Computer Systems are Down

Last weekend, Mr Knitty took me on a tour of Down Street.  This made at least one of my friends a bit envious.  For those who aren't complete geeks, Down Street is a tube station that went out of service before World War II and was then converted to be the headquarters of the Railway Executive Committee.  Staff would be in the station for three weeks at a time, so conversions included a kitchen, bathrooms and sleeping quarters.  There were no lights, so we all had to use torches.  There were points in the tour we had to stop and switch the torches off, so that they didn't distract drivers passing through the station.  Of course, I came away with design ideas.

My wristband, which I inexplicably lost somewhere between the tour and dinner. 

The outside of Down Street, as it looks now. 

A plan of the station, displayed inside.

There's a host of abandoned stations across London.(I really want to visit Brompton Road; our tour guide is holding out for King William Street).  Transport for London still own the abandoned stations, some of which are still maintained should they be needed for emergency evacuations.  (Better pictures of Down Street from other blogs are here and here) 

I've never been so excited to see something which isn't in the Johnston typeface. 

The telephone exchange, buried deep inside the station

The lift shaft, which I immediately recognised from pictures I've seen in blogs. 

The purple and green sparkly socks are continuing.  As I was getting bored of vanilla socks, I thought I'd stick a pattern on.  The pattern I wanted didn't quite work, so I ended up with this:

Pattern of stockingette and garter stitch stripes.
Yarn = Funny with sparkle, by Opal in colourway drollig/droll

For some reason, I'm having problems with getting a basic pattern right.  I messed it up and tinked back, only to mess it up again.  I tinked back again, only to find:

See, just above my thumb?  Knits where there should be purls - and vice versa. 

This is why vanilla socks will never go out of fashion.

A couple of months ago, I ordered yarn from some independent dyers in North America (The Yarn Jar, String Theory Colorworks and Desert Vista Dyeworks).  The yarn is luscious and I want to support small businesses.  However, I made the mistake of getting them sent to my work address, which meant that the delivery card went missing and two months later, I still don't have my yarn.  I was trying to resolve one order last Monday with Loriann from The Yarn Jar, but Etsy was throwing a wobbly.

At the same time, I was trying to buy yarn for my Christmas knitting.  Website one had what I wanted, but it had an SQL error at the till, so I couldn't pay.  Website two didn't have everything I was after, so I had to enlist the help of website three.

Two purchase problems in one evening.  Is the Internet trying to impose stash control on my behalf?  It seems the only logical solution.