Running Fail

To quote Modern Family's Phil Dunphy "WTF, why the face?" (If you don't know what I'm talking about watch this.)

It was a running fail of epic proportions today. For 2015, my goal is to have at least 100 runs and run 500 miles. Additionally, I want to walk 250 miles (most of them on my work breaks). I also want to have 100 visits to my gym this year. Again, these are all do-able goals, if I set my mind to it.  I used to do this before I had Stormy and I can do it again.

Today was my first day back to work in just over two weeks.  We also got just over 5 inches of snow last night which made for an interesting morning of commuting (the van doors were frozen shut and we had to use the hatch to get kids in and out) but we all got to school/day care/work safely. Work was good and went quickly.  I am speaking as a part of three different presentations tomorrow so I had I lot to prepare plus a mound of emails to send. When I left work, I thought about just going home, but then decided to hit the gym. After all, these goals are not going to be made without choosing the gym over the couch.

When I got to the gym, I noticed I didn't have headphones.  No problem. It will be boring to run around a 1/10 miles track without listening to anything but I've done it before. Then, I got to the locker room to change clothes and realized I had not packed a sports bra.  Let's just say that a sports bra is essential to me running. In fact, often two sports bras are essential. So I realized that running is not happening today. Then I also realized my fancy new running watch that can keep track of my laps is also not packed. It was just not my day.  Most of these errors were due to the fact that I was supposed to go to spin class at 5:40 am but the gym opened late due to the snow so I had to repack my workout bag and some things got missed.  I did get in 1.5-2 miles of walking on the track and I did a mile in the halls on my break earlier in the day.  That's better than nothing.

Tomorrow's high is zero with wind chills in -20s to -30s so Miss D's school is cancelled.  As of right now, ICC is still on and if it is, I can try to run again tomorrow.  I am so thankful to have access to an indoor track when it is so cold outside.

Have you had any epic workout fails?

Knitting Goals

I've mentioned before that I am very goal/challenge orientated. One of the best parts of January for me is everyone else is thinking like I think all the time. I feel normal for a few days until everyone breaks their resolutions. For 2015, I have several goals that I will be revealing, including today's reveal: knitting. I want to make at least 12 substantial knitting or crochet projects. That is one a month, which I think is doable, even with my other goals. I've never challenged myself to a number goal of projects before, so we'll see how this goes.

Yesterday, I knit so much that my hand hurt. It is that crazy hurt of euphoria. I was in a "knitting trance" and soon I was pretty close to finishing the baby blanket, so I kept going (no pain, no gain in knitting too) and finished the blanket. One project done, eleven more to go. (Even though I started this project in 2014, I knit well over 50% in 2015, so it totally counts.)

The pattern is the Cuddle Tight Baby Blanket by Lion Brand Yarn. It is super easy which is perfect for watching TV (or watching my husband play XBOX). I used Bernat Baby Blanket yarn. It is so soft and squishy. Stormy really enjoys hugging it and I have to tell him it is not for him.

I have my next project ready to go. I am making mittens with one of my favorite yarns Malibrigo Rasta. (I love any Malibrigo yarn, really.) This color is called "Paris Night." It is an inky blue/purple.

Although mittens are not very big, they will still count in my "substantial" project count. I am just not counting baby bibs and dishcloths in the substantial count. I make a ton of small things (sub-goal: make 24 dishcloths). Hats and mittens, though small, will still count as substantial. I make so many little projects (finished in under 2 hours) that this year I really want to focus on getting some bigger things accomplished as well as getting some unfinished objects finished up. I have a few big projects that are nearly completed, but just need some finish work.

I am having a hard time deciding between knitting and reading right now. Usually I get into a real reading kick or real knitting kick and alternate which takes my time. I am trying to read the January book club selection for one of my many book clubs, but I want to start the mittens too.

I'm reading Like No Other by Una LaMarche. I thought I would really love it and read it quickly, but I am not finding it as interesting as the reviews promise. But, I'm only about a third of the way through, plenty of time for it to get more interesting. It just makes the call of knitting so much louder and hard to ignore.

What is something that usually distracts you from your goals? I usually have issues with conflicting goals and figuring out which one to do first.

2015

It is a new year and a new attempt at blogging.  Maybe this one will stick. When I was pregnant with little Stormy, I was told that two kids triples the work and I would say that is accurate.  I have been working on being a good librarian, wife and mother while keeping myself happy with my hobbies. I have been thinking about blogging, but not doing it.  I even thought about deleting the whole thing, but then today happened and I wanted to capture it.

I am adding a new hobby this year, I signed up for my first triathlon yesterday.  I am excited to get training, especially to start swimming again. I know I can run, bike and swim, I just can't do them one after another just yet. I do have until June to get it right though. I hope to also try this triathlon thing next month (on Valentine's Day no less) at an indoor tri at a local college. The indoor tri is a lot less pressure because they are seeing how far you can swim, bike and run in delegated time periods.

I started my New Year off with a 5k race on the Peoria riverfront. It was cold, but not as cold as yesterday, and not as cold as it will be this weekend. I got to run with a friend from church.

I came in at just under 30 minutes (29:54). I got to use my new running GPS watch too. It was great to know exactly how far I was into the race at all times. It is super nerdy. I love knowing the running stats as I run and once completed. I have several goals for health in 2015 but one of the main goals is to get that 5k time down to pre-Stormy time, which is over a minute per mile faster (it may sound crazy but it's totally do-able). My friend and I already have two more 5ks over the next two months (we signed up for a three pack bundle) so I should be able to make progress by March. I actually have a race at least every month until August. This should keep me motivated to get those miles in.

I am working on a great baby blanket. It is super squishy yarn and amazingly easy pattern.  More and more friends, co-workers and relatives are having babies which keeps my knitting needles busy. While I was waiting for the race this morning I got a few more rows in.

If you notice in the photo, I have a Jamberrys with a silhouette of a woman running.  I come prepared! Look out 2015!

I'm looking forward to a New Year.  Do you have any big plans for 2015?

Vintage Crochet Blanket

I love making things for babies so it is a good fit that so many of my friends are pregnant.

One of my friends from grad school is pregnant with her fourth child, a boy, due in just a few weeks.  I have crocheted a blanket for her first three so I started on the blanket for the fourth.

I haven't crocheted in a while. Crochet is my first fiber love.  I learned from my mom in my late teens. But once I started knitting five years ago, my crocheting projects diminished.  Still as my first love I am always happy to go back, especially when I am making blankets.  I prefer to knit for garments and accessories but nothing beats crochet when making a baby blanket.

I am in love with this pattern Vintage Crocheted Blanket by Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. I normally prefer to use free patterns or patterns from books and magazines I already own, but when I saw this pattern, I had to buy it.  It has every thing I look for in a pattern: easily memorized and looks great. Plus, it is just really fun.  This is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  I highly recommend this pattern to all crocheters out there.

31

Dear blog, I have been neglectful.  I have written so many times in my head as I drove to and from work or as I laid awake at night nursing a crabby baby, but that never materialized into anything.  But a blog is always forgiving when you admit that you have been neglectful, happy to publish another entry and forget the days of unpublished past.  This is unlike the people I have been tending to while I let the blog go dormant, so I guess that is really the way it should be.  I chose to do the things I usually write about instead of writing about them. And I picked up a new hobby (or some may say, sport).

On Mother's day, I finally got my 30th birthday present, a bicycle.  It was almost a year late, but that is okay because on my 30th birthday I was pregnant and in no mood to ride a bike.  Before I knew it my thirtieth year was flying by, I was back to work after maternity leave and in the swing of things, thinking about a bike but not pursuing it until this spring.

I love my bike, a Trek Dual Sport 8.2 DS.  It is in the fitness hybrid category as bicycles go which means it can do some off-roading, but not as much as a mountain bike, and can go fast, but not as fast as a road bike. I'm learning a lot about bikes since last bike I owned I got when I was 9 or 10 years old and it served me until I was a teen and no longer riding bikes. Plus, I was pretty tall by then and not really fitting on my hot pink 10-speed.

I went for one ride with D on my new bike and the Husband said he wanted a bike too.  I am all for finding a family activity so we hit the bike stores and got him a Giant bike. I find the brand name fitting for my tall husband's XL bike. Now that we had bikes, we needed a child carrier for Stormy.  Then, we needed a bike carrier rack for the van and soon we were spending a lot of time and money thinking about bikes. It is all worth the expense because Stormy, D, the Husband and I have been enjoying family bike rides together.  It is something we can all do together and enjoy.  I can't think of another thing we do together we all like, except watch television (which is what they are doing as I type this).  I can't wait for us to go for another ride.

Riding my new bike made me remember a part of me that has been dormant for years, the outdoors me. I worked at a summer camp for three summers.   I was a lifeguard for years.  The Husband and I walked a few times a week. I would eat my lunch outside. I was always outside and then suddenly, I wasn't, except for a run on Saturday morning and then once pregnant with Stormy, that too ended. I've wanted a bike for years, ever since my mom and sister got bikes while I was in graduate school.  The Husband and I have talked about getting bikes many times over our almost 9 years of marriage. I was hoping to get some cross-training in to improve my running, but I have found so much more in just a few rides. We have something to bond over as a family.

We even took out bikes to visit our parents over the weekend and had some great riding, something I never thought we would ever do.  D even got a new bike from her grandparents.  It doesn't have training wheels so I hope either she learns to ride or we get some training wheels soon.

Even more outdoor activities were in store for us in Iowa.  On Saturday, we cooked dinner over a fire at my parent's house. D got to heat her very own hot dog over open flame for the first time.  This is nothing quite like cooking over a fire.

My dad has been pestering inviting us to go kayaking with him for quite some time and we always decline.  But with the fresh air of biking in my body, I thought, why not hit the lake too.  So I found myself in a small, but beautiful, lake hear my parent's house in a kayak, enjoying the water and the surrounding forest. Kayaking is far superior to canoeing in my book. There is an amazing sense of solitude which is rare or this mom and you don't have to depend on another person in a kayak like you do with a canoe (I've had some bad canoe partners in the past). I also went for a paddle boat ride with D and her cousins and grandpa.  The Husband already asked me how long before we start collecting kayaks.  I think we might get some next year, if we can find a good place to paddle around Peoria.

I am dubbing my thirty first year the year of re-awakening my love of nature and being out in it.  What a difference fresh air can make.  Any suggestions of what to do or where to go? 

Something's in the Water

This is something I have never been able to say before, I have eleven pregnant friends/family members/co-workers. ELEVEN. I am glad I didn't have time to write this post until now because the number changed from nine to eleven as I found out about two more just this week.  Additionally, I know at least two more pregnant women that are "Facebook friends," as in friends from my past, that are expecting.  I hate to say it, but I think I started a trend.  More likely though, 30 is the magical age when everyone you know starts or continues procreating.

A knitter has a lot to look forward to with these eleven soon-to-be-babies.  Baby knitting is the best knitting.  It is small which means it usually doesn't take too much time to make, it doesn't cost too much, and is extremely cute.  I knit a few things for Stormy, but with my swollen and numb during pregnancy, I didn't get as much as I wanted done.  Now he has grown so fast he is in 12 mos clothes (at the age of 7 months) and already outgrowing some really cute knitting patterns. I tell him to slow down and stay little, but he just does not listen to me.  I think this is just foretaste of what is to come in the listening and the growing fronts.
 
As for the eleven, these are babies I will all knit or crochet for.  I have already finished one baby item and I love it.  I want to make a million of these. Most of all, I want to keep it and that usually means the recipient will love it too.

The pattern is so fast and easy. 

The color is so beautiful these images don't give it justice. 

The yarn is so soft, I wish you could all feel it. I want to sleep with it.

It is a small lap blanket, suitable for stroller/car seat time.  It is also great for becoming a special cuddly as the baby becomes a toddler. You can see the details here.

In other news, we have a boy on the move (see the growing to fast statement earlier).

He is not quite crawling, but he is getting around.  Watch out sister, someone is coming for your stuff.
 

Games Completed

I finished my project for the Ravellenic Games.

It took way longer than expected and I had to knit without end last weekend, but I finished before the Olympic closing ceremonies aired in Illinois.

I spent a lot of time on this Color Affection shawl and in the end, I am not sure I am totally happy with it.  I like the colors. I like the shape.  Over all it is beautiful and represents things I love: (1) a challenge and (2) something big made from little yarn.  I used sock yarn for this shawl. There is also a lace weight yarn option of this pattern and I am so glad I went with the thicker, yet still fine, option.

I just don't like the three-color-change-edge section.  As you might be able to see in the photo (yarn photography is something I definitely need to work on) there is a section of stripes that are orange, gray and teal.  It is just too tight there and so it does not lay right.  I have read comments about this pattern on Ravelry and found that some knitters rip out and redo that section to make sure that the edge is not so very tight.  I am not a masochist and will not be doing that.  I am on to bigger and better things.

As I age (I know I am still young at 30, but I am starting to gain some perspective), I realize that I cannot focus on all the things that are not perfect.  The shawl is not perfect and as I think about it, it really shouldn't be.  Handmade things are not made to be perfect, they are made to be made.  Made to show love and affection for a craft and for a person.  This shawl isn't perfect and that is what makes it handmade. It makes it good in its own right. Knitting is a great teacher; it is unbiased in how it can be a total jerk to those that do it and still we love it and take on the next project, learning a new skill and moving on.

I did learn a new bind-off with this shawl.  I have never really liked how tight my bind-off edge is on any project.  I can always tell the bind-off edge.  Maybe others can't, but I can.  I can always see the flaws in my work (I am working on not focusing on flaws, I really am). I tried a new bind-off where I knit two into the backloop and then place the stitch back on the left needle and knit two through the backloop again, over and over until all stitches are worked. I think found my new standard bind-off, which is pretty exciting.  I have been knitting about 5 years with the same bind-off. So out of a project that has a bit of an issue, I still learned something new tath is going to totally revamp my knitting in the future. Positives abound when you look for them.

I am also thinking I may need to change my color scheme....

I am now working on something new and exciting, but more on that later.