Knitting in Paris (Knit Groups)

Yes, I'm a bad blogger! I've been back from my vacation for a week already, and I haven't even posted about any of my knitting adventures, never mind any of the other wonderful things I managed to do! Since this is a knitting blog, I'll start out with a knitting themed post, and see if I get around to any additional posts.



I contacted two knitting meetups through Ravelry before I headed out, and managed to visit with both of them. Saturday, the day after my arrival in Paris, I dragged my ass out of bed to head down to the gardens of the Quai Branly Museum to meet the Tricot Opera group.



The gardens were beautiful, and I felt very welcomed! It was great to chat with other knitters again, check out their projects, feel new yarns and see new books and magazines. I've been living under a rock as far as direct access to knitting stuff for a while, so it was a great way to start my trip. FLOUB was even so organised as to bring a thermos of coffee (much needed after my travels the previous day), so it was a real "cafe tricot!"



On Wednesday night, I made my way to L'OisiveThé for TricotThé. Amy has a great little shop, and it was a very welcoming. L'OisiveThé is mostly a tea room, but it has a small selection of yarn available, and I picked up two skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in Pebble, a mixture of gorgeous beiges and blues, with a hint of violet. Admittedly, not a local souvenir yarn purchase, but it was something I'd never seen before, and it's knitting up beautifully!

I made something!

My new sewing machine cover!


The seams aren't perfect, but this is the first thing I've sewn in a long while! The front and back are legs of old pairs of jeans. The sides are colourful leftovers, and are quite old. I'm pretty sure I got them from my grandma.



Yay!

Motivation

So, I don't think I've talked about this here yet, but I've signed up for a half marathon in September! I think it's slightly crazy, considering I was not exercising in any way, shape or form when I signed up (in April), so I was starting from nothing. 21 km is a long way to go!

For reasons I can't talk about, April was a complete write-off for training, but I seem to be doing ok now. I have no illusions about actually running the whole thing. My goal is to train regularly (about three times per week), getting my mileage as high as I can go without hurting myself, and then run/walk the race on the day. It will be doubly difficult as I'm pretty much restricted to treadmill training until September, although I am planning to do some outside runs when I'm on vacation in a week or so.

Can I say that it's really difficult to train right now though? The room I run in does have air conditioning, but given that it's not running unless I'm in the room and the room has large, east facing windows, its often hotter inside than outside. An engineer at work told me that the average temperature for June this year was 50 degrees C!!! I believe it, even if the information I find on weather on the internet doesn't support that. (Just fyi, Weather.com says it's 39 degrees here today, and BBC is actually predicting 38 and rain (I don't know what they're thinking. I've only seen rain here two or three times in two years, and today doesn't look like the day for it.))

So, anyone that's ever lived in a super-hot climate, how does one stay motivated to run when it is so warm? I did 45 minutes on the treadmill this morning, and managed to soak through my moisture-wicking gear and had sweat running down my back and arms. I've never actually experienced that before, even in steamy Ottawa summers. There are some articles on Runner's World, but given that the sweat isn't evaporating, I don't know how much use a lot of that advice will help (a lot of advice revolves around wet hats or ice in a bandana around the neck).

FO: Ishbel

See, I do occasionally finish things! This didn't take much time, only a few days, but I was knitting a lot during that time.



It's difficult to get a shot where my facial expression is normal in the very bright sun. This is the best one I came up with.



Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Sophie's Toes sock yarn Layers of Colour Collection Dark Teal from emilyparson
Needle: 2.25 mm
The yarn was very nice to work with, and looks great.



And some nice flowers in the sun.