On the last day of February

It rained. Then the sun came out. Then the sky went black and it rained. Sometimes the sun came out whilst it was raining and we were treated to several rainbows. This one emanated from our land so I went out with my spade to dig for the pot of gold. No luck though!

So, back to crochet. There was football on TV the other night and so I took myself off into another room and spread the pieces out on the floor to see what I'd made already. I also had a look through the instructions for the motifs I hadn't made and decided I didn't like any of them anyway so won't be making them.

First I looked for something to go on top of the piano (I had to dust it first though!). It's a grand piano and there's a big expanse of shiny black to play with. In the past we've draped an antique lace cloth over it, a crocheted afghan which matched the decor in a previous home, assorted embroidered linen cloths and almost always we've had a plant on top.

This motif is OK (you can see that I've dusted 'cos you can see the reflection of a painting!) but I thought it was a bit too small and fancied something a bit bolder to cover more of the area.

 

So I tried the granny triangles around it. I really like the idea of a star shape and would only need to crochet 3 more triangles and would add beads to them. 

Then I tried the wavy square surrounded by granny triangles. Neither if us liked that as it looked too solid.

Then Mike said he'd prefer something smaller so it didn't dominate quite as much. We finally realised that what we wanted was just a bright mat to sit underneath another green leafy plant or a sculpture so I abandoned that and went off to play with ideas for the next chair back.

After much humming and haa-ing, this is what I came up with as a base.

The central motif matches the other one and just needs edging the way I did previously. I like the idea of using the granny triangles as corners and there are a few options I'm considering:

i)   Turn the blue motifs into squares and fill the gaps with mini-granny triangles.

ii)  Make 4 more granny triangles but with beads and use them to turn the triangles into squares. Make the blue motifs into rectangular shapes.

iii) Create a background of vertical stripes to sit behind the blue motifs and use the granny triangles as corners.

Running Streak

As I headed back to the village at the end of my run today the sky started to get darker and darker and I couldn't resist taking this photo of the church steeple as the gold-coloured weather vane really shone out against the dark sky.

As I ran alongside I noticed 2 blackbirds sitting up there which must be an excellent vantage point!

February was my 2nd month of running every day. Last month I ran 182 miles and this month I've run 191 miles making my total so far 373 miles.

I have 10 miles to do tomorrow and then another 20 miler on Sunday. I'm hoping the weather will be kind to me.

There are only 28 days to go until my marathons start, beginning with the back to back marathons in Dover (gulp!).

Random Dementia fact

Dementia is a word used to describe a group of symptoms including memory loss, difficulty thinking clearly, confusion & mood changes. Dementia occurs when the brain is damaged by diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia. In my mum's case, she had a series of mini strokes, sometimes referred to as TIAs (transient ischaemic attacks i.e. mini strokes) where the oxygen supply to the brain fails and brain cells die.