Birthday incoming!

Ooh, I’m very excited that today is Friday!  My husband is home after working away for a few days, the sun’s shining again (thankfully, as the washing machine is already on and I’ll be able to get the laundry outside) and it’s a bank holiday long weekend in the UK so that means that Monday is a day off for many people.

I don’t have much planned for the weekend at all other than hopefully getting out into the garden and finding some time to knit – with any luck, on a chair in the garden in the sunshine.  I am determined to finish the baby Newborn Vertebrae cardigan (baby is still not here, fortunately for me!) and I’m on the final section of rib now so the end is in sight.

It’s been lovely to have a new baby to knit for and I’m looking forward to meeting him when he eventually decides to put in an appearance.  (Just in case you missed earlier posts about this, a friend is expecting the baby, he’s not going to be a new family member!)

I was just under the wire with April’s Monthly Musing yesterday and I wrote about being at the garage on Tuesday this week with my car for a service.  Big daughter came to collect me and we spent the day together, which was just lovely.  We had always planned to have lunch together but at the last minute, big daughter said that she needed a few things from IKEA so we headed there on the way home and treated ourselves to breakfast in the restaurant.  We were a little bit early for opening time so we sat in the car and chatted – fortunately, I had my sock with me so I could make good use of the time!

Those dark clouds hung around all day although the sun did make an appearance later on when the dog and I whizzed (as fast as he whizzes these days) into the fields before what looked like a torrential rain storm heading our way arrived.

I do love the brightness before a storm that you get sometimes.  Not always, of course, and we’ve had a lot of wet weather over the last few months without any brightness to be seen at all.  On this particular day, we didn’t get the storm either and it moved over to the east without coming to us at all.  I don’t know if you can see from this photo but all along the horizon were bands of rain falling from the sky so whoever lives over in that direction will have got very wet!

I’m keeping this post short and sweet today so there’s just one more thing to tell you about.

It’s the Winwick Mum Sockalong birthday on Sunday so this is a heads up for you to count up the pairs of the Basic 4ply Socks that you’ve knitted since May last year.  If you’re new to the blog you might be wondering why you need to count socks and that’s because every year, I do an annual sock count of Basic 4ply Socks – it’s just for fun as I can never really know how many pairs have been knitted, but it makes me very happy to see that the pattern is being used and people all over the world have cosy toes because of it!

Last year, we were up to 23,713 pairs which is making me smile even as I write this.  All those stitches to make socks full of love and probably a few swear words – someone with a more advanced mathematical brain than mine could probably work out how many stitches there are in 23,713 pairs of socks and it would be a few million by now, I should imagine.  Someone else could probably work out how many times around the world all that yarn would wrap … but it’s enough for me to know that it’s lots of pairs of socks and I want you to be part of the birthday celebrations.

As always, there’s going to be a birthday giveaway and the post will be out on Sunday with all the information about getting involved.  That’s going to mean there’s an extra subscriber email to remind you to take part in the giveaway if you’d like to, but then we’ll be back to weekly ones.

You might have noticed if you get the emails that there’s a box part-way down to click if you only want to get the new pattern emails and not my general ramblings or other sock stuff.  I’ve done that to make it easier for you to do some email housekeeping, but just in case you might have clicked that box by mistake and you do want the ramblings again, you can let me know and I’ll sort that for you 🙂  (I’m mentioning this on the blog in case you’ve done that but still found the post and wondered why you didn’t get an email!)

Right then, that’s me for today so I hope you have a lovely weekend whatever you have planned and wherever you are, and I’ll see you again on Sunday for Sockalong birthday celebrations!