First Day Back at Work and Another Good Mail Day!

Yep, today was my first day back at the day job and I’m exhausted! It was really good to be back though, great to get to use my brain for the first time in over five weeks. In some ways it was as though I’d never left because I just settled right back in. But am I tired now! And the work doesn’t end because I have to do some KnitCast writing tonight for an interview tomorrow.

Yesterday was a public holiday in the UK and we went to St Fagans – the museum of Welsh Life because they were holding a summer craft fair. It’s quite a prestigious fair and if you want to have a stall there you have to be interviewed and bring your work along for examination. It’s quite tough to get in. I’m very happy to say that Jeni did get in, and why not since her work is excellent. I bought a few things of course including this pink and yellow yarn. The purple skein was a freebie from Jeni which was very kind of her.

I immediately cast on for the beginnings of a glove.

I’m using a pattern from Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. It’s a great book and I can’t sing its praises highly enough. If you’ve seen my Smittens on the blog, they were made from a combination of the glove and mitten patterns in the book.

I’ve been slowly getting back into walking again because my hips are still very painful after the virus.  They were quite sore on Saturday when I literally only walked around the block to a local fair where my friend Hannah had a stall. Hannah and I have been friends for about five years and she’s started her own business called The Green Emporium. She sells ecologically friendly products including cleaning products, including a fantastic natural vanilla air freshener that has no CFCs or other gases, just pure oils. It’s brilliant and the fragrance, I *love* vanilla, stays in the room for hours after you’ve sprayed it. She also stocks wonderful organic beauty products. You’ll also find lots of good eco links and info on the site as well.

So a little walk on Saturday had me shattered and then the walk around St Fagans, including a hike from a field where we had to park the car, nearly finished me off! The museum is great though and has lots of old buildings which have been rebuilt on the site. Sometimes they have a woman spinning somewhere on the grounds. I even saw a Rowan tree planted by a Cottage which was built in the 1600s. It was considered useful in warding off evil spirits in those times.

Today I came home to find a package from the fabulous Mariko!

Fantastic slippers!I’m wearing them right now, they’re so fantastic!

The best sewing pins ever plus fizzy, sherberty sweets – not to be used together of course!

And a Peeps basket! With a small package of bunny Peeps inside!

I showed this excitedly to Andy and he said "That’s not a Peep, it’s a bunny." So I had to educate him on the different Peeps varieties. He won’t make that mistake again! 🙂

BTW check out Mariko’s blog to see her incredible crocheted cat!