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Shopping and services
www.mypropertyspy.co.uk
Get access to property sale prices in London, some dating back to 2000. It’s compulsive reading, and great ammunition when haggling with estate agents who ‘are not at liberty’ to disclose how much your dream house went for when it was gazumped from under your feet.
Check out The detail includes house numbers, taking nosing on your neighbours to new heights.
www.crockattandpowell.blogspot.com
Crockatt and Powell is an independent bookshop behind Waterloo station, and a nicely old-fashioned purveyor of interesting tomes a world away from the likes of Borders. Through its site you can make enquiries about stock but the chatty and passionate blog is the real draw.
Check out The authors are clearly (and expectedly) voracious readers, so keep an eye out for their tips on the next big thing. Currently, it’s Jennie Walker, author of print-on-demand book ‘24 for 3’.
www.streetsensation.co.uk
Take a virtual tour of London’s busiest shopping streets. With photos and links to more than 3,500 shops, restaurants and bars, the idea is that you’ll always know what to expect when you stumble out of the tube station.
Check out Streets are presented as a scrollable set of photos of shop fronts, so you really will be able to find them.
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www.lynku.com
This is a designer fashion and furniture sales website specifically for London. It offers free weekly update emails and alerts on sales and promotions and lists them all by category.
Check out The sample sales calendar is one to check if you’re thrifty as well as well-dressed.
www.londoncyclesport.com
A huge online resource for anyone looking to take cycling beyond the functional commute to a more competitive level. There are comprehensive guides to gear, upcoming events and race reports.
Check out The forums where London’s two-wheeled demons swap advice (it’s also a great place to buy or sell a high-quality bike).
www.theratandmouse.co.uk
Presented in the form of a blog, this site sifts through the endless (and often conflicting) reports on the state of the London property market and tries to present an expert digest, giving you both useful information and an excellent source of dinner-party gossip.
Check out Search the archive by postcode and find out exactly what’s been muttered about your street.
www.londonrate.com
This is a neat resource for busy Londoners: a growing collection of service-industry contacts, rated and searchable. You’ll find everything from computer experts to cleaners, hairdressers to housekeepers and babysitters to builders.
Check out The clearly laid-out prices. None of that ‘ring for a quote’ malarkey.
www.propertysnake.co.uk
Yet another house-obsessed site, but the twist here is that the prices are laid out in a ‘Top of the Pops’ format, so you can see at a glance who’s up, who’s down, and by how much. The name is a cheeky twist on ‘Property Ladder’, obviously.
Check out The easily digested stat on the homepage that tells you how London house prices have gone down recently, and by how much (possibly bringing more joy to first-time buyers than property owners).
www.dalstonoxfamshop.blogspot.com
The genius of this idea is its simplicity: the author (a DJ, admittedly) heads to Oxfam in Dalston, buys up a load of music cassettes, and then digitises them so that they can be played online. The result is a resurrection of nostalgic old tapes that might otherwise have been lost. It also features the sleeve art and other charity-shop finds.
Check out Where else online will you find ‘Disco Beach Party 2’, complete with the ‘Birdie Song’ and ‘Una Paloma Blanca’?
www.londonnoisemap.com
As it sounds – a digest of official goverment measurements of volume levels across the capital, presented in colour-coded map form. You can search by postcode and instantly see how much racket there is on your street relative to the rest of the capital.
Check out It goes into so much detail you could even use it to plan a tranquil picnic – the lowest noise areas, not surprisingly, tend to be bang in the middle of parks.
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19 comments
just for the record... our website is here...
http://www.hungamunga.co.uk
I think we should all meet under Waterloo Bridge at dawn with sharpened knitting needles.
well you cant say we dont live up to our name can you !
Me thinks there are some lessons to be learned here. Lets all do something positive and go get crafting instead.
ROTFLOL! Thanks ladies, this is one of the funniest things I've read in ages. Who knew knitting could be so cut-throat and, well, bitchy! Knit On!
It is clear that you don't like that the group got chosen. You think the girls "got their mates" to attack (I personally am a group member, but hardly know the girls, though I do have a great amount of respect for what they do). You accuse their events of being "all part of other people's events" which is utter rubbish since they solely organised the Knit Crawl and the Lion Scarf. Also the girls have worked with other groups and organisations such as IKnit and Twisted Thread in harmony with them, rather than jumping on their coattails as you seem to imply (and again all in their spare time for no pay!)
You can't like everything all the time, but it seems to me you should just let the girls have their moment, and leave it at that. You have told the world you think their website isn't good enough for the top 50. The rest of your put downs they could have done without, I think.
You tell them to take it on the chin, but you are basically putting down five very hardworking girls who go out of their way to organise events and write newsletters that benefit you. This seems rather ungrateful to me.
I think the girls who have replied have been remarkably restrained in their comments. And I love the website. It makes me laugh. Well done girls.
I think this all may have spiraled a little out of control! Charley, you are more than welcome back to the group and are completely entitled to your opinion on the site and the group itself. There was no move to gang up and we are sorry if you feel that way - those that have posted obviously feel very protective of the group and I'm sure they meant no offense to you. Perhaps we can all do a few stiches and cast off this matter now!
Charley, I am not picking on you but it seems to me that you're missing the point of of Time Out's article and being needlessly brash about it. The introduction to the article says: "here we present 50 other corkers, all of them useful and entertaining, all of them devoted entirely to the Big Smoke."
Stitch and Bitch London may not have the slickest website but their website has lead to a community being formed centred around knitting and being in London.
Fair enough, Hungamunga also do crafts but they don't necessarily have a London-specific theme. Also, iKnit is a yarn and knitting shop/cafe so it is primarily a business.
Flipin heck, there's nothing like a stitch n bitch scorned. I do get the newsletter, I have been to the group...all I wanted to say is I don't think, of all the craft sites in London, it deserved to be the only one in the top 50 BEST WEBSITES IN LONDON. I take it very personally that Amy says I'm slagging off a charity event - the link says 'check the progress of it' and I'm just saying that the progress has finished - Time Out's fault not yours. It was a brilliant idea and it looked fabulous. Maybe my beef is with Timeout for choosing the site and I realise you've probably got all your mates here to attack any kind of criticism and I'm feeling a bit ganged up on. Take it on the chin - it's just my opinion! You are all mighty and powerful and the best knitting group in the world, your sacrifices 'to spread the pure love of the knit' are truly astonishing and your projects (all part of other people's events - although I loved the knit-crawl too) are worthy of the highest praise - I just didn't like your website's all. Will I be allowed to come back?
sounds like sour grapes to me. thanks for the extra publicity though
Charley, Stitch and Bitch London meet every week. I would think that is fairly regular. How much more regularly would you like them to hold events?
Also they arrange events all the time. They did the Knit Crawl in the summer (which I loved), the Champagne bar at Ally Pally's Knit Show, and the UK Blanket for all the knitting groups. And they have stuff coming up all year.
Both sites you mentioned have had their Time Out glory in the past. Why not let Stitch and Bitch have theirs?
Charley, luckily most people in the craft community are more supportive of each other. You're wrong about the lion scarf event too - I just checked, it was less than a year ago. Pretty bad form to slag off a charity event.
I think it's awfully sad that a Londoner interested in crafts, is so critical of the stitch and bitch group being given a little credit. Shame on you Charley.
Charley, I think it is a terrible shame that you can't just be happy that craft is getting a nod, since you seem to support it so much.
It is also very sad that you can't let a non-profit group, who do so much for charity and have an passionate love of London, get a bit of praise.
If you have a website of your own, run a knitting group of your own, write a fortnightly newsletter, teach people to knit for free weekly, pay out of your own pocket to spread the pure love of the knit, then I would be very interested to see it, to see how we can improve.
OK, point taken. I'm an avid crafter and I just thought, IMO, that there were better craft websites available - afterall this was the best 50 websites in London article, not the biggest group or community, or non-commercial organisation list.
I've been to a SNB London meeting before, I've also been to a couple of other knitting groups who also meet weekly, run by people who work and they are free too. Funny thing is...your comment is almost an ad in itself! Happy stitching.
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