D is for...

Dublin

So, it's actually over a month since my trip to London, but I've only just got around to posting about it. Oh well!

I only had one day to look around, but I liked Dublin and I hope to go back. I was amazed at how small the place is, given it is a capital city - but then when you realise that the whole of Eire has a population of something like 4 million, and London itself has about 7 million, that puts things into perspective. It being a catholic country, Sunday shopping options were a bit limited too. I'd hunted the internet for yarn shops, but most I found were unfortunately closed - including this one, which looked interesting:




I had a bit more success at Hickeys, which focuses more on fabrics (if only I'd had more than hand luggage to carry things in!)

They do have a selection of yarns in the basement - mostly the usual uninspiring acrylic mixes, but I managed to pick some lovely Kilcarra Aran tweed in a heathery purple:

And i just had to get a shot of their fantastic window dressing:

After finding some yarn to take home and hobbling around the city for as long as I could manage (given my huge blisters), I headed to the airport. They made me take off my shoes at security and I left them off for the rest of the journey home. That's right, I got one the plane, off the plane, went through Heathrow airport, got on the tube, changed at Green Park onto another line and got to my station all in my socks. Can you imagine the looks I got for that? Even in London I don't think you see all that many people travelling on the tube in socks...

April...

I was happy to find that most shops in Tallinn open on Sundays, so we did a bit of a tour and picked up a few bits and pieces...

There is a large shopping centre in Tallinn - I think it was the Viru Centre - and in the basement we found our first shop. No purchases, but worth a look, they just didn't have anything I wanted at the time.

Just on the Town Hall Square, we found this shop:

Where I purchased this yarn:

On Niguliste, we found another shop selling traditional Estonian knitting and more wool:

Picked up a few more bits and pieces there:

And as I mentioned before, on Saturday we found a shop on Narva Mnt where I picked up some bargain rate laceweight - it worked out at about £3 a skein! In fact, all of my purchases were absolute bargains, I spent about £30 in total, and brought home quite a haul!

Tallinn also has loads of places selling traditional knitting, including a whole street full of stalls on Muurvahle (no idea how to add umlauts on blogger unfortunately)

So, that was a great trip.

The rest of the month passed in a blur of telling people about our engagement, with the added highlight of my birthday, a job interview, visiting baby P and family (including a trip to Monkey World - highly recommended) and...

... being offered a new job and being able to hand in my notice! Woohoo!

February...

Going back in time a little, I'll cover my trip to Stockholm and a few details of my explorations!

Stockholm has to be one of my favourite cities, and I've been lucky enough to visit three times now. It's not a cheap city, so having a friend whose floor you can sleep on is very helpful! This was my first trip in winter, and I was hoping for the full Scandinavian winter experience, but alas, it was not to be - I managed to visit on one of the warmest weekends they'd experienced in months, so there was a lot of slush and not much snow - and not much need for the toasty hats and scarves I'd squeezed into my little suitcase either. I did, however, get to walk on a frozen lake, which was quite fun! (the tracks you can see are from cross country ice skates, which I'd never seen before)

I also got to explore some yarn shops and managed limit myself to one purchase (well, it would have been rude not to buy anything at all...)

I went here:

I can't quite figure out what this shop is called, its either Sticka, or This Side Up, but anyway, their website is here. A lovely shop, and the place where I bought this:

There was also another shop just down the road with some lovely stuff that looked to be hand spun/dyed - but I resisted!

We popped in to the yarn section in NK, which seemed to carry a lot of Rowan etc, so not much use to me, though it did look like a good selection, and toured some of the bead shops on Sodermalm. I have a feeling there might have been some yarn shops there too, but we couldn't find them (despite trying!). Finally, we visited Panduro Hobby (UK website here) where I picked up some little label holders which I intend to use on the side of the Ikea boxes that hold a lot of my stash. When I get around to being organised of course!

On the way home on Sunday afternoon, we happened upon another shop on the square where my friend catches the bus every day - which she'd never noticed before (no idea how, it was pretty big!) but unfortunately it had already closed. Oh well, will have to save that for my next visit!

As mentioned in my previous post, my flight home was delayed, so I whiled away some time chasing Bell Bottomed monkey around the airport while he misbehaved:

And that was about it for February, from what I can remember. Well, it was four months ago!