Confession time – I slipped in a quick trip to London on Thursday – it’s the holidays, right? Anyway, I went up primarily for a bit of “away” time, to go drool over the yarns at John Lewis, and also to go to the Afghanistan exhibition at the British Museum. As a last minute decision, I also decided to go to Loop, having found the most beautiful scarf/wrap on their website which, although still in my infancy of crocheting, I decided to have a bash at.
First thing’s first – having gone to Highbury tube station last time, purposely avoiding the 5,000 ft high escalator at the Angel, I realised that it was maybe worth suffering the escalator so as to avoid the rather long walk down Upper Street in Islington (as lovely as it is). Anyway, I c**ked up again, and wrongly remembered that Highbury was the nearer tube with the long escalator, so ended up, once again, doing the long trek down Upper Street, a little confused! (for those who don’t know, the Angel tube station is 2 minutes from Loop!). But I made it, and purchased my beautiful galabrigo 4 ply yarn with which to make this:
To see more (and it’s truly worth it), go to the Loop webpage here and they show you a whole stack of different ways to wear this beautiful wrap.
Then, of course, comes the joy (?) of turning these:
into these:
but then, if you’re lucky, it starts to look like this:
(My trouble will start when I do the next square and it looks nothing like the first one… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!)
Back in London I then, according to plan, mosied over to John Lewis in Oxford Street to try and buy some yarn that was a colour other than pastel – it’s actually incredibly hard to find primary colours in decent yarns (please don’t ask me what I define as “decent” – that’s for another time). Rowan Belle Organic was the only contender, really, so I purchased a couple of balls for Jen and I to share in our endeavour to create a crocheted Chelsea Flower Show!
Next came the trip to British Museum, which was when it all started to go a little pear-shaped. Got to the museum fine, only to discover that the exhibition had finished on Sunday – yes, this Sunday just gone – durrrrrrrh!!! I was able to chuckle at my general inefficiency … that was until I went to go outside and saw that the heavens had opened with 2 month’s worth of rain. The nearest walkable refuge (and next on my list) was Foyles, and I arrived there absolutely dripping wet (I make it a point NEVER to use an umbrella in London – waaay too dangerous!). Obviously the best thing to do was to gravitate to the coffee shop and enjoy a lovely latte whilst I dried off – well, it would’ve been rude to drip all through the store, wouldn’t it?! Whilst drinking said latte, I phoned home to check on the rest of the family – well, mostly the animals actually – to be rather reluctantly told by Hannah that Honey had decided my crochet flowers not only looked good enough to eat, but that they were good enough to eat. OK, so plans for Chelsea a little set back now… just as well I bought some more yarn really?
The day’s adventure complete, I decided (unusually for me) to get the tube back to the mainline station – I prefer the bus as I think it’s far more civilised – only to get stopped mid-tunnel because of a problem further up the line. In RUSH HOUR! I don’t even want to begin to describe the heat and sweaty bodies with whom I shared that tiny space for what seemed like an eternity. I was only relieved that I wasn’t on a home-ed field trip with a stack of exuberant youngsters crammed in with me!
Home safe and well – cuddled the rabbit, glared at Honey, oh yes, and cuddled the children and husband. I don’t think they’d actually missed me very much. That’s what comes of raising independent children.
LifeSymphony 
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