You can leave your hat on

An all-in-one weekend round-up, seeing as I've been so busy, again. I am deeply indebted to the concept of the nap, without which I'd never have got through. It's only going to get worse until Christmas, sigh.

Friday night: a trip to Shunt, an ace bar/performance art space under the arches of London Bridge station - in fact, when it's shut, the door looks much like a London Underground storage cupboard. It always has extremely odd arty things going on, which makes it much more fun than the average bar, but sadly is now shut for renovation until after Christmas (my liver is pleased at this news).

The boyfriend was so pleased with the reception given to his topper last weekend at White Mischief, he insisted that we all wear hats again this weekend. Of course, that ended up as just him and me, but we didn't mind. I love wearing formal hats. Mine, with the purchase of which I was assisted by Gail, was the following little number:

I didn't have time when getting ready to take a proper photo of my outfit, but here is a fuzzy photo taken when we got back at an ungodly hour of the morning, the fuzziness reflecting my mental abilities after a bottle of red wine to myself:

We fit right in at Shunt anyway - it's the one bar where wearing a hat won't really get questioned, or at least people will probably assume you're part of the performance. I had many compliments, and also some wanker trying to steal it off me - thankfully he returned it sharpish when I growled something unpleasant at him - next stop would have been one of the G&Ts with which my hands were full meeting his face. Performances seemed to involve lots of people doing a forensics investigation (who knows why) and a film, with live music from a rock band, about a troop of monkeys (people in monkey masks and tails) on bicycles, in some sort of traffic safety video, getting killed one by one as they ignored road signs. Cool.

Struggled out of bed on Saturday to attend the lovely Tash's yarn winding party. What fun! Yarn, winding equipment, knitting, baking, good company and plenty of prosecco with strawberries. I have a swift but not a ball winder, so I was childishly overjoyed with the speed of winding on the full set up, and just delighted with the pretty yarn cakes produced. Aren't they great?

I need a ball winder.

Today we went for a look at the new St Pancras station, as I'd missed the Wednesday night knitting excursion there this week. We were very impressed with the renovation - so much air and light and beautifully restored original features. The skeletal iron ribs of the roof have been painted a beautiful sky blue to enhance the effect:

Here's the statue of the late poet laureate John Betjeman, who campaigned against the whole thing, gothic revival hotel and all, being pulled down in the 60s, thankfully. I love statues at ground level, becoming part of the crowd, like the Famine Memorial in Dublin or some installations of the Burghers of Calais.

And here is the much-photographed giant statue of lovers not kissing (which could have caused offence apparently) but instead touching foreheads, which to me seems much more intimate.

Finished off with some sushi, and a fair bit of mindless knitting (WIP pics on Ravelry), and I am (almost) ready for the week ahead, once I've had just a bit more sleep...