW2 era "Make Do and Mend" mentality
(not because it's Recession Chic, but because I actually really and truly don't have enough money to buy a new pair of jeans...maybe I shouldn't have bought the lace necklace? Naw, that was needed), and finding myself pretty successful in my efforts.
4. Crossing tasks off lists. ScribbleScribbleScribble
5. Bored to Death. I've never seen anything with Jason Schwartzman in it that wasn't completely AWESOME.
1. Discovering that giraffes still create awe and wonder for me.
2. Hearing Dhari say, "Hi zeebas!" to the zebras.
3. A kind lady helped me carry Dhari up the steps out of Regent's Park Station today.
4. This scene from Kick-Ass where Hit Girl steals the show.
5. Making up new traditions. For example, today at the London Zoo, Dhari and I checked out the African animals. His favourites, of course, were zebras and giraffes. So, before we left, we visited the gift shop and bought a little giraffe and a little zebra for him to play with. All the way home, Dhari chattered away about them, whilst playing with his new toys.
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