March round up

And yet here we are, almost halfway through April! I was so exhausted by the end of term that I spent much of last week sleeping - many hours in bed at night, long naps during the day. I don't know how people with children manage. Even when I wasn't asleep, I was basically in a daze. 

March was quite a successful month though, goals wise.

Books read: I finished Caught in the Light by Robert Goddard, which was a real page turner. Then I picked up and finished very quickly Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This was not at all what I expected: I find I now assume all novels set in mid-20th century southern USA are going to be about race, whereas this was more about class. I stayed up much too late reading it, just to get to the end. What a yarn!

Then the Head of English leant me The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and, although I read a couple of pages, I put it down again almost immediately because it is quite long (I read Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog during lockdown 1 which was very brief) and also because the Head of English is not a spine cracker and I am, and I was afraid to read it sleepy. So I picked up some non-fiction, Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera, which has been going down a treat. I was wary of going back to non-fiction as I notoriously never finish any of them, but I am nearly done with it. 

A good reading year, so far.

Metres knitted: I finished Garnered though it still isn't blocked and I counted that yarn last month anyway. I knitted a baby jumper for my new great-nephew, born a month early, out of some All Seasons Cotton I've had hanging around for about a decade. 360m. I knitted up two skeins of Lion and Lamb into blanket hexagons - 375m but the second skein was in April, so only 187m for March, really. Let's call it 550m, not so good but oh well. 

I soberingly went through my whole stash in March, too, and came across approximately 2800m of yarn that was not listed in my Ravelry stash. And then I went online to browse for yarn I can use to sew up my hexagons, and ended up buying two skeins in a blues colourway I didn't already have. So with the yarn in from Flock last month, that it about 7200m in, 2100m out. Egads. 

Luckily I have already made a start on a nice 4-ply jumper with some of the new stuff from last month, and I have a plan for a huge, crocheted blanket in some of the chunky I found in my clear out, so perhaps I will manage to come out at a net reduction for the year. 

Pounds lost: I think, 3? I am 4lbs off getting back to my pre-40 weight. Happy with that. I managed the whole of Lent off sugar but had to put up with a few snide comments when I started eating it again the day after Palm Sunday. 

The day of Palm Sunday itself was probably the most testing time of all: I made chocolate nests with shredded wheat, and Simnel cakes. The chocolate nest mixture was not combining so I got in there by hand and ended up with chocolate almost up to my elbows. Hardest thing I have ever done, not licking my hands. 

Sleep: Clearly still variable. I think I'm getting into better timing habits but probably spending too long reading. 

Blogging: A pathetic failure. Being back in school meant that more things were happening but I was too tired and busy to write about them. Still. Onwards and upwards.