We made it back alive! I hope you all kept well in our absence. I am trying to see through the fog of jet lag to give you a nice blog post that isn’t just photos with captions. I will do my utmost to give you a summary of our brief trip to Uganda, which will be divided up chiefly geographically (and therefore temporally, as we don’t have a telaporter or a private jet. unfortunately). I should give you the disclaimer that, since I am still deluding myself with the idea that this is a knitting blog, I am going to focus on the knitterly aspect of the journey. If you want all the pictures, friend me on facebook; they will be put up over the next couple of days. If you want all the details of the trip, call me; or there will soon be a detailed report going out to everyone on our email list and linked on our church’s missions page.
This quest begins, as most overseas quests do, on an airplane. This is where it is my duty to tell you that British Air is our favorite airline. Ever. The reason can be summed up in two words:
Complimentary Drinks. Jared made it his duty, during our four BA flights, to collect one of every bottle of spirits they carry. I helped. Observing, you will see the nascent stages of Uganda Project #1: the California Socks. They’re the free ravelry pattern “California Dreamin'” and are made in Berroco Comfort Sock.
It’s amazing how much four twitchy hours of sleep on a red-eye flight helps with jet-lag, because as soon as we dropped off our junk at our hotel room, we were ready to embark on our first crazy adventure. It involved getting familiar with London’s various types of public transportation, both the bus (the upper deck, particularly):
And the tube:
We did things that first day that were awesome but I really don’t want to sit through uploading all the pictures onto xanga. Go see my facebook. But I did get sufficiently sick of the sock to pull out my second Uganda Project:
The Madli Scarf, or Shawl, or whatever, that you’ve already seen. If I didn’t mention it before, it’s Alpaca with a Twist, Fino. Basically, as the YH would call it, alpaca dental floss. This is going to take forEver.
After a lovely and glorious night’s sleep at our hotel (we cherished it as our last night sleeping in a Western place for a while), we went to church at St. Paul’s, then scooted over to the first stop in our international yarn crawl.
I Knit London is a place I read about in Vogue Knitting some time ago; something to do with a lady who’s become “a bit of a knitting celebrity,” as the ladies put it, by knitting little hats to go on health food drinks. I hope someone less lazy than me will put a nice link to some real information about it somewhere; I can’t seem to find the story on VK’s website. So we went because, if it made it into VK, it’s obviously a more than worthwhile shop, but nothing prepared me for this:
Why does not every yarn shop ever have a bar? Booze is so helpful at so many stages of knitting – getting started, frogging, boring bits, difficult bits – this clearly should be a staple. Come on, Other Yarn Stores; get it together and get a liquor license. How hard can it be? Unless you’re a teetotaler or something; then I totally respect that.
After oohing and aahing over the selection, much of which was familiar, some of which was not at all, the shawl and I settled in on the plush leather couch for a good sit.
But we were not alone. Around the same time we came in, two young ladies installed themselves on the couch as well, chatting quietly and creating mysterious polygons out of neon yarn. We knit on awkwardly, me not wanting to interrupt a personal conversation, them thinking, I don’t know, that if I was interested in talking, that I would talk. Anyway, eventually we introduced ourselves and our projects. Turns out they are rather beginning knitters making little animals. Personally I have never knit anything 3-D in my life, so I was shocked to learn that one of them (Fiona I think was her name? Sorry; I feel so bad) had, as her first-ever knitting project, made a little banana. I mean, how cute is that?
More ladies slowly trickled in, and it wasn’t long before we were told that this is a monthly gathering of knitters just getting their feet – err, needles – wet in the craft. In a bold act of knitting evangelism, a few of them had sat outside the store one sunny afternoon and gathered a crowd to start looping. Soon they had formed a group and were meeting. (I should mention that all present were quite impressed with Jared’s cabling prowess. It was revealed at this gathering that it is, in fact, an afghan. It’s sort of an anniversary present, so he’d planned to tell me that day. When told that it was an afghan, a guy who had stopped in to get out of the rain asked, “An Afghan what?” The shop owner informed him that afghan is American for blanket. Then the dude tried to turn the swift into an umbrella.)
I was so impressed at how cool God is. I mean, what are the chances? They were interested in learning what brought us to the shop, so we shared our story, and it turns out one of them is FROM Uganda. She told us about her trip to the Gulu area to see her family, while we shared our mission from the church. When Pippa asked how she could pray for us, she definitely made my week. Happy anniversary to us! (I think the shop owner was at least a little tickled that, after crossing the Atlantic, we chose to spend our anniversary at her store. It was worth it.)
Of course, we had so much fun that we had to purchase some of the stuff that caught our eye.
When I suggested a London yarn crawl, Jared said that was fine; maybe we could budget like ten pounds for yarn. I didn’t laugh. On the outside. Heck, even the shawl was impressed, and it’s a bit snobbish.
Osborn Fiber Studio 