Been up to London to visit....................

..................well, not the Queen, but some MUCH more exciting and special people:

Lesley
Gina
Michaela
Val
and My Bossy Big Sister Ally!

(and there some very sadly missed friends who couldn't make it - but hopefully next time?)

Ally, Lesley and I met up at our hotel - The Hilton in Euston (MUCH more luxurious than our usual Travelodge) and Gina came to join us about half an hour later.

Instead of hitting the hot-spots of London we all decided to stay at the hotel and chat, knit, laugh and drink wine before having a lovely, extremely reasonably priced, if rather unusual meal in the hotel

(I'm sure the waiter didn't mean to call Gina a Tart and I'm sure Gina didn't really mean it when she said "No. Her!" whilst pointing at me. At least I think she didn't mean it?!)

We nearly managed to kidnap Gina and persuade her to stay the night in the hotel and come shopping with us on Saturday but unfortunately common sense prevailed and she decided that she really did need to go home.

On Saturday we met up with Michaela and Val at Loop and bought lots of gorgeous woolly goodies. This is my selection:



Then Val went back to meet up with her friends at the Country Living Show and the rest of us had some delicious cake

before spending ages trying to catch a taxi in the pouring rain to take us to Covent Garden.

We eventually got there and popped into Cath Kidston (but they didn't have the type of fabric I was after which was a shame - so I bought a hanky instead!)


followed by the Bead Shop

and then another cafe for a drink, chat and knitting session

before it was time to head back to various stations to catch our trains home.


In true Bloggy-Meet-Up fashion there was a lovely exchange of gifts:

a beautiful button brooch from Gina

my bloggy giveaway prize from Val

delicious, not-much-left-to-photograph fudge from Michaela, beautifully wrapped in cute fabric

UN-photographed but equally scrummy-delicious chocolate brownies from Ally

and beautiful stitch markers from Moogs!


Moogs had also bought me this brilliant coaster


and this fabric was wrapped around a lovely blue dotty mug


This is what I looked like when she gave me the mug on Friday evening:


But this is what I looked like on Saturday morning when the bag I was carrying it in flew off my shoulder as I was giving Val a hello-hug smashing my lovely mug into smithereens

Sorry Moogs!

On the way back I had a lovely time with my friends from home, showing them what I had bought and looking at all their goodies.

They had all been at the Country Living Show and I had commissioned them to buy me some Decopatch supplies:


and my lovely friend, Aunty Ann had also bought me this gorgeous birdie

So it was a really fantastic weekend made even more lovely as Locketland had been struck down by a really awful sick bug which left us all feeling very poorly and this was the first time in over a week that I had actually felt well enough to do much.

But the icing on the cake was the telephone call I received on my way to the train station on Friday telling me that I had got my lovely new job! Hoorah!