The Great London Trip!
It’s been almost two weeks since I was in London, already – Now I better tell you something about it!
First of all – I had a fabulous trip! I stayed at an airbnb which allowed me to live at Portobello Road for a forth of what it would have been had I stayed in a hotel – and also, it was a great experience, staying with locals! I highly recommend!
Saturday I met up with Karin from Sweden. We’ve known each other for a long time and met at the first Patternreview European meet-up. We had coffee and then walked through Portobello Road looking at all the great stalls and shops. (My host later told me that there is a really good fabric vendor there (close to the Portobello Green) who has his stall up on Fridays! He apparently buys fabric from design houses in France and sells cuts at a really good price. Next time I’m going to go there on a Friday!!!) And we stumbled across yarnbombing at Portobello Green! We had to hug the trees!
Then we went to Islington (Angel tube station). What a lovely area! We walked around a bit and browsed the shops and stalls and suddenly we were right in front of the Loop yarn store! We had to go in, of course – having heard so much about it – and we might also have shopped a tiny bit…
Next up was Ray-Stitch. Great shop – and I got some pins etc and was very tempted to get some liberty jersey. I didn’t though, and now I so regret it. It was lovely and in greenish and teal toner. Would have been absolutely perfect for me!
Anyway.. I was there to meet Stephanie from Starcross Sewing for an interview. She is doing this thing where she sews from a new indie pattern company each month and then interview and review the products. Go visit her – she is having a give-away of one of my patterns!
The rest of the evening was spend with wine and dinner and when I returned home to my room, my host and her friends invited me to have cheese and wine with them. That was really interesting and they were very kind. I went to bed soon though because Sunday was the big Patternreview meet-up!
Words can not really convey what a Patternreview meet-up is like. And neither can pictures, I’m afraid. It’s like being with your bests of friends and you just talk and talk and talk and have a great time. We started out talking about sewing but eventually we were covering other subjects such as husbands, driving, politics and pubic hair (yes, really, but that was a lot later and after a Gin & Tonic or two…)..
But before that, we were at the V&A and spend some lovely hours sitting outside in the sun and having lunch and just talking sewing. Later we went to Liberty’s (yes, I bought a piece of souvenir fabric) and after that some of us went to a pub for some drinks (and this is where the talking evolved somehow).. You can hear about the V&A – and my interview with Deepika from Patternreview in the latest episode of the twinneedle podcast.
I am so happy I finally got to meet Deepika – founder of Patternreview.com. We’ve known each other and talked via e-mails and on Skype for ages, and strangely it didn’t feel like we were strangers at all. It felt like we were friends, who had just seen each other last week, and will see each other again in a couple of weeks.
More wine and dinner on Sunday evening (a great Turkish restaurent in Lamberth!) and Monday I spend walking around London (I love doing the London Walks!) and then met up with Karin again for a lovely afternoon tea, before I caught the flight back home.
Can you tell I had a great time? I only wish I had been able to meet Rachel (House of Pinheiro) and Karen (Did you Make That) and Winnie (Scruffy Badger) and other bloggers as well. Well, I’m hoping to come back to London in January. See you then?
