More reasons to be happy...

#1 - Discovering that there are deer in Richmond Park:

We spent last weekend in London, visiting friends. Rather than a planned trip, this was more of an emergency solution that turned out absolutely lovely. What we had planned was something much less lovely, so I'm doubly glad it turned out to be such a fun weekend after all. Sometimes I wonder about D and myself, though - two PhDs, and at times we don't seem to have a brain cell to share between ourselves...

This is what happened: We had an invite to the naming ceremony of the little daughter of an old friend of mine on Saturday afternoon. The plan was to do drive down to the Midlands on Thursday, down to London from there on the Saturday morning, and back up to Yorkshire on Saturday evening after the ceremony. Quite OK in theory, but not so much in practice.

First of all, it took us almost 5 hours to get to our destination, all the while relying on the dubious navigation of Multimap. We were led right across central London, passed Westminster and Marble Arch, and you can imagine how crazy the traffic was. Bean had been asleep on the journey to London and chose this opportune moment to wake up and start screaming, we were tired and in need of food, drink, and the loo, and generally pretty frazzled by the time we arrived in south-east London. At least we were on time... just!

The ceremony was beautiful and it was great to see our friends, but clearly the last thing we wanted to do at this point was think about an even longer journey up North. Also, in order to arrive at a reasonable time we would have had to leave barely an hour after we'd got there in the first place. Honestly, what were we thinking, planning to drive back up on the same day?! We agonised over it for some time and then decided to pounce on some other friends and ask if we could stay with them. 5 minutes later, the life-saving SMS arrived - no problem at all, we are welcome to turn up whenever we want. Aren't friends great?

They put us up, moving out of their own bedroom no less, so we could put bean's travel cot up in the bigger room, and even cooked dinner. We had a great evening and the next day decided sensibly that we might as well take some more time and drive back in the late afternoon. We decided to have a picnic in Richmond Park.

I'd never been, so to discover wide open fields, forests and lakes, complete with whole herds of deer, all in the centre of London, came as a bit of a surprise. We had a lovely day and a good journey up, and arrived in Yorkshire just in time for bean's bath and bed.

Now why didn't we plan it like this to start with? Why do we need to always rush around?

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#2 - going to the cinema with D:

We are going to see Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End tonight!! We will put Bean to bed and then MIL will look after him for the evening. Hopefully he will be asleep the entire time anyway. I'm ridiculously excited about this. We haven't been out, just the two of us, ever since LAST SEPTEMBER when the little Bean arrived!

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#3 - almost finishing the little baby cardigan for my friend B's little girl:

This is the second sleeve. After that I only need to assemble the damn thing and add the borders... It feels like I've been knitting this for ages! I do like the way it looks, though. Hopefully B will like it too.

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#4 - spinning again:

I've been spinning up a bit of the merino superwash that Tawama of Rooted in Knit-reality sent me for Yarn Abroad! over the last few weeks. I love the way it spins up and I am planning on Navajo plying it.