It’s been a week of winning and losing, of ups and downs. On the upside, on Thursday evening we won our local pub quiz! J and I do the quiz pretty much every other Thursday with a couple of our friends. We usually come nowhere, a while back we got joint first to be told the policy was not to pay out on a tie but to “roll-over” the prize.

This week we arrived to find the quiz had been totally revised, it’s organised by the pub themselves whereas before it was someone who came in to do it. You no longer have to pay (it was £1 per person entry before with the money going into the pot for the prize). And the quiz questions themselves are much better – an encyclopaedic knowledge of soap operas, football and the Sun newspaper stories for the week is no longer necessary!!!

So, we thought we’d done pretty well and when the scores were announced – we’d come joint first again…..oh great we thought….but wait, there was to be a tie break. One person from each team was nominated to answer the tie break, my team nominated me (thanks team, no pressure!!). The question was What year was the MCC founded – with the nearest to the correct year winning. First off the girl from the other team asked what MCC stands for – well, I know nothing about cricket but I have at least heard of the MCC…(it’s the Marylebone Cricket Club whose ground is Lords and who oversee the rules of the game). OK, so I had no idea of the date but through a little bit of logic came up with the date 1820……the answer is actually 1787 but I was nearest so we won….I have no idea what the other girl put…

We got 2 bottles of Jacob’s Creek white wine to take home with us…very nice.

Yesterday my winning streak continued. Saturday was the running of the Grand National – for anyone not familiar with the Grand National it is, apparantly, the world’s most famous steeplechase. A horse race over fences staged annually at Aintree racecourse, the field is around 40 horses, the fences are enormous, the course is two circuits totalling 4 and a half miles, and usually only a handful of horses finish with the rest unseating their riders or refusing at the fences.

In England, the Grand National is an institution and even people who never bet on horse-racing put a few pounds on their favourite horse. The best thing about the National is that with amateur riders competing with professionals and so many horses not completing the course anything can happen and so it’s a lottery with no knowledge of horse racing form being of much help in picking the winner.

In our office we had a sweepstake which we picked out on Friday, as there aren’t many people in our office we each drew two horses. I got Liberthine and Silver Birch – neither of them were very far up in the tipsters lists but Liberthine was tipped as a good outside bet so I put £5 on as well as the sweepstake.

So, guess what, the other horse, Silver Birch won! So I lost my bet at the bookies but I did win the office sweepstake – £40 for a £2 stake can’t be bad can it!

My winning streak has just ended however. I mentioned in previous posts that I was taking part in Sock Madness -well not any more. The pattern for this round was issued yesterday at 2.30pm BST but as I was at my parents and we took them out for dinner we didn’t get back home until gone 7 yesterday evening. I cast on as soon as we got in and sat knitting almost continuously until 2.30 in the morning when I decided I had to get some sleep….others obviously don’t bother.

This was where I’d got to when I went to bed –


The yarn is from Posh Yarn and is Lucia 4ply sock yarn (30% cashmere, 70% merino) and the colour is called “Pop” but reminds me of Refreshers (sweets). The colours are a bit washed out in this photo – this one is probably closer to reality -

Up until I went to bed I had been checking the flickr group regularly to see if my opponent in this round had posted a progress picture to get an idea of how I was doing – nothing. When I got up this morning at 8am to start knitting again there was a picture posted 10.34pm but I am assuming that was US time and I don’t know what time zone but say that was 4am UK time…it showed a single sock complete to a few rows past the gusset. I was at the same point on my sock and knowing it was now the middle of the night in the US I began knitting furiously….until 1pm when my opponent posted a picture of two completed socks.

She knit these in less than 24 hours so I’m assuming she didn’t sleep…..her progress picture was actually taken at 10.42pm PDT on Sat 14th but wasn’t posted until 12.17am Sunday 15th …if she’d posted it when it was taken I wouldn’t have bothered staying up till 2am but would have thrown in the towel and realised I was not going to catch her. Her completed socks were photographed 6 hours later at 4.20 am so I wonder if her progress pic wasn’t actually of her second sock….

Anyway, I’m out.

So – other knitting….have a few Secret Pal knits ongoing so can’t post any pics I’m afraid. Also nearly finished the Fancy Silk Sock in Lorna’s Lace – will post some pics later



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