Ahh Scottish Highland pics, Scottish Highland pics, they *are* on their way. What with all the hard work that my computer’s been doing over the last few days shifting files all over the place, it’s been a litle bit busy. I think it feels a bit overworked too as last night just as I was clearing even more stuff onto my hardrive, the fans were whirring away and then suddenly there was a small <<POP>> and my power cable stopped working. Fortunately I have a spare otherwise it would have been about £50 to get a new one (yikes!).
The other reason for the delay is that my free time has been slightly distracted by a new crochet project: it’s going to be a dress.
Today we went to London as my sister wanted to look at fabrics and trimmings for the new dresses and aprons that she’s going to make. Because of this it wasn’t a typical London trip day as we headed away from our usual hangouts in the West End and ventured up to Goldhawk Road and the area around Shepherds Bush Market where there are some a-ma-zing fabric shops. There’s practically nothing you can’t get. Here’s the market bit, it’s kind of set under railway arches (Goldhawk Road was just like a normal London road, but with lots of fabric shops).
In all my years living/working in London, I’d never ventured out this way before as I simply didn’t have to so it was an interesting trip for me. Shepherds Bush Market was much cleaner and organised than I had expected- for some reason I thought it would be a bit more messy, more like Camden or Petticoat Lane.
Of course I didn’t go all the way to London without taking a girl with me… this time it was Jaime who wanted to come (she’s Cecily’s ‘biological’ sister and the girl who I adopted when we went to Brighton).
Sadly the damp weather meant that she spend most of the time asleep in my bag, but she did enjoy a nice afternoon cup of tea. After that we did manage to make it to the West End for a couple of hours in the end which made me pleased- a trip to London isn’t a proper trip to London unless it involves Selfridges 
Also I decided on the way home that I wasn’t happy with the progress I was making with my new crochet. Since that photo was taken it had acquired three more rows of shells, but when I measured it my tension was all off making my intended size small into an accidental size large. So as soon as I stepped through the front door, I took a deep breath and unravelled three evening’s worth of work and it was done before I had time to think about it. Clearly unravelling my crochet projects is becoming a bit of a routine, but I’m actually relieved so now as like before, it means I can start it again with a smaller hook. I will no doubt be posting updates of my progress.
Born to wear pretty dresses and Barbour jackets and skip through muddy English fields in a pair of Hunter wellies, Nin is now a 30-something British Ex-Pat living in the urban wilds of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. She likes cake and chocolate and is on a quest to find the perfect Stateside cream tea.
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10 Responses to “Crafting, Craft Supplies and London”
I love your crochet shells. I saw a book today that I am going to order that showed how to make those delicate looking shells. Petticoat Lane, those names sound so eclectic and wonderful. I wonder is you would like all the names of places around me: Tahlequah, Skiatook, Neloganey, Bartlesville, Pawhuska, Stillwater, Nowata, Pawnee, Fairfax, Cleveland, etc. There are a lot of Native American names given to everything here.
I wonder (if) hee hee!
Jaime? What a wonderful name! HeeHee. She’s got me on the blond hair bit, but at least we share the blue eyes. So sorry to hear about the ripping out sadness; I hate that part of my knitting projects! I’m making tea sets for the little nieces for Christmas and you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to rip those apart.
Love the crochet, it’s going to be stunning!! Sounds like a very fun and fruitful day. I **love** London, I think it’s the most amazing city.
Jaime looks like she had a good afternoon too. Am a bit worried about Paige though, haven’t seen her in ages, has she completely recovered from her sleep-eye ordeal?
BTW off to see Mamma Mia in 2.5 hours. Gotta get me my Firth Fix !!
I have but 4 minutes left of battery on my laptop. I haven’t read the whole post yet, but I must say this before I shut down for the night:
You’re crocheting a dress?! That is SO cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before and I can’t wait to see the final product
T-minus 3 minutes…
I’m in complete awe - I wish I could do crochet (oh, okay, tell the truth Marn - any crafty thing) like that … just beautiful.
just like Marnie, i wish i could crochet, but i just cant ! my fingers get all nervous and the tension makes it impossible for me to do anything..
the fact that we moved closer to my parent’s house makes me hope that she’ll teach me around a cup of tea this winter !
Looks like a fun trip, despite the crummy weather. I can’t wait to see the dress finished…I hope the tension issues work out soon! =)
Oh Paige is fine and well recovered. (She actually underwent corrective surgery a couple of weeks ago to put her back to normal as with sleepy eyes she didn’t feel like Paige any more.). She hasn’t been around the past couple of weeks as as soon as we got back from Scotland she went off to an outdoor pursuits centre with Amélie Chocolat. They’ve spent the past two weeks canoeing and abseiling and things like that. They were supposed to come back last week but were enjoying themselves so much that we decided to extend the trip.
Well the crochet has now been ripped apart for a second time now. I was happily making a row of shells when I realised I had a funny extra chainspace in the first row, so it all came apart again. It was only three rows though, and the tension was much better this time….third time lucky, eh?!
[...] Several weeks ago I started what I thought was going to be a fairly straightforward crochet project using a therapeutic mind-numbingly repetitive pattern that would give me hours of creative pleasure. A crocheted dress, what could be better? Although it lived exactly up to expectations, it was also a little frustrating. I find that crochet is notoriously difficult to tension/gauge exactly and inevitably with me there is always a bit of prior experimentation involved with the hooksize to get it just right, usually with a couple of false starts. This was about my fourth attempt where each time beforehand I had worked a good few rows of big shells in the border before measuring across and finding it was completely out of gauge and I had to rip the whole thing apart. Understandably I was getting a little sick of the lower border and eventually hit the wall where I would have gladly given away my internal organs just to get beyond this part and onto the main pattern. [...]