Catch-Up

It's been a while. Let's play catch-up.

Here is the baby blanket I am working on for my cousin's baby #2. The baby, named after my grandfather, has been born. He's in Hawaii though, so how much need is there immediately for this blanket? Probably not much. However, after a break from it for too much thought required, I sat down and figured out the question in about 30 seconds. I guess it was the wine making the question seem way more difficult than it actually was?

Here is the sock I am working on, when I am commuting or need something small to take a long. This is sock #1. I needed some sunny yarn to work with.
I also started this project, a pair of Dashing (from Knitty.com) for M with yarn he purchased at Rhinebeck. That's right, I went and he came with me. I am a little farther along now and it is a darker blue color but fall light in Boston is difficult for color.

M went with me partially because it was the weekend before my 30th birthday. We also went to the Boston Book Festival the day before and it was fantastic. I highly recommend it next year.

My Portland family sent me flowers for my birthday, aren't they pretty?M got me new gloves for skiing. I wanted and needed these.
He also got me this book all on his own (I picked out the mittens). He remembered that I wanted to get better at finishing and he read reviews and picked it out on his own. It's a great gift for me.

He also knew I wanted one of these: a Namaste Circular needle case. I haven't set it up yet, but I will soon. I have a bag of circular needles just waiting to be neatly sorted.
This is M's Rhinebeck yarn.

This is part of the yarn M purchased for a sweater I will knit for him at some point. The rest of the yarn is being shipped from the seller.
M also got a skein of this super sparkly yarn to learn how to knit socks for our 2 year old niece. We will see how great he does with it!I bought four skeins of this yarn with Cashmere to knit a sweater with. Cashmere. That is all I am saying. You will see more of this soon.
I also got some yummy sock yarn. This is closer to the color but blurry.
This is not the color, it is much deeper, a real dark burgundy type color.
We also saw these puppies and thank god they were already purchased otherwise we may have bought one due to cuteness overload and we could not handle a dog right now.
There were of course adorable other animals, like these:
None of them really cooperated with my photo taking attempts.

I also ran in a 10K and finished under less than ideal conditions for me.

I did it despite eating some of the below peanut butter cup cookies. These are the ingredients and the process.
It is fun pushing the peanut cups into the cookie.M also made us delicious dinner. This was really good.


It included these really delicious twice fried potato slices. If you haven't tried this and don't mind a lot of work, it is worth it.
I also made a peanut butter tart that was the best thing ever but so dangerous to have around. It didn't last long.
That is what I have been up to, running and eating peanut butter desserts to replace those calories.

Happy Knitting!

Finally FO

I finally finished my "Tour de France" socks. It took me a lot longer than during the Tour de France and I am the first person to admit it. However, I am very happy with the finished product even if it seemed like they would never end. I learned on this project that I like one cable needle type far better than the other. I much prefer and find much easier to work with the fisherman's hook like cable needles than the ones that are like a dpn but bent up in the middle. They just work better for me at the stitches not coming off the cable needle and for ease of knitting from them. The socks turned out to be quite long and I used up all but less than a yard of the yarn I believe. I didn't even do the ribbing at the top, using my scale to judge with great success how many repeats I could squeeze out of this yarn.
It took me a little bit (a couple of days) to start a new project, but I have. It's not the project down below. It's a baby blanket I am knitting using someone else's dishcloth patterns, all of them are Hawaii related, to put into a pattern with seed stitch in between the dishcloth patterns. It's in progress but I only have the seed stitch border going so far since I had to do a fair bit of counting and arranging and math to get the patterns sorted into how I want to use them and what will make a good baby blanket size.

This is not the new project but the start of another new one. It's a swatch. If you know what for, let me know, otherwise I will tell you next time.

In running related news I have started training for my 10k in October. I am using Hal Higdon's Novice plan for the 10k and it is going well so far, except for all this rain we have all of a sudden in the Boston area which is mostly keeping me from running outside.

Happy Knitting and Running!

P.S. Happy Birthday to my Dad and niece tomorrow!

Flowers and Train Knitting

Hi everyone,

I have been very busy as of late. I did not meet my Tour de France goal. It was an epic failure for me. However, these flowers from M did wonders to cheer me up about that. Aren't they beautiful? They lasted strong for about a week and now some of the blooms are still around, but most have gone away. They were the most fragrant and wonderful flowers.
Here was the socks before I did another 1.5 repeats to be left with only one more to go on this sock and then the border. However, I am still behind this on the other sock, having most of the leg left to go.
I didn't knit on it much this week because Michael ran in a 24 hour relay race this weekend starting at 7 PM Friday night and going to 7 PM Saturday night. Our running club, the Shamrock Runners Club, had the team. We spent the night there in my car, and only slept 5-6 hours that night. It wasn't the most comfortable. The relay was over a 5k course. I ran one lap for M at about 4 PM on Saturday. It wasn't very ideal conditions. It was hot at that point, and while it was not that humid, I couldn't race as hard as I would have liked. I did improve my 5k time to 36:08 by M's watch, since each individual lap was not timed, that is all I have to go on. I definitely didn't hydrate enough during the night and day due to some very questionable porta potties. It was mid day Saturday before we discovered the office park bathrooms were open with running water and real toilets and soap!!!! soap!!!! It seemed like such a luxury at that point. If he does this again next year, we will 1) have a tent or go home to sleep in our bed, as it is 20-25 minutes away, and we would have 5-6 hours in between laps at night as they do 2 laps during the night to let people get some sleep. Today we were both tired, so we went and did some fun things I wanted to do-we did mini golf and got ice cream at Richardson's, which is yummy.

I did a repeat today on the sock however. I'm looking forward to the finishing line with these so I can start and concentrate on the baby blanket.

Happy Knitting and Running!

Will I Make It?

This past week I didn't get so much knitting done. I am at this point on both socks however. I turned the second heel last night and am knitting my way up the leg slowly. Both socks look pretty much like this, but one has the current repeat pictured and one additional repeat completed. Can I get them done by Sunday around 11 AM when the Tour de France rolls into Paris and onto the Champs d'Elysees? I just don't know. It would probably involve marathon knitting on Saturday because I am missed knitting night tonight. I did knit on the socks while I would have been there, but am not sure I was as productive as I would have been. M is in a team race tomorrow night so that will be cut down on time and Friday night we may go see Inception or something. Can I do it? I probably can, but do I want to?

I did check out Windsor Button's Tuesday lunch knitting group. It's small, but nearby and a good fix if I need to knit. I also picked up some beautiful soft blue Blue Ski Alpaca 100% Organic Dyed Cotton for a baby blanket for a Hawaii baby. I figured wool was just not an option otherwise I would have gone for Cascade 220. I picked up six skeins and it is 150 yards each and it should do it based on other baby blankets I have knit.

Finally, what would the world be if our Big Papi wasn't being cute? Here he is in a box peaking out at me on the couch. We have so many boxes in the living room because we were separating old kitchen stuff to give to our respective siblings.

I have not run since Saturday. I know, I wish I were but ever since I went from running 11-12 minute/mile pace normally to 4 miles on Saturday at 9:30 minute/mile pace my right hip on the front at the crest of illium has been hurting. It's now down to discomfort, but until it is feeling better, I am resting it. I will be taking it slower for my runs from now on. That was way too fast for me.

Happy Knitting and Running!

Tour de France Project

I love the Tour de France. I don't follow cycling except for the Tour, but I love it. It might have something to do with the fact that I love most things French, but not all, and I love the actual country. I can't stand mushrooms and that is something not very Francophile at all.

However, I love the Tour and follow it as much as possible during the week, watching when I can, and I watch on the weekends. During my last summer without 9 to 5 working, when I was studying for the bar exams I took, I watched every day on mute while studying.
Now, I watch less but love it just the same. It's an incredible feat just to ride it and to win it is to be lucky and skilled and determined.

A fair amount of people do a Tour De Fleece where they spin an entire fleece during the three weeks of the Tour. I am doing my own Tour challenge, of a project to complete during the Tour.
I cast on a pair of socks during the first real stage, not the Prologue, and have been knitting on them ever since. They are my Tour challenge, my mountains to climb.



I made a little more progress after taking this photo. I have three repeats done on the first sock I started and I have one repeat finished on the second sock and am on the second repeat now. I want to have three repeats finished on the second sock finished by the end of the day today at least. I think I will need two more repeats on each sock after that for a total of 5 repeats for the foot. I plan on using wendy's gusset heel for these socks instead of the one using wrap and turns. I think I am on pace for finishing these socks by the end of the Tour. We will see how that keeps going. I think there will be a lot of catch up on the weekends for these socks.

I also went running yesterday. M and I joined a running club, the Shamrock Runners. They are out of Woburn, MA, right near where we lived in Burlington. We went to go do a trail run they do on Saturdays yesterday, but people were only there for the earlier runs. M was going to do the entire 9 mile run, but I was going to do less. It was hot by the time we got there at 8 AM and we were the only ones there. We weren't really feeling it and after a few false starts we did 1.9 miles out in 21:26 minutes and walked back because I felt bad after that. I felt light headed and dizzy and like I was going to get sick. He went to the gym after that and did another 6 miles inside. It was too fast for me, our pace. In the heat, I couldn't go that fast and feel good after three drinks the night before and not properly hydrating. I'll try it again next week maybe when we go earlier and without drinking the night before and will properly hydrate.

Happy Knitting and weekend!

FO! FO! FO!

This is why I haven't been posting that much.

I ran my first 5k last weekend.  The arm you can see to the right in red is my husband, M.  I started running 6 weeks before that and signed up for the 5k as a way to motivate myself.  M has been running for many years and has been encouraging me.  I finished in around 36 minutes, which was my goal, besides running the entire thing.  With work and running and life there isn't a whole lot of time.  I have been knitting, but not that much.  

I did finish the socks for my grandfather.  Here is the finished project.  I hope they fit him.  I'm a little worried about that.

I also lost a weekend to Michael's marathon softball game.  Here he is batting during the game.  He did well, even though his team lost.

Here is the finished scoreboard we spent all weekend before the game working on.

I have since started a new pair of socks that I started during the first real stage of the Tour de France this morning.  The prologue just seemed like a strange way to start it to me.  I hope to finish these socks before the final stage in Paris.  I'll fill you in on the details of those next post.

For now, Happy 4th of July and Happy Knitting!

Progress, but not too much...

I did make a little knitting progress this weekend, but not much. I have a really good reason however. This is all I got done-the heel on the sock. I am now on the leg.









This weekend M and I went down to Old Lyme, CT to his cousin's beach house. Did we touch sand this weekend?

Nope, but I did see the beach. It really wasn't beach weather and that was probably good, because then we were not tempted to abandon the really giant craft project we worked on all weekend.

M has been playing in a marathon softball game for at least ten years the day before Fathers Day and this is the fortieth year of the game.

They used to have an old scoreboard and lost it somewhere. This year, in honor of the 40th year and a player who passed away a few years ago, M's cousin decided to re-make it. We went down to help them. I think that it turned out very well.













This is the lovely kitty we came home to. He wasn't there, but was in another of his spots when we came home. He has now apparently had enough of us and is back on top of the box with yarn in it.








Happy Knitting and other crafting!

I haven't been knitting enough to make this interesting....

I haven't been knitting enough to make this interesting and these are why










I started to run with my husband, Michael. He is a great runner and has been very patient with me, including running with me at my pace outside. I was making great progress, following a runner's world training program for a 5k. It was going along swimmingly.

I am training to run a 5k on June 27. It is around the Charles River and supposed to be pretty flat. I wasn't feeling particularly confident after a terrible running day on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I couldn't even run a mile. I did my 5 minute warm up, walking at 2.5 on the treadmill. I then started to run at my normal pace and a slight incline. I only made it .75 miles before a side stitch did me in. I was also dragging in energy. It was the proverbial set back.

I made up for it today. I did my 5 minute walk warm up and then I ran 3.1 miles at my normal pace!!!! That'y my race distance! Sure, it was on the treadmill and sure it was inside and sure I was sweating like mad, but I did it! I now feel confident that I will run the entire 5k which has been my goal from the start.

Knitting wise?
All I have done is get to the heel for the Grandpa sock and start it. I'm almost done with the gusset. It's going along.












I hope you have some happy knitting and whatever you do for exercise! I promise more progress on these soon!

Then, it will be another baby blanket and a bunch o' finishing and the bike thing for my brother, E.

Knitting? Not so much

I haven't managed to knit that much this past week. I've been very busy dealing with some things that needed to be dealt with.

I have made some progress on my sock for my Grandpa.










It's not that exciting knitting.

However, we did go to Newbury Street in Boston yesterday and walked around.

I am starting to run with my husband, so we went to Marathon Sports and picked me up some running shoes.

They are hopefully going to be good for me, so if this continues, you will probably get some running stories on here too now.

Happy Knitting!

Knitting Galore!

I have done a fair bit of knitting lately, so I have lots to show you. Unfortunately, I did not take a final picture of the socks I knit for my mother, which is also my first design ever, so I will have that pattern for you at some point soon.

Here is in an in progress shot. My Mom says she will get pictures for me sometime soon of her wearing the finished project.









I did finish some other projects.

I finished a Gail/Nightsongs in Mini Mochi.










Here it is blocking. It's now off the blocking wires and I wore it today. It is so light and warm.










I also finished a scarf for my brother based on the movie Harry Potter, the scarves that the students wore in the later years. Here he is in the scarf, I think you can tell that he likes it.












This is one of my current projects. It is a pair of socks for my Grandpa. I hope they fit since I don't have his foot measurements, only his shoe size.









I am also working on his hat for my niece, who can now say my name! She is growing up so fast!










Happy Knitting....