Knitting a Tube, on the Tube

I have been working on my Here and There Hat (scroll down), in a manner suggested by its name: this is a hat that seems to ask to be knit in little captured bits of time, here and there. Stacking rows of spongy gold upon vinous purple, pulling udon-like strands of Malabrigo from the centre of my squidgy yarn-cakes: it's a pleasant business. 

Since arriving in the capital, I have largely eschewed the tube. I prefer to use my two wheels and two quadriceps, and zip about on the face of the city, rather than tunnelling around under its skin. This means that every time I do take the tube, it feels like a bit of a treat, especially when my tubular hat-to-be coordinates so beautifully with the yellow poles of the Northern Line. 

Now if I can just perfect the art of knitting while cycling...

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.

Snow snows

Like divine dandruff, snow snows outside my window, sometimes in lazy, downward spirals, sometimes in frenetic horizontal streaks, sometimes in whirlpool swirls and curlicues. It is distracting me from all I meant to do today, and is a right white blight on my plans for another two-wheeled London adventure, but it’s so pretty I don’t mind. 

Also, now that I have followed them southward, I am free to wear the mitts I knit whenever I can get my hands on them (and in them). 

Brick Lane

This Sunday, my sweetheart and I took a stroll down Brick Lane. As it so happened, we had inadvertently chosen to come on the day on the annual curry festival, and the street was absolutely hoaching.

There were various modes of transportation...

... and several decorated walls that caught my eye.

Most of all, though, there was FOOD. Not just the aforementioned curry, wafting sweet spice over the crowd, but all manner of other comestibles, from gherkins to goulash, all sizzling in the sunshine.

 

This last exhibit is a deep-fried Hungarian flat-bread with sour cream, cheese and garlic sauce that was one of the most delicious things ever to have passed my lips. I snarfled half of it before I could bear to put it down to photograph it.

It was a superb day.

London

Felix's thoughtful podcast got me thinking about the colours that make up an urban landscape, so I decided to try and record bits of London that interested me as I was through there this weekend. I don't think I was entirely successful in my endeavour: despite spending a fair amount of time there over the past few years, I do not feel I have a grasp on London as a whole, rather than as a disjointed series of experiences. Still, this was a most interesting exercise.

My London starts and finishes with the gloomy dome of King's Cross, and the glare of the light on the Cambridge Express. That ectoplasmic blob in the photo on the left is a man running for my train.

Sometimes I can't help but be a massive tourist - ooh, neon! Ooh, policeman!

I stayed away from yarn shops; I was sorely tempted by the intoxicating range of Liberty fabrics and buttons, but managed to resist.

 

I saw some extraordinary false eyelashes....

 ... and the people who wear them.

I saw this sign, from a shop in Wembley, which I think speaks for itself.

Although I do not appear to have succeeded in my mission to distil the city down to its component colours, I do bear love London.