It started with a work trip to London last week. I was there for the better part of a week, but I did get a bit of time to go wandering. I walked from my company's offices on The Strand (practically on the River Thames) to Liberty. I was totally blown away by the exterior of the store:
And the interior was just as amazing. There were gorgeous scarves, beautiful wood architecture, some amazing Christmas displays, soft Rowan yarns and beautifully printed fabrics. I managed to score 2 meters of these fabrics:
I gave the one with the stars to Illanna.
After I spent too much money in Liberty, I wandered on over to I Knit London for their Thursday night Knit night. They were all so friendly there and the yarns at the store were all so beautiful! There were even a couple of people there that were good enough to tell me if a yarn I was looking at wasn't available in the states! It was the kind of knitting group that I wished I could knit with all the time actually.
As soon as I got back to the states, I headed on over to Illanna's place. We had organized a weekend of sewing together. I passed out super early on Friday, but ended up waking up rather early on Sunday. We sewed the pajama pants from Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing. After breakfast we traced the pattern pieces out and then traced them onto the fabric. We took a break and wandered over to Yarn Diva & More.
Now, if you've never been to Yarn Diva, let me describe it to you (because I'm too shy to ask to take photos of a yarn store from the inside): it's pink with floor to ceiling yarns. They've got EVERY yarn imaginable from Patons to Berocco to Malabrigo, Handmaiden and Blue Heron. Amazing colors and notions and it's kinda the bee's knees. I ended up getting a new tape measure there (my old one is starting to rip actually!), an amazing button, and a pair of amazing glass needles that I absolutely love knitting with:
The stitches just fly off the needles and I can't wait to find another excuse to knit on size 5 needles!
We came back from the yarn store, cut the fabric out, and started sewing. We even managed to finish relatively early that evening (maybe around 8?)! I'm still so shocked I haven't managed to snap a photo of the pj pants yet. I love wearing them, they're super comfortable, but next time I think I'm going to put a draw string into them as well. The elastic is great, but it's too loose around my waist. However, if it were tighter it wouldn't fit over my hips and would make getting them on rather a pain.
The next day, we wandered over to south jersey to WoodsEdge Wools Farm. They have over 300 Alpacas and Llamas. Someone from the farm was nice enough to explain the differences between the Alpacas and the Llamas to us. The Alpacas, she told us are more like cats in that they're not really that friendly to people they don't know, and they won't really come when you call them. I still think they're really cute. A Suri Llama named Firefly (I think that was the name anyway) was super friendly and adorable:
It was a great weekend filled with fun, awesome food and wonderful friends! I did end up buying more yarn, and as I take photos for Yarn 365 I'll be posting them. I might actually round them all up together. In the meantime, you can check out more photos of London, llamas and alpacas on my flickr stream.
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