Shop: Loop London

Our trip in London is winding down... We leave on Friday, and it seems like time has absolutely flown by. On Sunday, our big plan was to go to Loop in Islington. Loop, for the uninitiated, is a beautiful little shop in London that has a pretty decent following in the yarn community. It's the only place that retails Wollmeise (except for Claudia's shop in Munich, natch), and they have an excellent offering of yarn.

The shop is two stories and carries a variety of yarn brands. Thus far, in my yarny travels, Loop is the closest thing to an ideal yarn store I've found. Everything they carried was something I could see myself buying and using. Like, I think I peed myself a little bit when I walked in. One of the most annoying experiences I have in yarn shopping is when you walk into a new store and they have two giant displays full of one company's yarn. I remember walking into a new store that sold a ton of Blue Sky products, every Rowan product ever sold, and a teeny little shelf with a handful of other things. Talk about disappointing! 

ANYWAY, at Loop, I ended up with a few purchases:

For my Pinctada vest, I picked up some Madelinetosh Tosh DK in "Molly Ringwald". I'll have some WIP photos (and a WIP regaling you with my personal frustrations and failures) later. Here's my awesome hotel stash photo:

Next, I was seduced by this skein of Old Maiden Aunt Alpaca/Silk Sport/DK in "Toast". I have no plans for this skein as yet, but it's got some pinkiness to it and that beautiful brown ribbon. It's so pretty I think I would just be happy looking at it from time to time without actually making anything from it:

I was drawn to some cute little 50g Malabrigo lace skeins, in Green Apple and Pearl Ten. There'll be some kind of cowl project with the two of these. Perhaps an Encadre?:

The real gem of the trip was learning about Artisan Yarns. I got two skeins of this Baby Camel/Silk fingering weight yarn that just feels and looks incredible. It has an amazing sheen and just ugh, I want to rub it on my face and sleep with it under my pillow so no one can steal it. I need to learn more about these folks:

One skein is this pale pink, "Pale Madder", and the other is a golden color: 

I'm thinking of something with teeny stripes, like the White Rabbit Mitts we looked at last week. 

So, I'm thinking I'll have to sneak back there before I leave... I didn't get anything blue! Speaking of which, you can get something blue right here!

- YX