Is it Time to Knit Yet?

Supporting Idaho's schools and whatnot

Had a pretty good day today, it started with Maple Oat waffles courtesy of Good to the Grain, love love love this book!  I actually have a lot of different whole grain flours on hand and it is just so great to have recipes that work and taste great.  It is worth it just for the Multigrain Pancake recipe alone!!

Next was a pretty great karate lesson and class.  I relearned a bo staff form that I had originally learned last year some time.  It was unexpected and I really enjoyed it!  I was also happy that we didn't warm up - my muscles are super sore this week after restarting my weight lifting program since I had taken 2 weeks off.  Lunges are not my friend, at least not until Tuesday!

After class we packed a lunch and set off on a quickie trip to Malad, Idaho for lotto tickets.  It wasn't my idea but it sounded good.  I bought 2 tickets for $10 each along with 4 $1 scratch tickets.  I scratched about 10 tickets for that $4.  When we pulled in the gas station parking lot M asked, "Are we in Idaho now?"  I laughed and said "Yes, you can tell by all of the Utah license plates!"  Call me a sucker but it sure would be nice to have $164 meeelion dollars!  

After we got home I squeezed in a 40 minute elliptical workout, even though I started not feeling so hot.  I got the telltale sign of me getting sick earlier today, an irritated throat.  It has been 3 weeks since I've done a long run and it is on the schedule for tomorrow.  Ugh.  I will try to eek out at least a 3 mile run anyway, depending on how I feel, and try to make up some mileage when I feel better.  So frustrating!!  Oh well.  

I suppose that's all I have to say about today.  Keep your fingers crossed for my lotto winnings, haha!!

What to do?

I want to blog, really, I do.  But I'm not knitting enough lately to only be able to talk about that.  And my day to day stuff is a little boring right now, I'm kind of in a rut.  My main interests right now are working out and eating food, haha!  I have a weight loss blog that I've been updating, mostly for myself.  Maybe I will kind of do a mishmash of all of that stuff, but in here.  It doesn't make sense to have paid for a blog and then never use it, right?  Well I guess I have my answer then.  I will swirl it around in my head and try and figure out some kind of regular themed days but try to just make it a daily kind of a thing, if it isn't too boring.

I do have a finished knit to show you, though some of the local girls have already seen it, my Street Smart Hoodie has been done for ages and I'm really proud of it, so I should show it to you.  I have started another sweater too, the Slouchy Cardigan in some yummy Berrocco Ultra Alpaca Light.  Kyra, however, is sitting in a dark corner just being ignored.  So sad.

So yeah, I want to start blogging again.  Now to make it a reality.

Crimping my Style

Today I turned this into this.  

It still needs to be washed and dried but I feel so productive anyway.  Now the question is what to do with it.  I fell in love with this and Cheryl does say that it would look good in Noro....hmmm....

Fantastic Felting

I had a customer send me a picture of a finished project that my hand dyed fiber was used in and I just had to share.  Is is not fantastic?!  I love it so much, makes me want to try felting myself!

Got spinach?

This was today's breakfast, a blender full of spinach - loose, not packed - 2 bananas, and 1 1/2 cups of water.  Delicious!!  It may look chunky but it was not at all, and the foam disappeared as I drank it.  The spinach came from our spinach-from-hell plants.  Those things are monsters right now!  Gigantic.  I need to get out there and try to get the rest of it, though last time I picked I barely made a dent and had a produce bag full.  Anyway, I'm going to switch to green smoothies for breakfast for a while.  Good stuff!

Lest you think I am not crafting at all, even though I basically am not haha, I made a pillow for The Kiddo.  I had the machine out anyway to sew my karate patch on my new black uniform and I figured since I had hauled it out I may as well do something else with it.  So I whipped up this non-perfect, non-square pillow in like 5 minutes.  I stuffed it with polyfill that has been sitting around for at least 3 years.  Viola!

Happy Monday all, after a week of eating vegan and not drinking any alcohol I am feeling fantastic!!  It is a fabulous day, go out and enjoy!

Good to be home

The weekend away was tons of fun.  We ran a pretty good race, considering the circumstances i.e. small path at a golf course to run on with lots of people running on it, pushing a stroller with our almost 40 pound child in it over the grass, and me of course being sick.  We both finished in just under 33 minutes which isn't bad, since we were also at the very back when we started.  The whole thing was like a big party and The Kiddo was such a trooper staying up until after midnight.  We won't be doing that anytime soon again!  We spent half a day at Zion National Park, I love it so much there.  It amazes me every time.  We did hotel pool swimming and miniature golf, and generally had a good time.  I've decided though that I don't care much for St. George and think we will have to try and bypass it altogether in the future.  I don't know what it is, it just seems like it isn't really that cool.  Anyway, I've just uploaded a bunch of pictures to Flickr so check it out if you have time, there is a bunch.  Here is the breakfast view we had on Friday morning at the park in St. George.  

Going Away

Ha, as if I could get much more 'away' from this blog!  I know I promised pictures but I still have none.  I can tell you about my progress but that isn't as much fun without a pic right?  I started a new project too that should be good for car knitting.  I'm sick as a dog but we have already made plans to go to St. George this weekend (leaving today) for a Midnight 5K.  For some reason we thought that going out on a Friday night at 11:00 pm to run 3 miles would be fun!  I think it will be, if I don't die while doing it.  I ran yesterday despite being sick and I made it through okay, but that was on the treadmill and I'm sure over a golf course will be a lot different.  Anyway.  At least I might have some nice pics of Zion or something to share with you? even if I don't show you knitting?!  Have a great weekend :)

Got bugs?

Antelope Island sure does!  We took a half-day trip and went there yesterday for a little hiking and just to check it out in general, as I've lived here for 32 years and have never been there.  So we went, hiked, drove around and enjoyed the scenery, got swarmed by bugs, and almost met some bison way too close and personal!  Exciting it was, indeed.  I'm thinking we will go back and maybe next time do some biking around there and check out the beach more closely as we didn't make time for that.  Anyway.  Here's a few pics.

Also since it has been forever since I posted a Finished Object, I give to you my own trendy Noro Striped Scarf.  I used Noro Silk Garden and Tahki Sedona for mine.  If you knit, you know the project so I won't bother with stats. 

Plowing ahead

I've been working on a new sweater, since that seems to be what I like to do lately.  And I didn't even join the knit-12-sweaters-in-a-year thing!  Maybe I should have?  Anyway.  For whatever reason I somehow decided that this one needed to be pink.  I needed a big old pink hoodie.  Patons Cabled Hoodie. (Rav. link)  I'm moving along on in, being more than halfway done with the hood and then only one more sleeve to go!  I think this one might do me in on cables and bobbles for a while though.  I love some cabley goodness but this is turning out to be a bit much, especially since the sweater that I just did had a bunch of bobbles and cables too.  I think I'm going to be pretty happy with the end result though.  I've even been blocking the pieces as I finish them so it will be all ready to get seamed up and then be done.  And with the weather has been going this past week I may even get a chance to wear it soon ;)

In other news, The Boyfriend and I will be running the Salt Lake 5k tomorrow morning!  We've been training for about a month and feel confident that we will make it through it.  It might not be fast, but we will do it!  I get to meet and participate in a seminar tonight with a 7th degree black belt Master, it should be great fun and I'm really excited (and nervous) about it!!  Also tomorrow is our karate tournament, where I will get up in front of strangers and present a form to judges and peers.  I'm not even so nervous about that as I am the seminar.  Anyway, it will be a full weekend and to kick it off I'm taking The Kiddo to my sister's for a sleepover - that way I don't have to push the stroller while I run tomorrow.  Have a great weekend!!

Getting healthy

So I have been busy, very busy.  I try to squeeze knitting and spinning into my day but it is just not as much as I used to be able to do.  And since I haven't really been posting that much about fiber adventures I thought I should explain why that is.  Get ready for a potentially boring story ;)

I'm trying to get healthy.  Trying to eat right and lose weight.  I've been up and down for about 5 years now after getting pregnant, mostly up all of last year.  So in December I decided to get back on track and so far I'm doing pretty well.  I started karate and that immediately led into getting more fit so I could do karate better.  I also started eating better, first using Dr. Oz's guidelines, but since then I've switched over to a new system. It is working so far, not without problems though.  The last couple of weekends I've gone overboard and ate things I shouldn't have, you know, the normal ups and downs of trying to get healthy from not healthy at all.  Anyway, since December I have lost about 23 pounds so I'd say overall I am doing pretty good!

I have good days and horrible days but I do my best to make most of them good.  I eat pretty much all day, every 3 hours and always make sure to get some protein with each meal.  It may be a little wierd at times, like as I type this I am having chipotle tilapia with broccoli for breakfast.  But I do what works, however strange or difficult it might seem at first and eventually it just gets easier.  I'm also training to hopefully run in the Salt Lake 5K next month just to see if I can do it.  I actually ran 2 miles on Monday, something I haven't done in a couple of years!!  I exercise a lot, in between life and kid stuff.  I do karate 3 days a week.  I run 3 days a week.  I'm busy.

So anyway, all this adds up to me saying bear with me I guess.  For now I'll just keep trying to get some blogging in here and there and hope I at least keep a few readers!!  I need to be all about me right now though and so the blog will suffer I'm sure, as it has been.  I will do my best to keep some knitting content posted and not just disappear into thin air ;)