Mother's Day

Almost five years ago, on my first Mother's Day, Ironman took wee two month old baby Devil to an all-women's triathlon (he was "volunteering")and left me by myself for six hours. It was bliss (except for the exploding boobies part - thank you Medela!). It was the first time I'd been by myself for more then half an hour in a long time, and I loved every minute of it.

This year, I actually got to celebrate Mother's Day on Saturday with a similar event. IM went for a run early, and by 9:45, I was on my way to the Tube, with instructions not to come home until dinner time. Ummm...ok! My first stop was the Handweavers Studio, a lovely shop in Finsbury Park. Although it is largely a weaving shop, complete with shelves and shelves of gorgeous yarn for weaving in the most incredibly array of colors, they also sell spinning fiber and wheels. They had a bunch of undyed fibers of both the animal and plant varieties (mmmmm....cashmere/silk blends!), but I came away with 50 g of tussah silk dyed by Treetops Colour Harmonies, in "Thunderstorm" (always with the blues...). And a copy of Abby's book, which I've been wanting to get for a while now. And I'm much happier to buy it from actual people rather then Amazon.

Then it was off to Loop, in Islington. What a lovely store! Small and cosy, with what I assume is a classroom downstairs (lots of people were coming in for a crochet class). They've got a nice range of yarns, including a bunch I'd never seen before. I came away with three skeins of sock yarn...

Crazy Zauberball, for the first sock of Sock Madness IV.

Some Misti Alpaca Hand Paint sock yarn, in slightly more manly colors, that I'm thinking will be socks for the Man with the -20C toes.

And some Handmaiden Casbah Sock, in "Blackberry", that I just could not resist.

After doing serious damage to my bank balance, I then went to Leicester Square, ate ice cream and saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", which was grim and in Swedish (! I had no idea). Thank goodness Hollywood didn't get a hold of this one. The book is very dark, and LA would have twisted it into something with car chases and explosions. But this version was pretty true to the story, and the actress who plays Lisbeth was great. After the movie I headed home to meet up with the rest of the family, who had happily spent the day at the Dinosaur Museum and the Princess Diana playground. It was a lovely day.