House for Sell

The weekend i spent literally sleeping, for example today I could not wake up, and eventually had to drug myself out by hair, like the famous Munchausen. After a lot of struggle I woke up and went to see a house, which would be sold at an auction. Lovely Gregorian house just behind Sadlers-Wels theatre, which is the prime location. The house is old, in a bad condition and must be heavily refurbished. Minnimum bidding price is 400,000£, but my estimation (read, wild guess) that it would probably rise to 800,000£. I wonder if its worth the hassle of buying it and if yes, where should I look for the amount as at the moment there is a hole in my pockets - not a pound left !

Billingsgate Market

Today was my first time to the fish market next to the Canary Warf; the Billingsgate market. It sells fresh fish and sea products almost on daily basis. The biggest customers are the London restaurants, therefore the market is open from 5am to 8am almost daily. We have arrived at 6am, I was driving a BMW, dont ask me what model. It had a nice semi-automatic gearbox of formula-one type, which was very strange to drive. The market is not huge, but amount of people buying, selling and going around is quite impressive. The feeling was like being at the Carmel market in Israel on a busy day. We bought salmon, sea-bass and king size prones. Ate it at an evening gathering on the same day, delicious ! ;)

WindMill Knitting Machine

I was working very hard over the few months, and today is the final show at the RCA, which is the Royal College of Art, probably one of the most famous schools of art and design. My contribution is the collaboration project on a wind knitting machine, which is a Wikuna (from 1920s) knitting machine with custom made windmill and a turning mechanism. A girl, who is a student from the Product Design department came up with an idea and I made the mechaical design. Honestly, reflecting back I can say that it was a very ambitios project because we did not have proper manufacturing facilities and I do not have windmill design experience. Moreover, the time available didn't allow major design mistakes and in addition to all, I was busy like hell with my research projects.
Yesterday when we finally installed the machine outside for the show, an insignificant issue suddenly became into a problem; the back rotating. It was caused by a back wind, the one reflected from the walls of a building, it turned the mill the wrong way around, stop knitting and potentially could ruin the yarn. The poor girl even cried, and i really was disappointed as well, but honestly I could not have had predicted that it may become such a big issue. Anyhow, at the moment the machine is out and wind-knitting, I also ordered a rachet and a pawn, and hopefully the rotating issue would be solved tomorrow.
It is also interesting to note that the girl sees the machine as a step to the product (e.g. Eco-Sock) and really worried about the integrity of the product, while I see the machine as more important piece, because it what makes people stop and wonder.
I am happy with the final design, but as a conclusion, next time I must be carefull in admitting myself into potentially over-ambitious projects :)