London

We spent last week in London to attend our DD's graduation last Wednesday. Here she is after the ceremony looking at pictures on her camera while I took a picture of her with mine.
It was a nice ceremony. The university staggered ceremonies through the week. The afternoon of my DD's graduation, there were only 2 departments graduating students.
That evening we went out to an Italian restaurant in GX and also met her boyfriend for the first time.
We're not sure whether he's from East Anglia or Essex. Though, if he were from Essex, he would be unlikely to admit it. People from Essex have the probably undeserved rep of not being too smart.
I guess it's sort of like just after we moved to NJ. I told people that we lived near Newark -- even though we live 20-30 miles from Newark. I later found out from New Jersey-ans that I should say Northern NJ. People from elsewhere in the country are ok with the Newark description.

I bought along socks to knit. In fact, I finished the pair of socks for my DH. A picture of the socks is posted to SAM3.

I also started on test-knitting a sock for Chrissy. She designs such nice cabled socks. I forgot to bring a cable needle along and so had fun cabling without a cable needle. It isn't as hard as I thought. I used the method in which one leaves all the stitches on the RHN until done with the cable. (For a left-leaning cable, one first needs to slip knitwise each st onto the RHN and then slip them back purlwise before knitting the sts through the back loop.) Chrissy, of course, assumed that whoever was making the sock had a cable needle and/or would take the time to buy one. (And, yes, there are cable needles in London. But, I didn't see the need to buy one. I had a perfectly good one at home, and it was interesting looking at techniques for cabling without a cable needle.) I left my other projects on hold.

Shortly after getting back, I resumed my other knitting. Here is a picture of the July KAL dishcloth. I have yet to start the mid-July KAL. I also started working on the MS3 again and the Tomato. But, at least, I have a pair of socks finished -- just in time before the end of July.

While in London, we also went to the British Museum -- one of my favorite places. The area for the Mausoleum had been redone -- more befitting one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. We also saw the London Zoo for the first time.

To get to London and back, we tried out Zoom Airlines, a Canadian discount airline. It was a decent airline -- with a few caveats. The price in the ad is only part of what one pays. The amount we finally paid was about twice the advertised price since that price didn't include taxes, fees, and a fuel surcharge. It took a long time to leave JFK. We sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours before the air traffic controllers finally noticed us waiting to take off. Then, when we left from Gatwick, we found out the UK/EU regulations had changed and one was allowed only one carry on, including a purse or computer case. So, I dumped the contents of my purse into my carry on. However, the airline had a 5 kg limit on carry ons, and so I had to dump things like books from the carry on into one of our checked bags. At least, the lady at the counter was nice about it and did allow us to rearrange bag contents. She even suggested it so that we wouldn't incur an excess baggage fee. -- But, if one thinks about it, a 5 kg (11 lb) limit isn't much for something like a laptop and computer bag.