East London - Geffrye Museum

I was going to upload the photos of the holiday and show you Lake District stuff, but instead I shall tell you about my day in London.

Daughter and I decided not to go to the usual museums we frequent when visiting London and go to a part of London we have never ventured into - East London. So we caught the train and travelled the tube to Old Street and walked to the Geffrye Museum - http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/ - where there are sitting rooms throughout the centuries. A sitting room is a middle class room apparently, or as they used to say "middling" class - neither rich nor poor but in the middle! The building was an almshouse and a very charming building it is too. The paper bag the postcards came in tells you abit about the museum - I hope you can read it. Give the photo a double click to make it bigger if you can't

We spent a couple of hours there and I found a chair made about 1685 using a technique called Turkey work to upholster the seat and back.

Closer detail of the chair

I bought a postcard of a better specimin as the chair had seem better days!

Apparently it is called Turkey Work as the patterns are from the patterns found in Turkish carpets and the rasied bits of the pattern are threads knotted onto the canvas base to make a pile and embroidery stitches sewn around them for the flat background. This was common 1660 -1680. We decided that although the earlier rooms were very nice, and Daughter was impressed by the wood panelling of the first room, we would prefer to live in an Edwardian to present day style of room - especially if I could have the fireplace from the Edwardian room.

Leaving there we jumped on a bus to Aldgate and walked a while in Whitechaple and then returned to our usual stomping ground of Covent Garden and watched the street artists

and found two bead shops - so I had to go in! One in Neal's Yard http://www.beadaura.co.uk/ where I just had to buy these for the new module

and one on Tower Street - http://www.beadshop.co.uk/ where I bought a set of tools for making the bead holes bigger or smoother if they have jagged edges.

Deciding that at 6pm it was time to eat, we headed to St. Paul's catherdral, as the last time we were there we noticed that there was a Yo!Sushi across the road. We were probably closer to the one in Haymarket but we do like to try new places.

So that's what we did and had a thoroughly good time choosing the different dishes from the conveyor belt and watching the chef cooking and preparing the food in the middle.

http://www.yosushi.com/

Had a great day out, now I need to get some sleep...