Three knitted socks, The Marathon, a birthday and knit club!

Well I thought might as well put it all into one post!
First off the socks!
I love this pattern from this book I've Raveled it here and these are the socks I've knitted so far using 2 of the 3 colourways I bought from Kemps in their recent sale/offer.

no.2.son's socks

no.1.son's sock

I like the way the colour stripes are nice and evenly spread and knitting the two pairs from different colourways makes it interesting to knit a 2nd pair as I can judge how the stripe effect will flow.
Both lads have seemed to favour the handknit socks - I do think its the sort of thing you need to wear to fully appreciate how nice they are and once you've experienced a good handknit sock you are spoiled for ever!
At the weekend I went along to the regular knit'n'chat group at local John Lewis and enjoyed the morning in the company of other local knitters - I do enjoy seeing in "person" what people are knitting and in the same way as nothing beats seeing a friend and their project so to is buying "wool" from a "proper shop".   There are benefits obviously to online yarn purchases but its always that much nicer to visit a LYS and its such a shame we can't manage to keep one going in our area especially when there are so many knitters out there - we must be doing something "wrong"?
Anyway I didn't linger - usually I have a good mooch about the yarns but this time I was going on to my sil's home to catch up and see her grandchildren as they celebrate being "one" ..

Maisie!

Completely spoiled in the nicest possible way: baby-Maisie! at one year old standing confidently and taking beginning steps to walk!  We went at the weekend to visit and take birthday gift and a small Cadbury's easter egg (she knew it was chcolate and wanted more!!  its nice to "spoil" someone elses baby isn't it!?)  Its exciting and interesting to watch a relative's baby develop their character and they change so much from baby to toddler don't they?
We didn't get chance to see baby-Arthur on this occasion but hope to on the next visit which will more likely be the summer now.  it was nice to take our own adult "children" as its the last week before they return to "normal" routine of College and back to Uni-digs ..

Lovely Maisie with Mum - Claire!

We all wish Claire the very best of love and luck for her massive venture to "walk" the London Marathon this weekend in her new "robot suit" and hope she achieves the target she plans for the charity Spinal Research.