Monday 11 May 2009

Freewheeling

Too long no blog, for which many apologies. I once read that the first half of life is like riding uphill and the second like freewheeling downhill. I never was much good at bike riding but the pace of life does seem to be speeding up and I'm certainly over the hill as my 50th birthday is fast approaching...

To mark the event I'm raising funds for The Lavender Trust, which provides support and advice for young women diagnosed with breast cancer. If you've managed to escape my e-mail about this, then please visit my website http://www.justgiving.com/susannareece to read more. It's really easy to make a donation: my aim is to raise £500 and amazingly, thanks to the generosity of my wonderful friends, I'm nearly half-way there!

On the knitting front I've had two really good trips to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London recently with fellow students on the City & Guilds course and led by our tutor Loraine McClean. The pictures I'm posting today are from the V&A's online knitting collection, which is really worth taking a look at. The first one is from a fantastic book of swatches - the sample book of Elizabeth Hume - which we saw in a behind the scenes visit along with a wonderful knitted Tudor jacket and a weird but equally wonderful Body Map dress from the 1980s. The second photo is a Second World War "Victory" jumper and you can download the pattern if you feel like knitting some lacy chevrons! I'm offering a prize for the first person to spot the significance of the date (2nd June 1945) on the cover. Why not post a comment with your suggestion? Clue: it's not the year!