birthday celebrations

As you all well know, I have been very busy recently, and after celebrating my book launch and birthday with lots of lovely knitters on Thursday, I then spent my actual birthday weekend doing lots of lovely indulgent things!

On Friday, I had a look at the freaky exhibits in the Wellcome Collection's Exquisite Bodies exhibition, then went shopping in Liberty of London and Carnaby street. It was here that I came across the Sorry you missed the 60's exhibition in the Newburgh Quarter. The show could have been speaking to me specifically, as I am sorry I missed parts of the sixties, especially Mary Quant's first designs, Biba and the music scene. It was a small but perfectly formed exhibition of Phillip Townsend prints and I left a business card for the draw to win one, but no success there I am afraid; I had to make to with a few greetings cards.

While shopping, I managed to buy a fantastically comfy pair of Melissa shoes in the sales and this adorable lucky charm fashioned in the shape of a spinning wheel from an antiques stall....

...I hope I don't prink my finger on its spindle and fall asleep for one hundred years, even though after last week I feel like I could easily do so!

The final treat over my long, lazy birthday weekend was yet another trip to my favourite shop, Liberty, for the private view of their lovely exhibition Prints Charming. Six artists: Grayson Perry, Paul Morrison, Mike McInnerney, Michael Angove, Anj Smith and Simon Hart, have drawn from the Liberty heritage for inspiration and designed their own wonderfully inventive prints for the collection. Original one-off pieces of furniture, interior products and artworks have been produced for the show and there are also some great archive images and information on how Liberty prints have been utilised by past artists and fashion designers. Grayson Perry was there, dressed as his alter-ego, who is, of course, also called Claire! She was a wonderful sight to behold dressed in a custom made Liberty print dress, and I thoroughly enjoyed a leisurely stroll round the fourth floor sipping on a yummy Tom Collins cocktail.

In celebration of the exhibition, the folk at Liberty have covered the Carnaby Street entrance of the shop in their own Betsey print which looks fabulous. I think I shall be purchasing some of the Grayson Perry Cranford Tana Lawn fabric, although I have promised myself that I will finish off some of my planned projects using my last bumper lot of Liberty print first, so perhaps this will be the motivation I need to finally pull out the sewing machine...