Good morning. I’m not weighing or measuring right now because I feel enormous and don’t want the discouragement.

I did an hour on the elliptical Monday and Wednesday. I did a half hour Thursday and Friday. It was an incredibly busy week. I was at the school about 8 hours, and preparing stuff for school for many more. I’m very pleased I was able to exercise Thursday and Friday.

Tuesdays are just tough. I have one window of opportunity, and it’s squished in between two other things so that’s hit and miss each week.

I haven’t done well at recording calories or foods consumed this week. So I really don’t know how that went.

How are you all doing? We’re approaching March, which is when a lot of New Year’s resolutions die, if they haven’t already.

I seamed it up at the cabin last week.

It’s not going to fit him for about 2 years. I am completely UN-talented when it comes to picking a size based on body measurements. I just took a class that I’m hoping will help, though.

I know some of you are waiting for a post. Here I am. Tired. Busy. Not feeling very creative at the keyboard. And my internet has been evil and temperamental limiting my opportunities to post.

We had a wonderful time on Hood Canal. Aside from bringing ants home with us (eww), I can’t think of a negative. Well, Nate couldn’t come and we missed him.

I took over 300 pictures.

This week is crazy. I am going to be at the girls’ school a LOT this week, and I’m basically looking to fit my elliptical in somehow every day, and survive. Those are my two goals.

I hope to be more interesting next week. And I hope to post some of the trip this week. Like the way cool gnome I’m working on.

So, Health Group…

On Monday of last week, I did an hour on the elliptical. I think. It might have been 45 minutes. I don’t remember.

I walked up the HUGE hill (truthfully, it’s a combination of huge hills, all right on top of each other) at the cabin once, Friday night. The cool part of that was not getting winded, or even raising my heart rate much. I was happy. And confused as to why the stairs at Madrona kicked my butt repeatedly when the hills didn’t. I most definitely ascended to a higher elevation with the hills than the stairs.

I’m on my vitamins again, and am loving it.

Oh, this is interesting. I looked in my account settings in Calorie King today and they’ve updated their site a few times since I signed up nearly 3 years ago. When I signed up, they had 3 activity level options for you to choose from that they take into consideration when calculating your daily calorie target.

Now they have 5 or 6, and they had me down as “minimal activity- ie bedridden”.

Pah-lease! I am so not bedridden. So I upped it one level to “office job”. I get at LEAST that much activity in a day. That alone bumped my minimum calorie target to 1750 from 1550.

I guess I was really under-eating the month and a half that I was exercising like mad and not losing anything since I couldn’t even get close to the 1550.

It’s really hard, making sure I eat enough. Now, if there’s donuts, cookies, ice cream, etc around, I can totally go over, no problem. But if I’m eating healthy, or even just normal food without the junk, I’m not hungry enough to eat that much. So that’s going to take some effort.

And that sounds totally stupid.

I bought this kit at Madrona last year and was hoping to have it knit by this year, so I could justify buying another one. Didn’t happen, BUT I bought the circular needle I need and I’ve balled my skeins.

I’m planning to make the Kilim Shawl (scroll all the way down, there’s a photo at the bottom of that page. If you like the Diamond Eyes shawl or the Trilium better, tell me. It’s not too late to change my mind. I’m fluctuating myself).

And I’d love to make a sweater for myself. I just can’t decide on a style, or colorway, or if I should make it a raglan, or if I should totally design my own and try to makes something that would be flattering on me with their yarn/kits. I LOVE Ann and Eugene, and think it’d be groovy to always have one of their kits in the stash to knit up.

I’m taking this one to the cabin this week. Have I mentioned how much I’m looking forward to this? I’m giddy. We’ve cleaned out the car (two 13 gallon trash bags. I find that horrifying. Fortunately, the kids were pretty disturbed, too. Maybe they’ll alter some habits? It’s not from lack of reminders on my part to bring in their stuff when we get out of the car). The laundry is well under way. The girls mopped for me today. We’re making lists of things to bring.

And it looks like we’re going to have respectable weather.

So, I was only able to exercise 2 days this past week. Tuesday was super busy, and I was at Madrona all of Thursday and Friday. Very much fun. I did plenty of walking and stair climbing those days, and I must say that with as much exercising as I’ve done the past month and a half, I was super annoyed to be winded after climbing them.

I ate pretty well. A few treats but not too much food overall. I packed lunches. This next week will be tough. Tomorrow I have a sister-in-law coming over to work out, but after my guitar lesson on Tuesday, the kids and I are going to Belfair for mid-winter break. I am SO very excited about that little vacation. I only hope my truck can hold everything we want to take with us. We have grand plans for grand play.

If you recall, there is a huge hill at the cabin in Belfair. Huge. I might climb it once a day for some exercise.

Maybe.

If it isn’t going to interfere with the vacation-ness of my vacation.

I’m up all of the 4 pounds I lost last week (I told you that was a freak event though) and have gained yet another. Whatever. I’m down a half inch in my hips, nowhere else.

All in all, I’d say I’m the same as I ever am. Another two weeks and I’ll go to the doctor for some blood work.

Probably.

Perhaps.

If I’m grumpy enough.

Have a great week. I’m not sure if you’ll hear from me again ’til we return.

But you might.

I wasn’t able to wander around to find the best light, so hopefully, these pictures show how incredibly cute she is.

And it’s all my own washed and dyed wool! She’s even wearing a Tweedy Batt!

She was extremely fun to make (aside from the green cloth for her dress, which took forever and was pretty boring), and I’m looking forward to doing more. I have some grand ideas.

Clark’s sock is done and he’s wearing them both. I’ll have opportunity to knit on the pink mitt tonight at 2 music concerts at the elementary school.

I am going to be running ’til 8:30 tonight without a break, starting in about 10 minutes. I’m tired just thinking about it.

I have a cute picture of Abby toe braiding with her friends on Friday night.

I blurred their faces ’cause I haven’t asked their parents if I can put them on the internet.

We were busy this weekend. It wasn’t the relaxing-knit-and-spin weekend I’d intended. There was too much work to be done on Saturday, but I got my room clean.

So exciting. It was a disaster, and it was driving me crazy.

That evening, I sample spun up a little bit of a Mystery Batt from Fantasy Fibers. Have any of you spun one? It felt a bit coarse to me, so I’m trying to figure out the best way to spin it. My little skien has gone missing, however. I can’t find it to show you. Basically, I tried a slub yarn, and a boucle.

Yesterday, the girls and I spent all afternoon needle felting gnomes.

Mine still needs arms, so I’m only going to show you a little bit of her.

But she’s SO much cooler than I anticipated. I’m planning to take the kids up to the cabin for mid-winter break again like I did last year. I can’t hope that the weather will be as nice as it was then, so we were thinking about bringing needle felting supplies up with us to give us something to do indoors, and I wanted to complete one beforehand to make sure we would know everything we’d need.

Like band-aids.

In other news, Clark ended up wearing his sock for three days. He loves it. It’s so sweet. I’m doing the toe decreases on the second.

And I did end up digging the pink and purple chevron sock out of it’s hiding place and committing it to fingerless mitts, probably for Abby.

Here’s a bad picture of the silks I dyed last week. They all turned out SO well! They’re dyed solid, all the way through, without light or white spots. That’s truly an accomplishment for me.

And while I really thought I’d card up some purple batts over the weekend, our felting party got in the way, so here’s a purple batt with some silk on top of it.

There are two different blues there, it’s kind of hard to tell. Nate doesn’t think he likes the lighter blue, but I think that in a very small amount, it’ll look neat.

I have a huge list to accomplish today. On that list is re-mopping the kitchen, since it’s already sticky and gross. I mopped the whole upstairs thoroughly on Friday, so I’m pretty grumpy about that. And all of this wonderful fibery-ness has distracted me from my guitar homework the past few days. I need to brush up before my lesson tomorrow or I’m toast.

I don’t know what’s going on. My appetite is crashing through the floor. I didn’t eat a lot this week AT ALL. I had a big lunch on Thursday, and that’s about all I ate for the day. Yesterday was the worst, I was over 1000 calories below my target. Monday thru Wednesday I was about 500 calories below target, meaning I netted around 1000 calories (and burned off the others through exercise). So while I’m down 4 pounds this morning from yesterday morning, it’s probably because I didn’t eat yesterday. Yesterday morning, I was the same weight as I ever am, and my measurements haven’t changed a bit. However my wedding ring is falling off, and that’s inconvenient. My fingers weren’t fat.

For some reason, the weight not changing doesn’t bother me. I expect that. My measurements not changing, my clothes not getting looser is REALLY TICKING ME OFF!!!

I did an hour on the elliptical on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m going to try to make up Thursday’s hour today.

So I’m thinking that I need to eat more. My metabolism must be shutting down. That’s the only thing I can think of. I don’t really know how to do it, though, and it kind of scares me. It feels so counterintuitive. I’m trying to LOSE weight. Force feeding myself seems wrong. So I’ll be thinking about that today.

How was your week?

My silk dyeing went well. I’m excited to show you on Monday.

Mmmm, looks like a BLOCKING SWEATER to me!!!!!

And my sleeves are not the same shape. They’re pretty close, but I obviously increased at different rates. I so don’t get that. I’m certain I knit one right after the other. But they’re close enough, provided they fit into the armhole ok. If I’m going to have to re-knit one, I’ll have to re-knit both.

Please no.

I’m on a mission. I want to knit and spin all weekend, so I’m tearing through my house, trying to get it vacuumed, mopped, and picked up such that I can without feeling like I should be doing something else. It’s 10:30, and I’ve made good progress.

Tomorrow, I’ll have the kids clean the basement and their rooms, and I want Nate and I to clean out our room which has accumulated way too much “overrun”. Piles of everyone’s stuff everywhere. And It’d be great to get our bathroom deep cleaned. I’m hoping I can talk Nate into doing that. I’m pretty sure I did it last time.