The Long Road to Alexandra Palace

It has been a very full on couple of weeks for the project as we made the last effort to finish The Tales of the Unfinishable Extravaganza in time for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. The show opened on the Thursday and we were still stitching the gold craft accessories onto the central column on Monday morning, we finished just in time as the van arrived to take it all up to London. We carefully stowed all our bubble wrapped parcels and the main frame of the Extravaganza into the van and got into Hazels car to follow suit, her car was also filled to the brim with strangely shaped parcels like the pom pom infested finials and the metre high weathervane. Not much room left for humans! It was a strange and slightly unnerving moment for us as we watched the culmination of nearly 2 years work disappearing down a rain sodden road.

The Extravaganza was to be put up in Ally Pally's Palm Court, which looked ginormous when we got there. Was it going to be dwarfed by the huge palm trees and soaring glass roof we wondered. We quickly started to set up the basic structure with Craig and Brian and we began to feel a bit more confident, it was certainly unmissable from the front entrance and filled the space perfectly. In then took us 2 more days to dress the inside, install the lighting and audio systems and add all the finishing flounces. It was the first time we had seen the interior fully completed and in place – the curtained entrance came out just as we had imagined it, the banners looked elegant – we began to feel quite chuffed! We worked such long hours and became such regulars at the Ally Pally the bar that the staff knew our order for white wine off by heart by the end of the week!

Thursday came around and we were finally ready to unveil The Tales of the Unfinishable. We breathed a sigh of relief we'd finally finished and settled down to a great 4 days of meeting project friends and contributors and hearing new stories from enthusiastic visitors coming across the project for the first time. More about this next time...