A Day in London… with Crochet at Selfridges

My husband and I had a day in London yesterday. It only takes an hour by train for us to get to the centre of London but surprisingly we don’t visit very often so when we do it’s always a real treat. We had booked tickets to see a band we love, Mandolin Orange, who were due to perform in the evening but we headed up earlier to make the most of the day (on this occasion the children were left behind and taken care of by wonderful family… 🙂 )

I had no intention of writing a blog post about our day but my love of crochet and writing this blog seemed to influence how the day evolved…

Firstly I remembered a post by Wild Daffodil about beachcombing along the Thames…

https://daffodilwild.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/arranging-things/

…so when we saw the beaches along the Thames as we walked from London Bridge to the Millennium Bridge I felt compelled to go down and have a closer look. Wow- how much ‘River Glass’ we found! There were copious amounts in so many colours, shapes and sizes looking like precious jewels. I don’t know why it surprised me to see so much – I suppose it’s obvious that in a big city like London with millions of people who go by the river, all kinds of things, including a lot of glass bottles, must end up in the river!

We got chatting to a local lady who had just found the sole of a Victorian shoe!

After our little beachcomb we headed to 2 Temple Place http://twotempleplace.org/ which had a free exhibition called ‘Sussex Modernism’ with a collection of artworks from Sussex (which is where we live).

I must admit that when I visit museums and galleries I don’t always read all the explanations and I don’t look at every piece in detail- I prefer to just stroll and browse and am often as impressed by the actual building and surroundings. This was certainly the case here and the following photos are of the stained glass windows and staircase- so beautiful!

And then came a real highlight of the day… I had seen a photo shared on Instagram of a window display at Selfridges by Katie Jones http://www.katiejonesknit.co.uk/ so we took a detour especially to see it. Oh My Word- it was so beautiful and it made my day to see crochet in Selfridges in the middle of London!

It’s just so stunning… 🙂 🙂 🙂

Inside Selfridges by one of the entrances was an exhibition by Luke Stephenson http://www.lukestephenson.com/ and these photos of birds were so gorgeous and vibrant…

We then headed to ‘Loop’ in London, a yarn shop that I knew existed and have seen many advertisements for in magazines, but had never visited… http://www.loopknittingshop.com/

It felt like a little piece of heaven in that shop with so many beautiful yarns…

…and somewhere for my husband to sit! I must acknowledge at this point what a supportive husband I have- you may think I dragged him round all these places but he was a willing participant and kept reassuring me that he was happy to come along! But I did feel a little less guilty browsing for ages in that shop knowing that he was comfortably resting his weary legs!

The price tag on some yarns was too high for me so I settled for some gorgeous little 25g balls of Scheepjes Catona…

And here I am outside…

So you see that if it weren’t for others sharing through blogs and Instagram, we would never have searched for glass along the Thames or seen that window display in Selfridges… I’m so glad that we did!

And yes, we did get to see the band at the end of the day… they were wonderful too 🙂

Thanks for reading- I hope you enjoyed sharing a little of our day… 🙂 😉