Well, and I’m not making this up, my feet hurt this week. Enough that I couldn’t exercise. I did weights once, and I should have done some physical therapy which I never got to, but I couldn’t have hit the treadmill. They’re getting better. I don’t know what happened, but it was the top of my foot, pretty high up, and it was excruciating. It kept me up at night. And I didn’t drop anything on it, I didn’t twist it… For the first few days, it was the right foot, and now, it’s mostly the left.

Freaky weird.

I ate ok until the weekend.

This week, with Madrona and Valentine’s Day and everything, and my freaky weird feet… I’m just going to try to eat sensibly and drink more water. I’ll pick up exercise again next week.

How ’bout you?

I’m not feeling very inventive with post titles this week.

So, I spun the batt yesterday and plied it, and washed it, and today, I knit some of it.

I’m not in love with the colors, but I was working with what I had, I didn’t dye the silk. But I’m happy with the overall product. I like the feel of it. I like the drape it has, I like the effect of the blended fibers. I think I want to see more of the wool in there, so I’ve blended another batt with half the silk that the last one had. We’ll see how that one turns out.

So, I put Clark down for a nap and almost went to bed myself, as I think I’m fighting a cold or something that hasn’t fully hit yet… but I decided to go downstairs and play with fiber a little bit.

Oh. my.

So, I’ve been wanting to make a sweater for myself, and originally, I was planning to dye the white fleece I bought, but then the dark gray fleece has been seducing me, and I thought I’d blend it with a little bit of black alpaca for a gorgeous, charcoal color. So, I’m down in my basement kitchen and I have a couple pounds of dyed silk noil that was given to me a year ago, and I picked out some multi-colored blues…

And the only thing hindering my joy is that I can’t accurately capture the colors with my camera, and I don’t have the patience to mess with exposure compensation to try. All you can see is the blue silk, but the charcoal wool blend is stunning.

There may be too much silk, I’ll continue to play around with it, but it’s beautiful, it feels amazing, and I’m giddy.

I’d barely started spinning and was so excited, I had to stop and show you. But now I’m going to get off the computer and get back to my wheel.

I just came back from my 2nd guitar lesson. And I thought he dumped a lot on me last week! I could practice 2 hours a day and not be ready for my next lesson. Wow. It’s so totally cool. As I thought, I’m learning stuff I wouldn’t have known to ask to be taught. And my instructor was much warmer this week, and even a little funny. We’ll get there.

So, a quick catch up… I’m almost through with 11 out of 13 repeats on the Angel Lace shawl, and have finally run out of my first skein of yarn. So I need to ball the second and finish it up. I’m going to end up using a lot less yardage than the pattern calls for, and that is really weird.

Sam and I went to the yarn store on Saturday afternoon and picked up more yarn for his scarf, so I’ve resumed work on that. It’s my new traveling, mindless knitting project. We also bought three skeins of fuzzy, purple laceweight for the third of those things I’m being cryptic about. And I happened to see something I couldn’t live without. That so rarely happens to me in a yarn store. Usually, I see lots and lots of things I really like, get overwhelmed and balk at the $$$, and leave a store with nothing. I’m not much of a yarn buyer. But on Saturday, I was on a mission to acquire yarn for Sam’s scarf

and that other thing,

and then I saw it.

It’s delicious. It’s laceweight. And now it’s mine.

I’ve bought 12 skeins of laceweight in the past month. Whoa.

The pink and purple socks are stalled out for now. (I’m kind of stressing about having four works in progress. I need to finish some things). Anyway, Abby likes the socks, and wants them either as socks, or at her suggestion, fingerless mitts.

Ooh.

Now there’s a thought.

It’s weird, but I think they’d look pretty as fingerless mitts, and hideous as socks. Exactly as they are, not changing a thing. How does that work?

I’ve been naughty this week. I’ve been going 250-500 calories under my calorie target until last night, when I went to a party and ate a lot.

I just didn’t feel like eating to meet my minimum calories when I wasn’t hungry.

Something that has helped me the past few weeks is to eat a large, rich lunch… spinach and cheese ravioli is one of my favorites, to get me through the late afternoon snacking hours gracefully. It has worked very well, and I enjoy it. It feels decadent.

I’ve been exercising all week, and once I do weights and a little bit of physical therapy today, I’ll be quite happy with my week.

How’s it going?

Yesterday was busy. I did everything on my list and then some. I took Clark to the store and decided to let him walk everywhere. The grocery store is somewhat calm at 10 o’clock on a weekday, so it went pretty well and took a really long time. He only booked out the front door once, and I was ready for it.

I painted, made bread, and dinner, had the girls put away the load of laundry, I lifted weights and did some physical therapy exercises, knit a repeat on the Angel Shawl, and helped my internet shy friend get started on a new knitting project. I’ve also been sending 5,000 emails to my yahoo group trying to coordinate sweatshirts for Madrona. They’re going to be cool, but it’s taken a phenomenal amount of time.

Today, I need to exercise and help out in Veronica’s class, but this morning, I’m going to sit and knit on the shawl for a little bit. I need to relax.

Shawls on the needles don’t make for very good pictures, but it’s all I’ve got right now. And I’m going to get to it, or I’ll run out of knitting time.

So, last night, I asked the girls to help me clean up (as I frequently do). For some reason, last night it worked. I was able to wake up to a relatively tidy house. On these rare and wonderful occasions, I feel an enormous sense of freedom. The day is mine. I can do whatever I want with it. The house is already clean. (ish).

Of course, I’m going to do things like grocery shopping, finish painting the little corner of the basement that isn’t done yet, make bread, put away the last load of laundry, exercise, etc. But it FEELS SO GOOD to be able to be productive, as opposed to spending the first half of the day trying to catch up on the mess from yesterday.

I thanked the girls profusely last night for helping. Maybe they’ll do it again.

It’s not that they usually refuse, they get distracted and wander around with this dazed look on their face, like they have no idea what to clean. So I have to tell them every. little. thing. to. do. And if I give them a few things at a time, they’ll inevitably forget most of them, and I have to tell them again…

It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. And I rarely ever win.

I didn’t get much knitting done yesterday. Just a few rounds of the too-much-pink-and-purple sock while waiting in the lobby for my guitar lesson.

My guitar teacher isn’t particularly dynamic. I don’t get the impression he’ll ever gush or tell me how fantastic I did with anything. Maybe I’m wrong. I liked him, and he does seem to know a lot about music. My homework this week is to try to memorize what chords are in what keys, and their relative minors and their chords. That should make my mom happy. She mentioned relative minors when talking to me about piano.

And I need to work on different strumming patterns, and memorize the weird chords in Possession. Oh, and mute strings in those weird chords… which is strange and uncomfortable. And strum Across the Universe differently, which I thought I did pretty good to begin with.

I guess not.

So I’m excited. I expect to learn a lot. He mentioned something about “getting me organized” in my playing. That sounds like a good thing. And I already have some decent callouses going, so it isn’t overly painful.

Clark is grumpy this morning, so I’m going to get dressed and get us both out of here. That’ll put him in a better mood…. until I strap him in a shopping cart.

Life with an (almost) two year old. Such a joy.

I’ve been busy. The kids were out of school yesterday and it was non stop craziness. Abby had a party. Liv went to one. The house and laundry were in need of attention.

And I knit.

So, to catch up… we’ll start with Saturday. I bummed a ride with Marian out to east of North Bend to Shiori’s house for a dye workshop. They were handpainting and steaming skeins and rovings. I dyed a little sample skein,

but didn’t have time to dye my yarn as it started snowing quite convincingly, and we wanted to makes sure we could get home. And really, I wanted to kettle dye my skeins anyway. BUT, I brought home some dye to mix and experiment with,

and hopefully, it’ll be dyed soon. I think I like the color of my sample skein, but I’d like it lighter if possible.

Also on Saturday, I started another pair of socks, since I finished my Koigu cable pair. (They’re in the laundry, no picture yet).

I’m not sure how I like them. I’ve never been a huge fan of chevron socks, even though I like chevron stitches. But I thought the colors needed to have some movement to them, which is why I chose it. Are they too pink-purple-chevron-y? Dish it to me straight. I can take it.

Finally, (well, not finally, but finally in the knitting department), I wound up a skein of silk/mohair and am well into the Angel Lace Shawl.

It’s extremely hard to photograph, being all bunched up on the needle and such. I’m halfway through the pattern, but not halfway through the knitting, as it gets bigger each row.

I have my first guitar lesson today at 2. I’m really excited.

I exercised once, and didn’t meet my calorie target at all this week. I don’t think I did bad, necessarily, but not great. I was extremely busy getting the spinning done and working at school and such, so I nibbled and snacked a lot as opposed to taking the time to eat good meals.

However, I can tell I’m building muscle again and I’m in better shape. I’m happy with that.

Now I’m off to dye the yarn I’ve spun for Clark’s sweater.