The Red Coats are coming!

This morning I woke up to the sounds of people gathering outside of my window. Not that this is an unusual occurrence, seeing as I live right next to a busy walkway that leads from downtown up to the University Campus, and right above the one bank machine that almost every undergrad on campus seems to need to visit every night after 11pm (not that I'm bitter or anything - I just love falling asleep to the sounds of hoardes of drunk kids queuing up to get even more money for booze at 1am), but usually Sunday mornings are pretty quiet outside my room. Anyway, when I peeked my window, this is what I saw:

Turns out that today is remembrance Sunday, the day that England holds their Remembrance Day parades and ceremonies. Around 10:30 all the different groups started lining up and then they marched off to wherever the cenotaph (or its Newcastle equivalent) is. It seems a bit odd to be holding the ceremony on a non-Remembrance Day day, but I guess it makes sense, since this way, everyone is able to go. And the weather was a whole lot better today too - I remember all those Remembrance Day parades when I was a kid in Vancouver - as a girl guide we were expected to participate in the parades and the laying of the wreaths, and it seems like every Nov.11th was a pouring wet, cold day - it was wet and rainy here on Friday also. Maybe Newcastle knows what they're doing, in delaying the ceremony by a few days!


In other news, yesterday I finally managed to get out to a meeting of one of the local stitch n' bitch groups here in Newcastle - the Centurion Knitters. Helen from PurlPower has invited me to these groups several times, but me and my crazy schedule had yet to find a moment for such organized knitting. So when a Saturday morning with no specific plans showed up, I took the opportunity and knitted with it. And look! I even managed to get a whole 1 1/2 pattern repeats finished on my Travelling Vine Scarf, pattern and Silk Garden yarn both courtesy of my Secret Pal!

What a fun scarf this is going to be, despite my pathetically slow progress... But then, I have been busy on other projects, like my peaceful palms KAL gloves. This is the inside-out 5.5 inch cuff of the first glove - I was all set to start the gusset for the thumb when I realized that since I still haven't printed out the opera gloves pattern that these gloves are based on, I'd have to have my computer in front of me to be able to continue knitting them... thus, they'd make a very bad coffee shop/watching tv at Tara's Dorm knitting project. And so my poor glove has been neglected for several days. I suppose it might make sense to print the pattern out while I'm here at the library, wouldn't it...
(still no internet in my room, so I am taking advantage of it wherever/whenever I can. Although the accomodation office has promised internet in the rooms by Christmas, and I am trying my best to actually believe them for once!)

Before I go off to do the studying that I really came here to do, here's a look at what Mike's been doing this week, while the rest of us are slaving away:Hee hee, that's mean... Mike has actually been on a very busy business trip in the states, and was merely taking advantage of a free afternoon in California, in the best way possible - by hanging out at the beach!