London calling to the far away towns...

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
That went well!
As you know by now, I planned my trip knitting wise down to the last letter, and it did pay off.
I'd planned to start my evangeline gloves, mainly in honour of the band we where going to see and because it was a good pattern to take, small, not too complicated and would keep me interested.

I packed all my little bits up in a pencil case, and even took a spare set of dpns just incase I got some sock yarn I wanted to knit. I was all set!
The journey going down didn't take too long, but in that time I did manage to cast on, do the cuff, and 1 and a half pattern repeats, whilst Dave looked on fascinated, and asking me questions every so often on what I was doing, how I was doing it etc.

My little knitting bag was attached to the top of my rucksack so swung along behind me, complete with Ravelry badges just incase there was any people in the know around!
I didn't get any time to knit whilst actually in London, and in the end I only went to visit Stash yarns in Putney, but it was so so worth it. Lovely shop, great owners, and a wonderful stock of yarn. I stood in wonder at all the names of yarns I'd only ever read about and there they where right in front of me, I could touch them, see the colours, it was just fantastic. I really wanted to buy much more than I did, but I was really really good and spent £26 on two sorts of yarn, which I won't list quite yet as some is supposed to be for my UK swap partner and I don't want to give the game away just incase she stumbles across this post!

This is where my surprise of the week came. As we came in to Stash, I sat Dave down at a table, joking about a man crèche, and he sat being very patient whilst I wandered round. Without me realising it, he'd sat down near the debbie bliss yarns (which I wasn't there to see lol) and noticed the Cashmerino yarns. He recognised the merino part of the name and started to talk to me after we left the shop how he'd seen merino used in some sort of cycling jumper, usually used as a base layer (think Thermal from Knitty) and then said he was thinking of commissioning me to make him a custom one!

Well that was it then, I was off, in my element, questioning what exactly he wanted, how it would need to be constructed for cycling, and then we started to talk yarns and patterns, explained about gauge and yarn weights and what achieved what where, and how. It was brilliant! Never had some one take such an active interest in my knitting before, apart from other knitters. I really enjoyed talking to him about it, and course, have more than certainly agreed to make him his jumper.

I have since realised there is no such pattern at all really for what he wants and it is going to be a case of measuring him up (ooer!) and turning those measurements in to the finished article. I've already sought out advise on how best to achieve this, as lets face it, I've only been knitting just over a year, and found that the best thing to do is to get my self a copy of Ann Budd's handy book of sweater patterns as not only does this contain basic patterns, it also gives all the instructions for making your own patterns, in what ever gauge you need. So if I want to knit a 4ply ribbed jumper, with holes in the cuff for thumbs and longer at the be, I'll be able to suss out the dimensions using this book, and once I've done that, I can get the yarn I need (going to be black naturally!) and get cracking with my commissioned work!

Any way, after all that, the final concert came and went, and it was time to come home again, and I got in a 4 hour knitting marathon on the train coming home (came home a different way than we went), in which I got a lot done, in first class no less, so I had plenty of room to spread out (picture above is on the way home, you can see I had nearly the whole table!) and 4 hours seemed a lot less when I was knitting away quietly to my self and not one person batted an eyelid, tho how often do you see some one who is obviously a goth knitting unless you know other people? Well I know I don't, but I do know some one else who is like me!

It was a good week, in terms of the knitting stuff and what we went to do in the first place! We spent a fantastic time in London, going to 4 gigs and meeting new people, and I'm sorry its all over now. But I'm sure some thing similar will happen, and we'll get to do it all over again!

This is what several days of late nights does! Dave, me and new friend Jamie, chilling in the pub!