All Fingers and Thumbs

I celebrated my 30th birthday yesterday and it seems like 1978 was a great year for knitting ;o) Here's to a great 30s.

...but no beret! Thanks for all the cheering on in the comments but despite the encouragement and the wonderful example for CSC from Carlos Sastre in the time trial yesterday, I haven't quite finished with the knitted on band. Thank you so much to the organisers of the TDFKAL , to Teri our fabulous CSC knitting team leader and to my fellow riders. It's been a wonderful knitalong to be part of and has reinvigorated my love of Le Tour, sorry I couldn't quite make it, even at the back of the peloton, but thanks for having me along for the ride. It's hard to be too upset though - deadlines are made to be extended, especially in the summer, it's been a blissful weekend and today it feels as if life is one long picnic.

Being at home immediately made me feel so much better and day by day I've improved this week. The jet lag has not been fun but I'm finally starting to feel a little more human just in time for the weekend :o) I will not be wearing my shrug as the sleeves are still very much a work in progress as you can see here. Ah well, life just gets in the way of knitting some times and I have a shop bought back up! It's just too glorious for words to be at home, managing a little knitting but mainly just resting and exhaling all the tension from the trip. Thank you for all your well wishes. I'm hopeful I might get my beret finished for the Paris parade, here it is as it was on Monday when I caught up with missed events from Le Tour with the review programme. We've got people staying from tonight but I think this pattern will be simple enough for me to follow and still be sociable. Comforts have also arrived by mail - waiting for me when I got back was this delicious yarn whic...

I have been, all week. Just hanging around now waiting to go to the airport to get on the tin can home and still feeling sick as a dog. Officially my worst trip ever, I've seen little but the inside of my hotel and for two days as we had no power I was lucky if I could see that! I'm always a little bit anxious before travelling a long way as the travelling itself and being away from my normal routines can be very draining because of the ME; this time that was no problem but right at the start of the week some stomach bug totally wiped me out and is still doing its best to keep me down. Then to round it off my poor knitting has also gone MIA - see that beautiful Silk Shine up there, I started a Spring Forward sock in it on the way over and somehow I lost it and my beautiful Schrodinger cube bag when I dragged myself out to a meeting on Thursday. Oh sob, when I could just have done with a break. I've got one ball of the yarn left and I'm not sure where I can get another ...

Nothing quite like it for warming the heart! Some people like Queen of the Froggers understand an odd concept called destashing . It's not something that computes round these parts but I was happy to help out a blogger in need :o) Got my paws on a whole kit of Summer Tweed to make Glimmer . Another summery yarn next from another lovely blogger. This is a skein of Giotto that the lovely Knitty in Pink offered me after seeing my plans for summery scarves like the Rose Garden one which I'm pleased to report was happily received by the birthday girl at the start of the month. This colourway is perfect for a friend with an end of July birthday if I can just fit in the knitting of it! You could say that's the crazy thing about buying more yarn, when will I knit it? But hey, it cheers my heart just looking at it so here are some soft squishy ornaments in the form of rich, red sock yarn. This comes from a UK ebay seller called The Yorkshire Wool Lady who s...

I've been slow at getting away on Verity as I was kidding myself that I could finish Iris to take away with me on a work trip tomorrow. This little shrug has missed two deadlines now just because I always like to imagine I can knit faster than I have any evidence I can. I'm eager to wear this as I have a lovely dress that needs it. Next occasion wear event will be end of July and even allowing for tour knitting I think that is finally a realistic deadline. Here is Verity where I dropped her last night having momentarily ridden into a spectator who as per le chien is no help on the knitting front at all. I've messed up one row so a quick repair required before I'm back on the bike. I am so enjoying watching the Tour itself and after the disappointment for my CSC team in the time trial I was pleased to have a good cheer for the Brit yesterday. In honour of Mark's sprinting prowess I think I should enter the knitalong's first intermediate sprint . I'm n...

The big one kicks off today, July 5 th , time for le Tour. In France the cyclists will be pumping the pedals and around the world 108 knitters will start the needles clicking. I am very excited to be participating in this super fun knitalong - for the maillot jaune - so it is also part of my Project Spectrum contribution. So needles at the ready it's time to say - go Team CSC ! My chosen project will be Verity - un chic et joli beret: Would you like some help with that? Those sticks look good: My Mum's dog Poppy thinks that knitting and blogging is dull compared to playing with her. Thank you all for your lovely comments on my Rainforest socks, it was super satisfying to finish in time and feels great to read all your nice words :o)

Well I'm not sure you could actually call the fabulous June prize draw from Sockamania a race or I would have lost by a mile and to be honest it was less slow and steady like a tortoise on these socks and more slooooooowwwwww and a burst of speed at the end but anyway I like that post title and I hope I win the draw :o) So here are the Rainforest socks all finished, and I do agree that they are far more fabulous than any socks that could be bought for the money spent on the yarn and luckily I know my Mum will feel the same. It was a double deadline for these socks as it's her birthday on Wednesday. Two deadlines finally meant that I shook off my knitting malaise, stopped the evil business of calculating stitch counts (I agree never again until a project is finished - and maybe never again at all - too scary!) and buckled down and got the second one knit in three days. It was quite fun wondering whether I'd have to stay up to midnight last night to get it finished but I ...