Does anyone know the way to the garden party?

So, all the life coaching training courses are now over, and bar another 20 hours practise coaching I am qualified! (And what’s 20 hours between friends?) We also got a freebie course to learn how to become a trainer, which I think is going to be very useful at work; and I am picking up loads of practise at negotiation with this wedding planning. Argh. Input and suggestions I love, but then please, let me make the decisions? So, I am officially People Skilled up. Ask me anything, and see if I can give you something powerful and incisive in reply. (Well, anything bar nuclear physics or about the finer workings of an internal combustion engine.)

Learning to train was entertaining. We all had to do 20mins of training each other on something, so now I can make a cocktail, frost a cupcake, and have an inkling about photo compositions and swimming butterfly. Can you guess what I got them to do? Can ya? Yes, I got them all knitting. I’d forgotten how difficult it is to make sense of a tangle on a stick when you’ve never looked at stitches before. I had people trying to knit from the blunt ends of the needles, with the knitting sticking up rather than hanging down from the needle, knitting over and into the next stitch instead of slipping the just worked one off the needle…. Phew. And all in 20mins, less preamble! I was shattered! But good to realise for next time the things that knitters take as read that you actually have to point out to a newbie.

This was the view from the training room.

Right into the Queen's back yard, where they were setting up for a garden party from the looks of things.

We managed to coincide some breaks with the changing of the guard.

You can just see the brass band bits there. Good job the horses don't mind all the racket.

I’ve started the summer jumper. I know we’ve had our annual week of sunshine, but this is for Florida in October. I have a horrible feeling that although I measured my bust size properly (Liz can vouch for this because I did it during knit group in the middle of the restaurant), it’s going to be rather capacious. Possibly there’s not as much shaping as the baby cables jumper, which is my main comparison. Hmm. Anyway, it’s being done in a Twilley’s yarn called Gorgeous which is 75% bamboo (how terribly modern of Twilley’s!) which looks like being quite nice and drapey. Not as silky and floppy as the Soya yarn I used for Daisy’s hoodie, but not bad.

Uh-oh. Just found the jumper on Ravelry and everyone says the sizes come out big. I have a feeling that I should have succumbed to my inner vanities and gone for the smaller size – it was borderline between the smallest given and the next one up, but I went for the next one. But having spent three days worth of train journeys on it already, I’m not sure I have the heart to rip it. What to do what to do? Ah come on woman, where’s your knitterly bravery, people have ripped a lot more than 5 inches of st st. Just because you had that trauma of starting out and realising your lovely knitting-in-the-round was twisted into a mobius strip… you can do it again. Deep breaths.

This weekend The Man is competing in the London Triathlon at the Excel Centre in the Docklands. He came up a few weekends ago to practise the swimming section, which was just as well, as he now has tactics on how to avoid being drowned by other competitors. Watching him wriggle into his wetsuit is the funniest thing in the world, but hopefully he will be in The Zone at that point and not thinking about me unable to breathe from laughing!

Update: It's ripped. That'll teach it.