I'm back

Yep its me, in my motorhead baseball hat and the vertrans 10's trophy. I am actually old enough to play the vets rugby now (yes but I look like a wee spring chicken and no arguments about that)but for our tournament I'm the wrong sex so I just got to pretend for a bit.
The tournament went really well. I got 20 womens teams in so I was really chuffed and top notch teams they were too. I got to go on a boat trip with the Mens South African national 7's team which was excellent fun and the lads were really really nice. I also managed to do the announcements for the Women's European Championship games which kicked off on the Saturday night. By the time it had all finished on Sunday I was so tired, i couldn't even drink beer. Actually that's not entirely true. I could drink beer, just not Heineken. I hate the stuff now. I think my tastebuds are now in tune with the more refined german stuff. Anyway, everyone worked really hard and my mates Tessa and Sarah are stars :o) coz they ran me around, put me up and generally just helped me out loads.

I got absolutely no knitting done almost the whole time I was in A'dam. I did knit on the way there though. I started a sock which I had to frog as it was too big but that was it. Before I went I finished the swallow tail shawl in KSN purple stuff with glitter. Photo will follow when I get around to blocking it. I slept near enough the whole way back on the train so no knitting done there but since I've been back I've done 1.5 socks. I've had visitors as well and I do feel that I'm not paying them enough attention if I sit and knit while they're here. This weekend I have some more visitors and I need to get 0.5 of the other sock finished before they arrive as the socks are a sort of belated b'day pressie for one of them. Hopefully I'll get the top part of the sock finished tonight.

My wish to turn into a gym bunny is slowly working, I'm just trying now to work up the courage to get my knitting out while on the exercise bike as I feel it cuts down on my hobby time. I mean I don't mind reading while I'm on the bike but I'm not sure about knitting yet. I have read knitting books and patterns while cycling to nowhere so the next logical step would be to whip out the pins and knit in time to the pedals. We'll see.

Book Quiz and stuff.

Was at stricktreff last night and it was great fun. I did more treffing than stricking as I made a mistake with the swallowtail shawl. Yes I've moved on already. The other stuff has not been forgotten but I'd been sorting out my stash when I came across some lovely kid silk night in a purpley plum colour. It was there sparkling and blinking at me saying 'knit me please' so i did. I'm on the 2nd graph of lilly of the valley lace and I don't like it. I'm glad that there is only a few more rows to go before that stops. I think its the yarn and the needles that makes it all the more difficult to purl 5 together on the return rows.

I'm also turning into a gym bunny (Well I'm trying) I went last night before stricktreff and got myself a new training schedule. This one involves coming to the gym 5 times per week and bouncing around on the cross trainer rather a lot. I did 30 mins on the cross trainer and 30 mins on the bike, sweated like a pig and felt great afterwards. Although my toes did go slightly numb. Maybe once some kilos have gone, they won't go as numb. Also I need to be perfectly honest with myself. I DO have time to go 5 times per week. I mean what else do I do apart from sit at home and knit? And to make it less tedious - yes bouncing around on the cross trainer can be very tedious - I've to break up the training days, so 2 days off per week and not one after the other. This does mean that I have to go to the gym at some point over the weekend. Fingers crossed that I manage to keep it up.

I got this from SaRi's blog and thought that it would be fun. Quite appropriate book concidering the gym bunny stuff and the fact that I do talk about rabbits :o)

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Wips

This is my current WIP. Its Laminaria from knitty. I'm not putting in the link coz the blog police always think that I'm a spam blogger and cut me off for weeks at a time. Okay so that was a slight exaggeration and its normally only for a couple of days at a time but its a pain especially when you're an infrequent blogger like myself. The wool is from Wollmeise in deepest darkest Bayern and the colour is Pfauen fädern I think. They are really pretty colours when in the skein but I'm not so sure about them now that they're knitted. I think this might be a present for someone. We'll see.
I've also decided I like the term Work in Progress or WIP much better than UFO. In that case I have tonnes of them. Another WIP (started yesterday) is the Hanna Valkenberg or however you spell her name's Gloria. Its kind of petroly blue colours and very nice. Its kind of wierd to knit and they didn't have the english pattern so I'm knitting auf deutsch but its going okay so far. Its quite complicated but the woman in the shop was right. Just follow the instructions to the letter and it works. Because I'm having to concentrate on the german thing, I'm not making as many mistakes as I normally would with a new style of knitting so I would strike the 'its going okay' and change it to ' I'm quite pleased so far'. We'll see how far I get with it before i get bored again.
Fank's boat warmers are finished. Well his feet are the size of boats so the socks can be classed as boat warmers.
Off to sort out some 7's stuff now. One cancellation and one other team from the waiting list in, Its going well.