End of the Games. . . both of them

And so we come to the end of another Olympics - one I really enjoyed watching.  Team GB was amazing. Obviously home advantage and the huge crowds must have played a large part in the medal haul; there were so many athletes who really pushed hard and had terrific events whether they won a medal or not. It made for some very exciting and tense watching. It certainly inspires one to finally get off the couch and get active (after tonight's closing ceremonies of course, which I'm very much looking forward to watching.) Hopefully I'll be getting on my bike shortly - just as soon as I feel entirely comfortable as a pedestrian with the traffic on the other side of the road.  Liverpool has quite a lot of bike lanes and some lovely parks to cycle in, but like a lot of cities, the bike lanes will just suddenly stop (usually at a busy intersection), or cars will park in them and many of the roads get very narrow.  So I'm still a little skittish, but I'll get there.

One good thing about sitting on the settee for numerous hours over the last two weeks - I got a lot of knitting done and finished my shawl for the Ravellenic Games.

I'm really pleased with it - it was a lovely pattern to knit. It's called Sweet Dreams by Boo Knits and allowed me to try beading for the first time. I am hooked!  I didn't order enough beads so only did them on the last lace chart but I really like how they weigh the shawl down. I purposely tried to match the colour of the beads with the yarn so there was a bit of sparkle but it wasn't overwhelming.

The yarn is Scrumptious Lace from Fyberspates which is a lovely mixture of merino and silk, making it very strong with a nice lustre. I would definitely recommend it for lace work.   And I was able to enter this project in four Ravellenic categories: Shawl Sailing, Single Skein Sprint, Balance Beads and Lace Longjump.  It was a lot of fun to participate and chat with knitters all over the world.  And now I have the perfect summer evening shawl.