The estate's been on my list of things to visit for a few years but I kept putting it off. Going there last week was a completely spontaneous decision, which was probably poor planning on my part, as it ended up taking the best part of three hours just to get there. The second half of the journey took the most time. Turns out there's no direct bus from Lewisham station and I wasn't really up for walking through a couple of miles of unfamiliar backstreets so I had to get a bus to Eltham and then double back around on myself on what turned out to be the Slowest Bus Ever (although I was intrigued to see a sign for an ice well as we passed through Mottingham, having visited the one at the Canal Museum).

All the streets in the estate are named after Arthurian characters. Mordred Road is also home to a gorgeous magnolia tree which will probably get torn down along with the houses (and also at least one very grumpy cat).

Even the church is a prefab — with some pebbledash.

Ironically (and annoyingly), once I finally got to the estate, I stayed less than ten minutes because a man started following me down one of the streets while I was taking photos, trying to chat me up. He only disappeared when I went away, even though I probably would have been willing to talk to him if he'd had more to say than "hey baby hey baby" all the way down the road. It might even have been interesting if he actually lived in one of the prefab houses.

It's annoying I wasn't there very long, though because, on top of wasting so much time trying to get there, I didn't get that many photos. Oh well, there are loads of pictures all over the internet. See more from Sarah McIntyre, Nothing To See Here, hereWW2 Talk, BBC News, and Urban75.

This week the Grant Museum re-opened in a new location, although if you were to visit the new venue and didn't know it was a new venue, it wouldn't be at all obvious.

Housed in an Edwardian library, a double-height room with a balcony on the second level, it feels as though the collection had always been there, with the only modern addition being a few discreet iPads dotted around the room, and some bright green chairs which look a bit out of place, because they are quite a distracting colour.

But they aren't the main draw, so easy enough to ignore in favour of peering into wooden cabinets filled with jars of moles and monkey skulls.

There are some slightly creepy/humorous examples of wonky Victorian taxidermy — it's hard not to anthropomorphise animals that have been given dolls' eyes and funny expressions.

The signage is sometimes funny, too, in a very deadpan way that may in fact be dryly serious. This is not a brain, in case you had any doubts:

Other labels offer philosophical questions — mostly about the running of museums — for example whether it's OK to display animal remains if they can't give their consent, or what makes a bulldog a uniquely British icon.

I like the way you can "adopt" an item in the collection, and have your name displayed on a label, although it's a bit annoying when the label covers the item so much you can't see it properly.

They also have a few lovely examples of glass sea creatures made by the Blaschka brothers. Their work is always incredible to look at — especially when you consider nobody knows how they did it.

More photos here.
More reviews: culture24, Wired UK, Londonist, Hayley Campbell.

visiting the Grant Museum of Zoology
The Grant Museum is in the Rockefeller Building, 21 University Street, just off Gower Street, five minutes walk from Euston Square or Warren Street tube stations. Bus routes 24, 29, 73 and 10 stop across the road, outside the UCL main quad. Entry to the museum is free, but the museum is only open Monday-Friday 1:00pm-5:00pm. Worth a visit in your lunch break, though.

Not to be confused with its posher, more famous namesake further down the river (which I have never had much interest in visiting), The River Cafe is a friendly local caff with a wonderful tiled interior and cheap food. I wasn't hungry enough for a proper meal, but a nicely stodgy croissant and a mug of tea (no milk, one piece of lemon) came to a bargainous £1.80 ­­­­– cheaper than many places charge just for the tea, these days.

You'd be hard-pushed not to love this place, with its ageless formica and tiled walls, and it was certainly doing a roaring trade, even though I'd arrived in the middle of the afternoon, long after the lunch crowd should have left. (although this photo doesn't show the full crowd as lots of people had left by the time I took it)

There are a few more photos here, and more reports on EBCB, Great British Cafes, the Breakfast Blog, and Edwin Heathcote's article at the FT comes with a great slideshow. (Heathcote's book London Caffs has been a favourite in our house since it came out, and is one of the things that prompted me to go to the River Cafe in the first place a few years ago. Worth picking up, even though quite a lot of the cafes in it have closed down now — more reason to visit ones like the River Cafe or Rodi's while they're still around to visit.)

Even if I go out exploring with the intention of taking photos, it can be a bit intimidating being under constant and suspicious scrutiny by locals passing by, especially when I'm on my own. I tend to get a bit self conscious if I'm wandering around on my own in bits of London that don't often see people waving their cameras on street corners, and leave without having taken any photos at all (which only half defeats the purpose of the project, since I am at least exploring many parts of the city I have never seen).

It recently occurred to me that I could of course take photographs in a number of museums (at least the ones that let you take photos), and that this would be a decent way to visit new boroughs and support local museum culture, especially as it is in the slow process of being destroyed by our utterly philistine government and in a few cases won't be around for much longer. So I've scribbled a (probably incomplete) list of all the boroughs — and their museums — in my notebook. Whether I do indeed get to all of them this year remains to be seen of course, but I've already visited a few. Posts and pictures to come…

Incidentally, if you can recommend any interesting places (not limited to museums) to go and take photographs — especially in the outer boroughs — please let me know!

Here's a hedgehog brooch I made for my friend Anwen's birthday

Here's a really terrible photo of the beaded moth brooch I made for my mum's Christmas present (this was the second version, which I started after I'd almost finished the first version and realised I hated it! What a waste of time… I'm not even 100% happy with this one, but my mum loves it, so that's all right)

This is Maurice Morris, who I also belongs to my mum now. (I started making him during Movember, hence his name and his moustache)

I made these two in October. They don't have names yet. They have pipecleaners in their arms and legs so they're poseable (so does Maurice Morris).

This is a sugar skull brooch I made last October

I wore it when I went to the last Alternative Press Fair and several people asked me if I was selling them. One of them, Chloe Cook, gave me her email address and commissioned me to make a brooch for her mum for Christmas.

I tried a different design for the second skull brooch, although I forgot to take a better photo than this one on my phone before I sent it off.

I also made a scrappy dog brooch, which I wore to Boring 2010 and later in the pub a drunk lady asked me to make her one but I don't know who she was…. (Incidentally, did anyone do a blogpost collecting all the reports and presentations from Boring? I can't find one, which is a bit annoying, as is the fact that I haven't taken a better photo than this one)

I also made a couple of lavender owls (not brooches), but I didn't take any photos of them before I gave them away! oops.

(the colours are a bit weird on my photos because my camera really hates the colours red and blue for some reason, so anything with a hint of them comes out looking weird and I don't always get it right when I edit in Photoshop)

Since the start of the year I have made over ten brooches, and have got started on three or four more. Sometimes the getting started bit is the most fun, because I like working out how things fix together, and building them, more than I like the straightforward sewing, which can be a bit boring. I didn't have many proper brooch pins, so I just used safety pins.

Mostly they've been flowers because I like making the roses and the little leaves (and I haven't seen the same style of roses anywhere else online, which is nice)

I also made a larger rose and leaf, which can be worn separately or together (though I'll make them with proper brooch pins next time).

And I made a robot brooch, based on the same design as Sunday George. This one doesn't have a name yet, though.

I don't really like the felt that I used to make it, as it's pretty cheap acrylic felt which bobbles and pills really easily, and isn't as nice to sew as the wool felt that I made Sunday George with (which I bought in Birmingham a few years ago). I don't know where to get some good quality wool felt in London, though, as all the shops I know which sell felt in small sheets (rather than by the metre) all sell acrylic felt rather than wool felt. Sometimes acrylic felt is just as good as wool felt, and sometimes it's just nasty. I did find this list of places I want to check out, but if anyone knows anywhere I can buy some nice wool felt (not online as I like to see what the fabric's like before I buy it), please leave a comment! I

If you want to have a go making some felt or paper flowers I just bookmarked a few different tutorials collected here. I haven't tried any of them yet, though.

Here's the Abominabubble Snowman which I made for my friend Alex Milway last month (apologies for the poor photo; I only managed to take one before I handed him over). Alex has just finished writing his second yeti book and I still haven't even read the first! (But I am loving the work-in-progress pictures from his newest story, which he's been posting on his Twitter page.)

And here's the Sasquatch version that I made.

He's a friendly fellow.

And here's a weird news article about yetis being at war with bears in Siberia.

Sometimes I post pictures of what I've been sewing over on Twitter, although I haven't done so lately because I've been making Christmas presents and I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Back in August, I made a little squid, inspired by StitchLondon's Stitch-A-Squid night at the Natural History Museum, where Deadly Knitshade's Squidius Knittius Giganticus Plasticus wowed the crowd.

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I like the idea behind Stitch London's regular crafting socials, but I'm not a knitter, so I thought it would be neat if other non-knitters could have something simple to make on the night, but I didn't finish it in time. And then I forgot to do a pattern, until a week or so ago, so here it finally is.

Let me know if you make one!

Meet Sunday George who went off to have an adventure at the Wellcome Collection, where he was officially registered by the artist Keith Wilson, and given a dedicated calendar date of his own. February 11th is Sunday George Day, so remember to celebrate with robots!

You can see more pics here, and see the whole Things calendar here. Check it out; there are some great little stories to discover. Here are some of my own favourite things.

It's a great place, full of character, and full of characters. While we were queuing up the entire cafe was being regaled by a jolly woman about her very busy life, and the two women behind the counter had more than a few comments to share.

The best thing about the place, besides it apparently being a great place to people-watch, is the original vintage decor. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos in the front of the cafe because I didn't want to intrude on people having lunch, but there are two other rooms. One is a converted passageway, with beautiful green tiles and a red-and-black checkerboard floor.

The other is a slightly grander dining room, looking more like a traditional pie-and-mash shop (although I didn't notice pie-and-mash on the menu). There's also a little smoking area out the back, which I didn't explore.

As well as the beautiful green tiles, there are other great period details, like this old ad for Nosegay Tobacco (no snerking at the back!), which is found in the window of a phonebox. Yes, a phonebox. No phone that I noticed, though.

Then there is this beautiful illuminated advert for 7-up, which is impossible to resist. It's slightly different on both sides:

viewed from outside

viewed from inside

As for the food, my ham omelette was standard caff fare, although not unnecessarily greasy, and the chips were very good; crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. When I ordered my cappuccino (with slight dread as caffs often fail to provide good coffee), I was asked if I wanted a strong one, and it was perfect: it tasted almost like proper Italian cappuccino. And the staff were so friendly, I instantly felt at home. The only drawback is that it's only open on weekdays, so you can't go there for a weekend fry-up, but if you fancy bunking off during the week, it's well worth the journey to the end of the Victoria line.