Stitch 'n' Bitch London Part 1 - Mostly Bitching

You may have noticed on my List of Things to Do that go to a Stitch 'n' Bitch night is number 7.  If you haven't heard of Stitch and Bitch, basically they are knitting groups, at which you can do your fair share of bitching, while you're stitching.  Stitch and Bitch London holds these meetings at various cool locations throughout central London, and they teach you how to knit for free!  How cool is that?  Well, if you ask me thats super cool because most things in London are EXPENSIVE.  And since I am in need of meeting people and making new friends I thought this would be great and they must be friendly people if they're willing to share their mad knitting skills with low lifes like me for no moolah.  All I have to do is show up with knitting needles and yarn.

I try to create mini adventures to keep myself entertained around here.  Nick is in the Holy Land doing business (not with God though) so that means I'm extra bored.  So today I went to Loop, a shop for all things knitting.  This place isn't even remotely close to where we live but it looked cute and it was a good excuse to go to a new part of London.

So I take the tube to the Angel stop on the Northern Line and I head off on my way.  I'm supposed to walk North towards this one street.  Ok sounds easy enough, except the street is DIRECTLY across from the station.  How I'm supposed to walk towards it, unless I'm crossing the street which clearly isn't what google intended, is beyond me.  So I willy nilly pick a direction and start walking.  Google says its supposed to be a 16 minute walk.  I walk for awhile and I feel like I am not going in the right direction because the street seems way more windy then it looks on the map.  However, London doesn't believe in well placed street signs.  They may or may not be posted at the corners.  Also they're not like street signs like in America, they're posted on the sides of buildings making them much more difficult to spot.  So I kept walking until I actually found a street sign and learned I wasn't even on the street I was supposed to be on and I was supposed to be walking in a straight line.  Good one.

Can I just say I want a fancy shmancy phone with GPS?  My darling husband (who has lived in London his entire life I might add) uses one all the time, and he gave me his piece of crap really old nokia which is useless for people like me who have no sense of direction.

Anyways.... I turned around and hiked for a half an hour in the other direction and finally found the shop.

It was cute, as expected, and the shop keeper was a friendly Canadian who married an English guy too.  She said she's been here for 20 years, I assumed she liked it, but she said she didn't and warned me not to have babies or else I'd be stuck here too.  Thankfully, that is most definitely not on the agenda and I will continue with my prega-phobia.

Anyways she told me to pick out some yarn, and then she got the appropriate needles for the yarn.  Apparently the yarn you use corresponds to your needles - who knew?   She gave me rainbow colored ones.    Do you like my purple yarn?

I'll be attending my first stitch and bitch session tomorrow night at the Royal Festival Hall and I'll let you all know how the stitching goes, as I'm sure you've noticed the bitching part will not be a problem.