All around the houses...

Some more pictures from last night and the I Knit London event with Franklin, first. As you can see, and if you know me and look at the IKnit Flickrset, I inadvertently picked an absolutely prime position despite the place being completely packed - Gerard moved the furniture around us and lo and behold (or sole and beheeled as my Dad would have it) I was in the front row. Cool. These were taken from alarmingly close range (and I still couldn't get them in focus... not sure if it's this camera or me!).

Anyway, there was a bit of intro

and then some reading of pieces from the book (pages 90-94 and 58-61, if you've managed to lay hands on a copy - I'll have mine at KTog tomorrow...) -

and yes, he's another of those rare authors who really ought to read their own stuff and it was very funny indeed...

And then there was a Q&A, during which people seemed to be inordinately interested in the Guys with Yarn calendar, for some reason...

Then there was signing. Yvonne has blogged about her request today (well, one of them - go on, Y, tell us about the other one!)... I didn't get a pic of the signing...

And then there was general emptying-out of the shop (it was packed. Did I mention that??) and a relaxing...

Today I had a rare treat. I work in quite a famous building in the middle of London, the one with the clock with the bongs on the end of it [yes, I'm being evasive here. We have no policy on blogging at the moment but I suspect that I won't be able to identify where I work when we do have such a policy and I'm trying to avoid words-that-Google-will-find]; and I'm able to take a couple of people round at a time, if I grab an afternoon off.

Such it was with Franklin and Tom - and they were fantastic company, two witty, erudite gents... We had two little glitches - somehow we managed to miss each other during security, so they ended up inside the building while I was sitting knitting outside, which seems wrong, somehow. I still have no idea how that happened... Thankfully Tom is in possession of more commonsense than me, so came and found me - I'd introduced myself the previous evening, but doubtless the sitting-knitting-a-sock-while-waiting-thing was a bit of a giveaway too... Not, of course, that we Cambridge knitters carry emergency knitting. Obviously not.

The second glitch was that while my bit of the organisation wasn't meeting that day, I'd forgotten to check that the Other bit of the organisation wasn't either. And it turned out they were; and they went on for quite a while.... Thankfully there's a lot of the building to see, and somewhere to have tea while waiting for them to finish their deliberations!

We did this first, which was fun, and gave us a chance to talk about politics, particularly after the events of last week... and then we had a wander... I gave as much of the tour as I could, and several off-piste excursions, before we declared temporary defeat and went for a cuppa; then we were able to resume the tour. There are very limited opportunities for photography, but we did manage to take a couple. I am reassured by the knowledge that Tom can take photos which are no better than mine with my camera (I really do think there's something bizarre about the focus), but it's a record of the day...

... and here's one I took much later, before we all headed in our separate directions.

As Franklin said about the experience, "It's nice, if you like that sort of thing...."

Thanks, guys; it was a lovely afternoon. And Bon voyage ... (I went through the Tube station again a few minutes after we parted, and the harpist had just started yet another rendition of My Heart Will Go On, by the way...)