A hot and tiring Sunday.

Yesterday the current monsoon season here in London stopped long enough for me and Lucy to go up to town to try out her challenge route. Not only did the rain stop but the sun shone brightly and very warmly. I forgot to take sunscreen with me but by moving fast between patches of shade I didn't get sunburnt. Although there were no special events on in London there were huge numbers of people out in the capital. 

Lucy is running an event next weekend to help a group of girls from various places outside London celebrate 100 years of the Guides senior section, that's the 15 to 25 year olds. She had the broad plan for Saturday but needed to check the clues she will be giving to get from place to place and the timings. We roughly followed the route but we did make some detours to visits bits we have either never seen or haven't seen for a while.

I have wanted to visit the memorial to Bomber Command for some time, well since it was unveiled by the Queen in 2012.  It's situated in Green Park and commemorates the 55,573 members of bomber command crew who lost their lives in World War 2. One of my uncles was a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber and survived the war but many of his friends died.

I'm not totally in tune with the fake greek style columns but the statue of the air crew is amazing and you can see the weariness in their faces.

The bomber command insignia and motto is carved into one of the walls.

A second memorial we visited was The New Zealand Memorial at Hyde Park Corner. It commemorates the bonds between New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and sacrifice during times of war. It symbolises the two countries common heritage and of New Zealand's distinct identity.

Diagonally opposite is the Australian War memorial. We decided to visit this another day as it's a bit overwhelming to visit a lot of memorials in one day. 

Part of our route took us along Knightsbridge which is the home of Harrods store. We didn't have time to pop in and browse. Maybe another day.

We also saw some interesting architecture exhibitions in Kensington Gardens. When you walk inside this one it is huge

The loop effect of this one reminded me of the way pencil sharpenings curve and loop.

This one picked up on the shapes of the temple in the background.

Had trouble taking a photo of this one as there isn't much to photograph. It was certainly causing a lot of questions...what is it? what does it mean?

Finally this one opens out like the first one so you can walk through the middle or maybe take a break on the benches. The children certainly liked this one.

I walked 25,346 steps over the day which was just short of 11 miles. By the time we got home I was worn out. I had intended to finish off my scrappy blocks but once we'd eaten all I wanted to do was chill out and watch some TV. I carried on stitching badges on my camp blanket. It seems to have been about 5 years since I last added any badges so I think I have about 60 in totally to stitch on. The badges are quite thick and I found I needed to use a thimble as my finger was getting very sore. I don't usually use a thimble as I find it slows my stitching down but I think I need to persevere .

Having finished my knitting I also decided it was time to revisit my millennium sampler. I haven't stitched on this since our holiday at the end of March. Here's how I left it at that point.

This is so close to being done and is definitely my oldest UFO. I set this as a goal for the year as I want it all finished and framed by Christmas. I stared the block of the Spitfire on holiday. It shouldn't take long to finish this square off.

Sunday's stitching was very slow. In fact I only stitched 3 badges on to the blanket. Hopefully this week will see the spitfire completed. 

Lyndsey