Cream crackered

Cream crackered is cockney rhyming slang for 'knackered'.  I had a busy week, went jogging five times in a week, rested 6 days from the jogging but still did the 10,000 steps a day and am feeling rather tired.

On Good Friday we went to the vet's for Tammie's 6 month blood test and it wasn't our normal vet, it was a 'newbie' and she straight away said 'she has a heart murmour and needs a scan' and I said straight away 'my vet has been seeing her for a year now and he hasn't said that once'.  I get a feeling sometimes that new fresh out of college vets think that because an animal is insured, let's bump up the cost.  We decided to wait for our own vet to come back from holiday with the blood test results and then I will have a moan at him.

After that visit we brought Tam home and then went off to London for a few hours.  We had a little look in Liberty's of London and then went to McDonald's for lunch in Oxford Street.  Had a look around John Lewis and then was knackered so we came home.  I went for a jog at about 4.30pm and did 2.5 miles which I thoroughly enjoyed, came home and then walked Tammie. I sat down and did a couple of hours of crocheting after a nice hot bath and when I stood up from the sofa, I was stiff all over.  So I think I had done my exercise for that day.  That was the busiest Good Friday I have ever had.    Oh yeah, whilst walking out of the vets Frank bought Tammie a soft toy, a duck, and Tammie practically carried it home and she was like a hyperactive child on e numbers.

On Saturday (yesterday) Frank went to his Mum's to finish off the front garden and bought loads more plants namely scabious, euonymous, roses, pink carnations, pieris and whilst he was doing that I stayed home and watched the knittingincircles podcast with Aimee & Darren.  I then went to see my son for a short while and after feeling a little unwell, I just spent the rest of the day doing practically nothing.

I did start typing up my crochet pattern for the Tunisian blanket I am designing but it's going to take a long time to do.  I am going to try and sweet talk my son into designing me a logo of some sort to put on my pattern.  I didn't realise how hard it is to design stuff, I hold my hat up to all those ladies and gents that design knitwear because I thought a blanket design would be easy but it's not!

I will give you a sneak peak at the blanket so far but your not going to see all of it until it's completed and the pattern is written up.

On Saturday afternoon we took Tam over Parsloe's Park and enjoyed the walk around the lake.  The birds were fairly quiet and we did see a glimpse of some baby chicks swimming around near the edge of the lake.  The crows were hungry as usual and picking on each other, they are quite naughty birds really.

We saw the very large swan swimming around and chasing other birds out of it's territory. It must have young chicks on the small island because it's wings were out quite fiercly.  Frank threw some bread to the edge of the water and the gulls came down, coots and moorhens were squabbling and so were the Tufted Ducks.  It was good to see and here is a picture I took.  I just aimed and clicked the camera hoping to capture something...

Here's one of the swan, he is quite a beast when he gets out of the water and comes walking towards you.....

Today, Sunday, we went to Frank's Mum's for a roast dinner and we took her birthday presents over.  She went all 'oooooohhh' when we gave her the Liberty Bag of goodies and she opened her presents.  She loved the stripey socks I made her although I think they could have been about an inch shorter in the foot.  However, she loved them and the posh soaps and soap dishes.  Frank surprised us both with more treats and then we sat down and had a lovely dinner.  I celebrate my birthday soon so I got spoiled too by getting some new clothes, some lovely warm socks to wear around the house and some jewellery.    We came home and lucky we did because when we got in, the heaven's opened again.

I spent an hour or two crocheting again and then did the mundane task of ironing upstairs so I watched some of the knit girllls podcast on my phone and then came downstairs to write on my blog.  That is the weekend so far and tomorrow is bank holiday Monday.  Which means a 4 day working week ahead of me which can't be bad.

To finish off, I am going to leave you with a photo of a plant called 'ajuga' plant which Frank planted at New River Walk. One of many that the team have been putting in to spruce it all up!

Have a good week and I will post again next weekend........