Hypatia Avenue

"6 lengths in a time of 18 minutes 47 seconds"

The Craft Rocks! event at the Victoria and Albert museum last Friday was absolutely phenomenal - the entire ground floor of the museum (which is rather large and imposing) was completely taken over by crowds of people, sitting on the floor between exhibits, dancing in the bar areas with their needles in the air and generally being very friendly and warm towards each other. The fact there was up to 3,000 people turning up to knit in the V and A on a Friday night is extraordinary enough but the atmosphere there was the most wonderful and impressive thing: the achingly cool and hip fashion students rocking out to the DJ playing Guns and Roses in the main foyer were as friendly and welcoming as the cheery old grannies dotted about, encouraging new knitters to "try another row, this time in purl stitches… go on, you can do it!" I had the honour of knitting with the uber-cool Fizzwhizz and the honour of teaching the ever-enthusiastic Devukha how to get beyond casting on.

Then the second event in camp-tastic weekend was Sing-a-Long-a-Sound of Music with my dear mother which was a mother's day treat from me to her. Oh! We has such fun! Mother was slightly subdued at first, quietly giggling at the variety of "nuns" filling up the auditorium and puzzling over the row of green-plastic sheeted folk (turns out they were the hills...) and then not really following the drag queen who led us through the warm-up but clearly amused and bemused by the goodie bag she had been given and the panto-like shouting... then the film started and the excitement was electric.

It is an extremely long scanning shot of the hills before the camera focuses on the hillside Maria appears on for her famous "Hills are alive!" entrance and some (female) wag with an extremely dirty laugh shouted "She's coming! Maria's coming!" and everyone joined in, revving up the entire cinema like a sportscar so that when Maria / Julie Andrews finally appeared over the top of the hill we all leapt up and cheered, ecstatic and euphoric. It went on like this for the entire film, booing the Nazis, barking at Ralph, singing along at the top of our voices - and dear Mother was considerably bolder in the second half and in fact led the cheering when the evil Baroness announced she was going to pack her little bags and go. Woo!

A really special moment was the kiss between the Captain and Maria in the greenhouse: Mother and I were sitting at the top of the slightly slanted stalls and when they kissed we had the explosive and breath-taking view of a sea of party-poppers going off in a truly mind-blowing moment. Fantastic stuff.

Then I was off to Brighton for Sunday lunch with Vixen and Former Flatmate A and vixen's extremely lovely parents. We ate in a very impressive seafront hotel and then opened birthday presents in Vixen's new flat above the Lanes ... and I got home to London that evening to news that finished one of the best and most magical weekends: Cambridge won the Boatrace.

Wow. What a weekend. How was yours?