Veuf Tricot

If Gregg Wallace was my life coach.....

... he'd be telling me in his usual understated manner that, "Weeks don't get much tougher than this!"  The fact that I've been getting imaginary motivational statements from Gregg should really be a warning sign that things have been far from normal.

Things have started moving apace with our other plans and so I'd been struggling to hold everything in my head at home and at school.  Imagine my delight therefore, when I received a message on Wednesday that OFSTED were coming in on Thursday and Friday.  Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of OFSTED has made claims about stress in teaching, or lack thereof.  The challenge of being judged on the basis of a 20-30 minute long observation with one class on one day of the school year is, to put it mildly, incredibly daunting.  In the event, the worry was unnecessary as I wasn't seen.  Frustrated doesn't even begin to cover it.

Naturally after a momentous week with very little sleep, I ended Friday with no voice and the start of a debilitating cold that brought with it the most wondrous cough that kept me awake.  Oh joy, oh rapture!  By Sunday morning, I was still feeling awful, to the point that I almost withdrew from the Wokingham Half Marathon.  Having trained hard for months, this was the first chance to run in an event this year and I needed proof that it had been worthwhile.  So I went down to the start in the pouring rain and freezing wind to see how I felt about running.

Adrenaline being the marvel that it is, I decided to really go for it and despite hacking coughing fits around the course, I managed to set a new personal best time.  It wasn't as quick as I'd hoped for a couple of weeks ago, but all things considered, still a big achievement.  Unfortunately, adrenaline doesn't last forever, so last night I was back to the cough, the streaming cold and added aching joints.

Despite the general insanity of last week, it was an exciting one without a dull moment.  I'm hoping that this week will be slightly calmer so that I can catch up on the things I've been neglecting.  Maybe I'll have the Steady Hat finished by the weekend and I definitely must push the fundraising more.

Speaking of which, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in the UK will suffer from domestic violence at some point in their lives.  I'm raising money for Refuge to help people deal with the after effects of domestic violence.  Please sponsor me by clicking on the tab at the top of the page.  Thank you!

Wokingham Here We Come

Next weekend I'm running my first event of the year, the Wokingham Half Marathon.  You may be wondering why I'd go so far from home to run.  The answer is really simple and two-fold.  Firstly it's where my sister and her family live, so I have a good excuse for dropping in on them.  She's runing too, so it will be a bit of a family day out.  The second reason for going so far is that the course is essentially flat.  Living where I do, hills are a near permanent part of my training.  The opportunity to not have to charge up or down steep slopes is a big draw.

Since I've actually tried to do proper tarining over the last few months, I am in pretty good shape for a reasonably good time.  I can certainly easily go the distance, but the real question is whether I have the pace to run a personal best time and at long last go under 90 minutes.

To find out for yourselves, you'll have to be in Cantley Park just before 11.30 next Sunday when I expect to cross the line.  I'll be the sweaty man in red fingerless mitts.  If you're really lucky, and it's cold enough, you might even get a sneak peek at the Steady Hat that is nearly off the needles.

Finally, thanks to all who have left such kind comments here, on Twitter and on Ravelry.  I still have a way to go to hit the fundraising target, but it's been a great start.

New Pattern: Ready Fingerless Mitts

I've not blogged in a while. I've been busy.......

Ready Fingerless Mitts is the first pattern in a collection of 3 designs to raise money for Refuge as part of my London Marathon training.

I knitted a swatch.

And then two whole mittens.

The idea behind these was pretty simple: I wanted something to keep my hands warm during cold training sessions. These Ready mitts are ideal for winter running. Pop them on while you’re warming up and your hands won’t freeze, while your fingers are still free to adjust laces, watch and so on. The beauty of fingerless mitts is also that you don’t need a pocket when your hands are warm. I usually just slip my thumbs out and slide them up my wrist to make a woolly sweatband. The mitts are quick to knit up and both the rib and pattern are sufficiently stretchy to give a close fit, without squashing fingers.

Ready Fingerless Mitts £2.50: 

Ready, Steady, Go! eBook £5.00: 

But that's not all. I've also hooked up with a crack team of UK hand-dyers to offer exclusive Refuge colourways to go with the designs. First up is Fyberspates who have dyed this excellent shade of Ready Red for Refuge in their MCN Sport yarn (80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon; 265m/100g hanks; £16.00). One hank is enough to make 2 pairs of Ready fingerless mitts, and £10.80 from the sale of each hank will go to Refuge to support their work. The Fyberspates Refuge yarn goes on sale on Monday 4th February in the evening as part of the monthly update. Check out the new arrivals page on Monday evening to be sure of getting a hank!

The next design in the series will be available at the end of February, and uses gorgeous Skein Queen yarn. The sample is nearly complete, so I'll post pictures soon. And the final instalment will go live at the end of March and uses Babylonglegs' wonderful yarn. We are particularly grateful to Babylonglegs for inspiring the whole project. Thank you so much!

Many thanks also to Andy Robinson at Bluefaced.com for kindly donating base yarn to the hand-dyers, thus enabling more of the money from yarn sales to go to support the work of Refuge! Grateful thanks as well to the ever-brilliant Nic Blackmore for kindly donating her formidable layout and design skills to the project. You're both fabulous!

With that, it's off the computer and on with the running kit to run into the teeth of the gale blowing outside.

This is not a viable alternative

I haven't run in nearly a week.  This is a bad thing as it's messing with my training schedule.  Part of this has been work related and part weather related. With snow around, I can't find anywhere safe to run as the side roads and pavements are ice rinks.  I've had to find an alternative:

I really don't enjoy indoor training.  I can't see the point of working up a sweat to go nowhere at all with exactly the same view throughout. In short, I'm frustrated and bored.

The only bright side has been that I've been able to uncover a few gems on the BBC iPlayer.  I don't know how, or exactly why, but I found myself watching Hits of 1978, including googly-eyed Kate Bush and so on.  With the variety of songs, I couldn't match my cadence with anything except, bizarrely, Terry Wogan singing The Floral Dance.  This may be a throwback to my youth as a member of Helston Town Band when I actually played for the real thing. However, national treasure or not, Sir Terry's version remains an abomination and the whole episode was a little unsettling.

With sub-zero temperatures promised for a few more days, I'll be busy going nowhere for a while to come.  Maybe I'll even begin to enjoy it.

Winter is here!

After the best part of two months on holiday, presumably skiing in Klosters, winter has made a comeback this weekend.  Yesterday's run was completed in pouring rain combined with icy wind.  Today was a bit more pleasant as the sun made an appearance, but the cold was pretty bitter.  The next week or so looks like it will be even colder.

I really don't actually mind the cold as I can just stick on another layer and a hat and get out there.  Unfortunately, my current hat is all but worn out, so I will need a new one soon.  Happily, I know where it will come from.  I will shortly have the first of the Ready, Steady, Go! patterns to release as I have my sample knitter on the case right now and the second pattern is a hat that just needs writing up.  Watch this space for photos and further news.

Knitting the Queue

She-who-knits has been looking back over her knitting output for the year and has actually started to plan what she wants to make over the coming year.  So determined is she to control things that she's even joined a special Ravelry group.  This being the season of peace and goodwill, I wasn't going to make a fuss, but then  some habits are really hard to break.

I present to you "The Twelve Days of Queue Mess"

On the first day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
a shawl from 2003.

On the second day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
two slouchy berets
and a shawl from 2003.

On the third day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
three babies' cardis,
two slouchy hats
and a shawl from 2003. 

On the fourth day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
four Fair Isle tank tops, 
three cardis,
two slouchy hats
and a shawl from 2003.  

On the fifth day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
FIVE POM POMS, 
four Fair Isle  tops, 
three cardis,
two slouchy hats
and a shawl from 2003.  

On the sixth day of Queue Mess,
the top priority:
LYS sale on,
and now she is onto Plan B!

Happy New Year! 

Cheer up London!

We've returned from our annual tour of the UK.  One of the things I enjoy about visiting family is the change of scenery when we're out and about.  That's not to say that I am bored with the Somerset/Wiltshire borderlands, but change is always good.

With the marathon 4 months away, I still needed to keep my training up, so had the opportunity to change my usual routes.  I had wanted to do a set of posts about running by rivers, but West Dorset was mostly underwater.  The Thames however, had not burst its banks, so I was able to put in some miles and get some photos.

 

I was serenaded by parakeets and met this friendly heron on the riverside.

I have to say that he/she was the friendliest part of my run.  It seems that smiling at, or saying hello to, other runners on the Thames path has a default response of looking away, or frowning.  By contrast, the minimum response elsewhere is a nod, but more often a few words.  I was left wondering whether London's runners are ruder, or just having a collective bad day.

Splash, Bang, Wallop

Yes it's raining.  Yes I went for a run.  Yes I fell over.  Again.  Fortunately, this time there was no lasting damage.  So, now I need to add changing direction on wet manhole covers to my list of things to avoid while training.

It has been remarkably wet for months now, with near constant flood warnings each time it rains  for longer than a couple of hours.  Following the assertion of of Ranulph Feinnes that, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing," I've wrapped up and got out there.  Today I paused to take a few photos to show the effects locally :

I strongly suspect that when I go past here tomorrow, I'll need my wellies as the water was right up to the edge.

Somewhere under here is a small pond at the centre of a nature reserve.  In March, the river was a fraction of the width it is now and the pond was all but dried up.  I do wonder how much of the banks will remain once the water has subsided.

With Christmas next week, I think I might struggle to get out and keep on top of training.  Hopefully the weather will pick up a bit too as there can't possibly be any more water in the sky to fall.

Ready, Steady, Go!

It's now 4 months until the marathon and I really haven't done a great deal to move the fundraising forwards.  Fortunately, I had the kick up the backside I needed last week from Sarah at Babylonglegs.  What started off as a simple idea has bloomed into this: persuade fabulous indie dyers to do exclusive colourways to go with 1 skein patterns designed by .......... me!

I've taken the frankly unlikely step of joining Ravelry.  I'll be releasing one pattern a month through my account from January 2013 with the option of buying each separately, or all three together as a mini e-book. Yarns to go with the patterns will be available from the terribly generous Babylonglegs, Skein Queen and Fyberspates.

Before all of this happens though, I really must finish marking the Year 11 mock exams that are calling me from my desk.

Snapper For Hire

Somewhere in the depths of my About Me page, I've written down photographer as one of my occupations.  This is of course a bare-faced lie.  While I can hold a camera and vaguely point it in the direction of the knitted person I'm supposed to be taking photos of, the results are quite frankly variable.

Yesterday was really very cold, but was also very clear, so I was dragged out of the gravitational field of the sofa to assist She-Who-Knits with some pictures for patterns/blog/can't quite remember the real reason, but won't admit I wasn't paying attention.  We stood in a frozen field looking for the ideal location and then I was sent to stand on the mark to set up the camera.  As you can see, I was the model of concentration.

Once we'd got the location right (next to a patch of nettles), and I had clear instructions not to mess with the settings, I had the task of getting the perfect shots.  Here are some of my high points:

Not that my model was being particularly helpful either.  Everything was just right and then this:

Once I'd lost all feeling in my hands, we called it a day.  Not all of the pictures were this bad.  Some may even make it onto an internet near you over the next few days.

Incidentally, you'll see from the top photo that my face has all but healed up following the accident the other week.  Despite still having the scabby knees of an 8 year old boy, I'm back to the training and was quite impressed with myself that I covered a smidgen over 100 miles in November.