Catching up

I've been playing catch up for the past week as I finally went back to work last Wednesday. I'm not doing full time hours just yet but I'm completely worn out and I've spent the past few days catching up on sleep and household stuff.

Oh and I've been knitting a bit too. Ravelympic knitting has been taking up a lot of my time. For those who aren't on Ravelry, which is the best knitting website ever, the idea is that you set yourself some projects to start and finish during the current Olympics. There's lots of different events and teams to join. I've got one project in the Mitten medley event and two projects in the Hat dash. Teams aren't compulsary but I'm part of Team Tardis, which was started in the Doctor who themed Who knits group within Ravelry.

I've now completed the first one - My wrist warmers for the mitten medley event.



And I've started the 2 hats. Both designs by Ysolda Teague.

Gretel hat



Rose red hat. This is the same pattern that I knitted in purple previously.



Hopefully I will get these finished before Sunday.

Most of the rest of my time has been devoted to watching the Olympics. The British Olympic team have performed spectactularly well this Olympics and there has been lots of medals to celebrate. The cyclists have been amazing, particularly Chris Hoy, who has won three gold medals in this Olympics alone. Considering that at the Atlanta Olympics, Britain only won one gold medal, whereas they've already won 16 golds this time, is awesome. And only 4 years till the Olympics arrive in London.

Today's pictures from China are from the city of Xi'an. Xi'an was such an interesting place to visit. Its most famous for the Terracotta warriors, which are an amazing sight to see. Everyone is different - different hairstyles, clothing, rank etc. You can't tell from the pictures but they were originally very highly coloured. You can still see tiny traces of colour on some of them



Xi'an has a significant muslim population who've been oppressed in the past. Apparently you must apply to the Communist party if you wish to join any religion, which is pretty bizarre. The Mosque in Xi'an is beautiful. The picture below shows one of the buildings.



Another amazing place in Xi'an is the Forest of Steles museum. Steles are stone carving of important documents and poetry so its kind of a library on stone. Its certainly the most amazing library I've ever visited.



Finally I have to thank Joy who nominated me for a blog award. Its lovely of her to do so. I think everyone that I would have nominated probably has one but I have a little thing on my sidebar which shows all the blogs I look at and I'm inspired by all of them in different ways so please all consider yourselves nominated.

I should also answer Dani's questions about the socks I knit. I almost exclusively wear knitted socks except at the gym. They are the comfiest socks I've ever worn and I don't find them any hotter than ordinary socks although Scotland isn't exactly the warmest country in the world. I do like the colourful aspect of them, it kind of cheers me up to see the bright socks on my feet.