Happy Birthday to Me!

We're having a quiet family day at home, where I'm mostly pretending I have no chores to do and handing over all nappy changing and bum wiping duties to the Spousal Unit; I'm fairly certain the Birthday Bum Wiping Clause was one of the things we agreed to in our marriage vows.

Our original plan was that we would be in Wales this week, with my birthday weekend including a visit to Wonder Wool, but we've rescheduled that for next year instead after after my recent job change. My mum went along without me and sent photos of the squishable yarns as requested.

It's still been a very yarny sort of birthday.

Exciting new knitting book and beautiful birthday flowers.

I gave my husband a list of three colourwork books that I've had on my list for a while and highlighted The Doodle Knit Directory by Jamie Lomax as the one I coveted the most. He delivered and I spent breakfast flicking through it and feeling very inspired. I kept pulling up the hashtags for the various projects on Instagram and was delighted to find that there 'expansion packs' of doodle designs which can be bought and downloaded from the designer's site. I've already got my eye on the Edinburgh and Dinosaur packs!

I've also got money for a Wool Warehouse order so I've started building that. I've been wanting to try knitting socks for a while so have been planning out some colour combinations of the Yarnsmiths Merino sock yarns. Happily they're on offer at the moment.

My colour inspiration is some work dresses I've recently bought myself, since I wear leggings or tights with them, and then handknit socks poking out from my boots. I currently only have two handknit pairs of socks (courtesy of my Mum) so I need to stock up!

I've also got a Hobbycraft birthday voucher too, so my next stop is to shop the downloadable patterns there, just in case I run out of potential projects to knit.

When I started...

As an extra special treat, I also hid down the bedroom for a good hour and a half working on a jigsaw puzzle. I felt kind of bad avoiding the family for so long, though I had extended an invitation to my older kids to come join me (and in the end, they both did) but it was lovely to just get in the zone and power through with getting pieces into place.

... And when I finished.

This puzzle has been my white whale for about three years now. I started it in pregnancy with Miss 1 and, as it's a map of the world, there's a lot of blue! Couple in trying to do it around children, particular a grabby baby/toddler, and it's hardly any wonder it's been taking me a while! I do feel as if the end might be in sight now, I might even finish it by my next birthday!