Good news everyone!

Hello poor neglected blog!
I've been gone for a while and many, many things have happened…but I'm hoping to be back here more regularly now. Because in terms of knitting and running and sewing and crafting I'm going to have a LOT to write about.

One week ago, on Valentine's day, the lovely boyfriend asked The Question.

2014; a vintage year

Ah, in the blink of an eye 2014 was gone and 2015 is charging eagerly ahead. I'm always one to get sucked into buying a nice new note book and writing very neatly some utterly unattainable resolutions. But 2014 has been an absolute vintage year, and I'm actually keener to look back on it in awe than to wipe the slate clean and start again. Here's why…

The Venice Marathon

A couple of weeks ago my lovely boyfriend and I travelled to a city I've always wanted to visit, to do something rather amazing. We went to Venice, and ran the 29th Venice marathon.

Halloween and a finished scarf

It's been a surprisingly busy few weeks since finishing uni. There's been a LOT of running (*ahem, marathon*), lots of sewing and recently, a lot of knitting.

It was Halloween a few days ago - not that anyone told the weather that it was the end of October. 24 degrees no less! The boyfriend and I had made the mistake of going to the Tower of London to see the poppies, unfortunately several thousand other people had had the same idea. We gave up as soon as we saw the queues and just came home. To add to the disappointment our supermarket had sold out of pumpkins. My first pumpkin-less halloween.

So I made some paper ones, using this tutorial. I've never seen leaves on pumpkins, so just went with the wire twist. They looked surprisingly cute.

Richmond Running Festival Kew 10k

Ok, I've been away from the blog for a loooooong time. Plenty of things have happened, both crafty and running-wise (not so much progress on the knitting!). I really have loads to show off. But the thing that's finally spurred me back online was the race I ran on Sunday with my boyfriend.

It was the Kew Gardens 10k, part of the Richmond Running Festival which also includes a half marathon, and a post-race music festival. It's only in its second year this year, but sold out. We had originally wanted to do the half, but places were already gone by the time we heard about it.

Why I keep running

I've had a bit of a struggle with running recently. It felt like I was getting up early for too many mornings, to do a chore that I wasn't enjoying - and ending up with times that I was disappointed with.
So I took a week off from my entire training plan. I used it as a chance to make some changes with my diet. And now that I'm returning to my training, I've reassessed why I run - in the hope that I'll avoid any future similar grinding halts.

Summer throwback makes

It's actually been resembling summer here in London, most days anyway. I've not been able to sew as much as I want (I have SO many ideas!) due to uni work, but have still managed a bit.

What I have made has ended up being vaguely childhood throwback themed. First up, a friendship bracelet. I used to make these when I was little, and even set up a little card board 'stall' and tried to sell them to the uninterested members of my family. With a pattern refresher from here, I made up this little summer themed beauty;