emily at beSottied.com

Happy Bank Holiday Monday to those who are lucky enough to be off work today. I’m having a bit of a ‘nothing’ day, but in a nice way - food shopping, reading, general pottering about.

Since my last post almost a month ago (I know, I know) my training for the Great North Run half marathon has really picked up. My friend Janine invited me to run with her and her cousins a few weeks ago, about a fortnight after I managed my first (and only) 6-mile run. It was really great to run with them, partly for the company and partly because they actually know what they’re doing, unlike me, and we managed a pretty good 8.1 (the point one is important) miles a full 5 weeks before the event. The race organisers recommend being able to run 8 miles 4 weeks before the GNR and I never really imagined myself ever running that far - my target for this whole experience was only ever 6 miles of running followed by 7.1 miles of out-of-breath walking. With just over 4 weeks to go, we ran 9.5 miles, and on Saturday we completed a pretty spectacular 12 miler. It was only meant to be 11 miles, but I was in charge of planning the route and didn’t clock it in the car - it was a “mapometer.com and guesswork” kind of route. The GNR itself is 13.1 miles, so we don’t have that far to go now. Ideally, we’ll do the 12 mile route another couple of times before settling down to shorter runs one week before the Big Day.

While I’m thrilled that we’ve done so well, and confident that I’ll be able to do this mad thing without getting myself killed, running is having a bit of a negative impact on pretty much everything else I do. Blogging has evidently gone by the wayside. I’ve only knitted about 4 rows of a tension square in this past month, and I haven’t been to Knit Happens (my knitting group) in weeks, nay, months. In fact, Leonie messaged me via Ravelry on Friday, asking if I was still their friend. The fact that I, an internet addict, didn’t even see that message until this afternoon just goes to show how little I’ve been getting done. I feel as though, most of the time, I’m either running, thinking about running, getting ready to go running or trying to recover from running. I’ve become a very big fan of Deep Heat muscle rub in a very short space of time and am experimenting with different types of bandage in an effort to stop a mole I have on my arm from getting all sore and angry during a run (the only chafing I suffer from, apart from on Saturday, when I was rubbed by my bra, but only on one side. Why?? Perhaps one breast is heavier than the other? Who knows?).

However, the weather is changing. Though I know that, by February, I’ll be moaning about the lack of daylight and longing for some sun, I do love autumn. For one thing, it’s cooler: I can sleep better and running on Saturday was the easiest it’s been in weeks, despite the route being the longest we’ve done (sorry, I can’t help talking about it. I know it’s annoying!). It’s also the time of year when I start to excitedly think about:

• 1. hand knitted hats and scarves and maybe some mitts
• 2. wrapping up in a winter coat, even though I won’t actually need to do it for another few months
• 3. splooshing about in wellies
• 4. spending windy, rainy, miserable days cocooned inside with a book, or some knitting, or just a nice comfy bed
• 5. spending too much money on Joules' autumn/winter collections.

Neil and I have a week away planned for the end of September, and I’m counting down to that, too. The run will be done with, I won’t be back at Uni yet and my time will be my own. On Friday morning (payday! Hurrah!) I went online and ordered 4 hanks of Blue Sky Alpacas’ Silk and Alpaca in Ruby Red.

I’m planning on taking my silky alpaca yarn on holiday with me to get cracking on a nice beret and scarf for myself. The hat pattern I’ve chosen is ‘Grace’ by Elizabeth Eisenstein for Loop Knits. I’ve found the lace pattern in one of my knitting books so I’m going to work on a co-ordinating scarf. One that I can spend three weeks knitting, then spill tea down and leave on a train.

Just three weeks to go until more regular posts, and hopefully some photos! I have been doing things other than running, it just doesn’t really feel like it. I might have do write a “This is what I did in June, July and August” post at the beginning of October. If you’d like to see some lovely bloggers who actually blog, and knit, why not visit Little Cotton Rabbits and Ysolda.com?

Rawr!

After years of friends and family getting nice hand-knitted scarves, hats and gloves (by request, I might add: I’m not the sort to ambush her loved ones with badly knitted jumpers emblazoned with Scottie-dog motifs) I’ve decided that, this year, I will have myself a nice hat and scarf combo in a carefully researched, lusted after yarn.

I’ve finally settled on Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca and Silk but am struggling with which colour to plump for. Initially I was deciding between reds Ruby and Garnet, but now I’m considering pale blue Ice and steely grey Slate. The thing is, BSA’s own colour swatches are tiny, and the colours vary wildly on other websites. Ice looks pretty swish on Purl Soho but pastelly-blue on many project photos on Ravelry. Garnet looks like a nice deep red on Get Knitted, but anywhere between pink and murky brown on Ravelry. I don’t want murky brown and I don’t want pastelly-blue. I want a nice flaming red or chilly grey.

Everything would be so much easier if America and its multitude of well-stocked yarn shops were a short car-drive away. It looks as though, until teleporters are invented, I’ll be playing a colour lottery. If my super-special luxury hat and scarf turns out to be a sugary pile of fluff, I’ll be blaming the interwebs!