A little bit Loopy

Let me lay some background on you: I have moved to London, on a semi-demi-permanent basis. As I haven't got a place of my own yet to stay, I brought virtually no possessions, just a couple of books and a capsule wardrobe. Well, 'capsule wardrobe' might be overstating things: I brought all t-shirts, pants and socks clean at the time of packing, and a motley mess of jeans and skirts. Anyway, the past few weeks have revealed two terrible gaps in my small collection, making my capsule more of a crapsule.

Gap #1: Any footwear vaguely appropriate for snow.

I feel like an under-equipped 19th-century Polar Explorer, tramping about Arctic South London tundra shod in a pair of pitiful plimsolls, alternately dodging snow foxes and frostbite.

Gap #2: Any knitting stuff. Any at all. I went without a wip, nary a needle, sans a single skein.

But why? A couple of reasons: the yasteroid has taken up residence in a Chinese cedarwood chest in Edinburgh, and it looked so cosy in there it seemed a shame to disturb it. Also, the creative dry-spell I've mimbled about on here before is not entirely over, and I am still disorientatingly less enthused about knitting as I once was; it makes me a little sad to look over my blog archives and see the volume of woolly goods I used to churn out. 

Since being here, though, my chilly fingers have been itching for some stitching, and it seemed foolish not to capitalise on the capital's treasures. So it was that I found myself inexorably drawn yesterday here:

Loop might well be my all-time favourite yarn shop. It has such an awe-inspiring selection, spread out over two floors, of lots of stuff that is difficult to get elsewhere in the UK, as well as supremely tempting notions, and the best button collection I have ever seen (which reminds me that I need to make a pilgrimage here one day, if I'm ever in York). Its embarrassment of riches always makes it embarrassingly hard for me to choose: I really would have been happy going home with any one of their yarns. So I bought two:

Yarn cakes fuelled by cupcakes

I think part of me thought I might transmogrify into a brand new 'London' person upon moving here, casting off (ha) all former interests and suddenly starting to seek out underground 'gigs', and art exhibitions in abandoned tunnels. As Socrates keeps telling me via tube posters, 'the unexamined life is not worth living', and there is much about being in a new place that has made me question several old certainties. 

Equally, though, there is a great comfort in doing familiar things in unfamiliar surroundings, and super-squishy Malabrigo Worsted has to rank as one of the most comforting yarns in the world. At the moment, pulling loops though loops of wool from Loop is a great help in stopping me going loopy.