Once again another weekend in the Wendys Woolies household where our feet didn’t touch the ground and we spent a total of about 2 hours in our own home!

Starting on Friday I headed over to my mum’s near Oxford and we then went into Oxford to get the bus to Victoria Station in London. From Victoria we got the train to Crystal Palace to attend the Norwich Union Grand Prix Athletics meeting at the Crystal Palace stadium.

We had been a little worried in the last couple of weeks that we were going to have to sit in the rain watching the athletics but the British summer seems to have finally arrived this weekend and so we were sat in wonderful sunshine all evening.

The athletics was really good -

This is GB sprinter Craig Pickering getting ready for the 100 metres (our seats were right in line with the 100m start line)

this is Jo Pavey after she ran the 3000m

this is the sprinters lining up for the final of the Men’s 100m

This is Chris Tomlinson jumping his way to victory in the Long Jump with a jump of 8.16

Unfortunately this evening didn’t end the best way, it was Jason Gardener’s final race meeting and the final event of the evening was the Mens 4×100 relay. Jason ran a wonderful 1st leg and then Craig Pickering and Marlon Devenish managed to drop the baton on the change over between 2nd and 3rd legs!

Still, the night finished with Jason doing a lap of honour in an opentop car and then a firework display

Saturday we had a lovely lunch with some good friends, my friend Julia is turning 40 on Thursday so invited some friends and family to spend an afternoon with her at the Swan at Streatley, a lovely hotel on the River Thames.

I’ve known Julia most of my life - we used to go to Sunday school together from the age of about 5 and all through our childhoods myself, Julia and Julia’s sister Alison were inseperable…they were my substitute sisters as I don’t have any sisters of my own. Julia is about 18 months older than me and Alison is a year younger than me so we’re all very close.

The beautiful summer weather felt like it had been laid on especially, we started with Pimms on the lawn by the river,

(Yes I know that’s a pint, we don’t seem to have any good photos of actual Pimms being consumed!)

A wonderful lunch in the restaurant overlooking the river

first the main course

followed by dessert

and then birthday cake

luckily we managed to prevent Julia’s hubby from flinging the cake at her in the manner of the Phantom Flan Flinger…..the cake was decorated with a photo of the birthday girl aged about 3 or 4 years old and the revelation actually reduced her to tears she was so touched

After lunch (actually about 4pm by the time we got up from the table!) we took our drinks out to the terrace

and had a stroll along the river bank

We finally left at about 6.30 having had an absolutely fantastic day - good food, good weather and good friends, what more could you ask for?

With all this social activity I didn’t get to see Clue 5 - and the theme reveal - for the Mystery Stole until late on Saturday evening. I printed it out at my mum’s and then sat with J and my brother watching Hot Fuzz on DVD whilst I started on Clue 5.

I got to the end of the first chart on Saturday evening, then yesterday we were driving back from my mums and, having been away all weekend, I had some washing and ironing to do yesterday so not much more progress during the day.

Sunday evening was the final chapter of my busy weekend and it wasn’t an anticlimax - I got to meet up with one of my blog friends, Roo who writes her blog at RooKnits.

Roo lives in the Midlands but was coming down to my neck of the woods for a training course so we went to pick her up at High Wycombe train station

We drove to the nearby village where Roo is attending the course and spent an evening in the local pub with her. We had a lovely evening and it was so nice to meet someone in person whom I’ve been chatting with online for a while.

Roo was my partner in the Sockret Pal swap, she wasn’t my original spoiler but they welched and she was swapped in to spoil me and did a wonderful job….coincidentally at the same time as the Sockret Pal swap we both took part in an Afghan Square swap and she was one of the partners who sent me a square in that!

However, when I got home from meeting Roo I did manage to complete the final few rows of MS3 clue 5 and here it is

The theme has been revealed as Swan Lake and this final section is to be a “wing”, the pattern is a feather lace

I love this idea of a non-symmetrical stole with a wing-shaped curving end and can’t wait to see how this finishes!

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Tags: ms3party athletics crystal palace

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