Yummy Sock Yarn

This arrived in the post this week.

How gorgeous are they?  From Laughing Yaffle and I can't wait to turn them into lovely socks and/or wraps/scarves. 

The baby blanket is coming along well, half way through the third border, I'm hoping to finish it this weekend.

London Marathon

I'm watching the London Marathon as I type this, it's raining really quite hard in London which is a complete turn around from the beautiful weather we had yesterday.  I spent most of yesterday sat in the garden reading my latest book group book, more about that on my book group blog (subtle plug :-)).

I always find the marathon so inspriring, just watching the elites and how fast they effortlessly glide along fills me with awe.  My running training (which is nothing compared to even the slowest marathon runner) is going really well.  I had a sports massage last Monday which left me battered and bruised (but feeling better) so I decided to take a week off training.  I went out for a test run (literally) yesterday (in the glorious sunshine) and everything felt fine.  Just at the end I felt my hip beginning to ache to I stopped and walked.  I've still got ages before Race for Life in July so I'm quite happy to take it slow and steady.

My baby blanket is coming along leaps and bounds, I've sewn it up and I'm knitting the border in 4 sections.  I sewed the first border last night and it finishes off the edges really nicely.  The 2nd section is 30cm long, so only another 50cm-ish to go, maybe I'll get that done while watching the marathon ....

Arrrgggghhh my fingers....

My hands ache, knitting has broken me.  I've been spending my time off work trying to finish off the baby blanket for my sister.  This is my first knitting project, it's been great teaching me all the stitches and practising, I'm quite fast now.  The blanket is 30 squares of about 40 stitches and 50 rows, I started off doing about 2 squares a week gradually building up to 3 but even so I've been knitting small squares for 3 months now.  I've now just got 2 squares left which are stocking stitch with bobbles.  After then I have to block (wetting each square and pining them out to the correct size) then sewing them together before knitting the border and sewing that on.  Here's the bag with all my squares.

 Phew!

I can't wait to get it finished and I've been so good not buying loads of wool and I haven't started any other projects to distract me.  I can see the end of the tunnel and can't wait to start my first pair of socks with my Regia self-striping wool.  Here's my stash, complete with nosey cat.

In other news, I've been doing lots of batch cooking for the freezer, we probably have close to 20 meals in the freezer now.  I sorted out the lounge shelves so they're nice and neat without the heaps of crap we usually dump there.

Yes, this is actually better than it was before.