Geeking out in the U.K

Friends of ours recommended that we visit Forbidden Planet, which is just a small chain of stores around London that carry comics, SF/F books, collectibles, games, and other media memorabilia. It's just more massive than any comic book or game store than I've been to in the U.S, and they had a massive range of products. I didn't take any photos (unfortunately), but if you're in the U.K, stop by at least one store.

As part of our trip, we caught our train to Wales at Paddington Station.

And if you're familiar with that name, you might be familiar with a certain bear, named Paddington. Obviously, we had to stop and take a photo of this "little" bear.

We also had to go to Kings Cross Station to catch our early morning train to Scotland. Despite what you might think, this station is pretty modern.

And for those Harry Potter fans, we took some photos at Platform 9 3/4ths. Luckily, because our train was so early, we didn't have to wait in line to take a picture, but unfortunately, this also meant we couldn't go into the huge Harry Potter store right next door.....

We didn't make any special trips to see these "monuments". It was just lucky that we were passing through these locations. However, it did make my little geek heart sing!

Visiting the Doctor Who Experience

Earlier this month, the Viking and I traveled to the U.K for a particular reason.....the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff was closing and we had delayed going for quite some time.

We had discussed traveling to the U.K and see some friends for quite some time, so this was a perfect opportunity. So, we flew into London stayed with some friends for a few days, then traveled to Wales via train, where the Doctor Who Experience is located in Cardiff.

We had anticipated that Wales would be wet and grey during our trip. However, Cardiff was lovely.  The weather couldn't have been any better....mid-to-high 60 deg F with beautiful skies.

Did you know that Cardiff is a big sports-oriented town? Neither did I, but there were a lot of sports themed stores, art, and banners around.

We visited the Doctor Who Experience (DWE) and spent a good 3-4 hours there.

 There are two parts of the DWE. First, a Timelord guide takes you on an hour-long trip with the 12th Doctor (Capaldi's Doctor) to recover crystals to save the Universe. Amoung many of the Doctor's enemies, you encounter Daleks and Weeping Angels....

Despite it being geared towards kids, I enjoyed it...and the huge room full of Daleks and graveyard full of Angels was a tad bit scary and creepy.

The second half of the DWE is a museum of many of the props and costumes from the show ---from the aliens, to many of the companions, to the Doctors themselves, and the different TARDIS consoles. This museum is where we spent a great deal of time.

 

The Face of Bo

   

Did I forget something??

 

Just a few different props

 

And more aliens

Not to mention a K-9. (Not the original...we saw that one at GallifreyOne, but this one is just a replica.)

And so many TARDI! They had a few from different eras.

And their consoles.

I ended up taking a lot of reference photos of various costumes from the set. (I'll see about posting the others later.)

The one nice thing about the exhibit is that you could really get up close and personal with a lot of the costumes and props. They asked you not to touch anything (totally reasonable), but many things were out in the open where you could seriously inspect types of fabric, accessory choices, etc., without having to second guess through glass.

The whole thing was amazing and we had a blast. We eventually left because we really needed to get food after 4 hours! We heard that the lease might be extended, so we'll wait and see! We'd definitely go again, if just to do more research!

 Afterwards, we visited Cardiff and, of course, the location for Torchwood.

No, we aren't geeks, why do you ask?

We also visited Ianto's shrine on the Cardiff pier.

Because that's the way we roll. :-)

We did do a lot more than just travel to a few geek meccas. We visited parts of Cardiff, spent time around London, and visited Scotland, as well a local yarn shop and some geek areas, but that's another post for another time.

U.K. Travel Knitting and LYS Shopping!

As a knitter, you can't go on a trip without bringing knitting AND visiting any local yarn stores in the area.

For knitting, I kept it very simple and brought one small project and one large-ish project. The smallish project was the self-striping Potter-themed that I picked up at Stitches West 2016. If I was going to the UK, I was going to bring something UK themed, and what better thing than a colorway containing all of the Hogwarts house colors?!

The largish project was my Viajante (traveler) shawl. My hope was that I would get a lot of knitting done on the plane and (hopefully) finish it while in the U.K, which didn't quite happen. The shawl grew quite a bit in size and I worked on while having large swaths of time, such as on the plane or on the train or hanging out with my friends. It was much too cumbersome to carry around with me.

Consequently, I worked on the socks quite a bit, while riding on the Tube (their subway system) or at various restaurants and cafes while travelling around London.

So, I've named my project Hogwarts TUBE Socks.... ;-)

 

Okay, I thought it was funny......

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LYS Shopping

As the Viking and I were going to the U.K, I did some research on a few local yarn stores that were in reasonable distance that were open while we were there. We were on foot about 90% of the time (except when traveling by train), so accessible was key.

Unfortunately, I only managed to visit one LYS in Scotland, Ginger Twist Studios, because it was the only one that was open and within reasonable walking distance.

However, she had yarn made out of strictly English wool, such as Jacob and Blue Faced Leicester! So, of course, I had to buy a few skeins, as well as some of her specific colorways. :-)

And the owner, Jess, was a very nice & pleasant person. I highly recommend visiting the shop if you're ever in Edinburgh!

Jess, the owner, told me that there had been the Edinburgh Yarn Festival the week prior, which we had just missed! I made a mental note to visit Scotland whenever this festival happens next.

Falling Behind

I'm really behind on things. The whole of January was unproductive and super busy at the same time. First, I caught a most horrible cold from the Viking and was laid up for nearly a week. My view of the world looked like this:

My cats were super happy that I basically spent a week sleeping either on the couch or on the bed. It meant that I cuddled.with them But even after I got better, I had a lingering cough that went on for weeks. But, unfortunately, all that coughing meant that my back was not happy. I basically threw out my back, which prevented me from doing a lot of the things I was hoping to accomplish.