out and about in london - part 2

More wandering, more shops (Maiden, Labour and Wait, Speedies), and more graffiti. Here is some of Malarky's work, in Redchurch Street. He's done a long mural here plus a shutter or two. I love his stuff, the colour, the patterns, the characters - it's just so playful and happy. 

and then more in Cheshire Street

 and then again in Sclater Street 

All this and then we found a little exhibition of his work along with 2 other artists at Tony's gallery in Sclater Street. It's on until December 18th 2011.

Next stop was Boxpark, we'd glimpsed it as we'd been walking about and everyone was talking about it so we had to see for ourselves. It's a pop-up shopping mall made of shipping containers. The official opening was Saturday but some shops were already open including my absolute favourite Marimekko! Others include Nike, Calvin Klein, and Onepiece - who I hadn't heard of before but they sell amazing adult sized romper suits (I guess that's what you'd call them). There are also food outlets, we popped into Foxcroft and Ginger for more tea and a delicious toasted muffin with butter and honey. Just what we needed after all the walking we'd done.

Refueled we set off again, this time heading up the Bethnal Green road to Donna Wilson's sample sale. How exciting I'd been looking forward to this all week and it was our main reason for visiting London on Thursday. We arrived about 15 minutes early we climbed the staircase up and up finally rounding the corner to be greeted by cups of mulled wine! 

It was quite overwhelming to suddenly be in a room filled with gorgeous things at bargain prices! D immediately found a big cuddly wolf and then we started selecting cushions. We are currently on a bit of a mission to rid our room of beige! So Donna's cushions are just what we needed. I'll try and get some pictures of our lounge one day when there is enough light to show it off and then you'll see exactly what we bought - our Xmas presents to ourselves! So glad we got there when we did as when we left the queue was snaking all the way down the stairs (if you were in that queue hope there was still plenty left by the time you got to the top).

We left Donna's sample sale and headed into the drizzle and the dark. But we still had another port of call on the agenda. We made our way down to POW on Commercial Street to catch the opening night of stencil artist Evol's show. This time it was our turn to join the queue, luckily it wasn't too long and we were soon inside in the warm sipping rum punch surrounded by Evol's cityscape. He'd turned what looked like old metal lockers into high-rise tower blocks all using stencils - though he's so skilled you'd never know that's how it was done had it not been for the used stencils hanging from the ceiling casting shadows around the room. 

The show's on till the 23rd December and well worth a visit.


So all in all a pretty good day finished off with noodles at Wagamama and a drink in the pub before it was time to take our train home to the country.