AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Crossing the finish line

One of my friends ran the Boston Marathon this year. She finished faster than Tedy Bruschi (go her!) and did really well in her age bracket (heck, she was just over 4 hours, which to me is double awesome because my half marathon time is around 2.5 hours).

Less than 2 days before the race I decided that something like the Boston Marathon deserved something special, so I went and got some yarn and learned that skin tones are hard to find.

So, my finish line was almost 3.5 weeks after the race. I blame my ambivalence to sewing. Here is my friend's mini-me.

I finally finished her clothing, her laces, and her facial embroidery on Wednesday night and gave her a bit more spine. My hair technique (and any mistakes I made in the process) gave her a wonderfully full head of hair, which was a little too much for her neck and torso to carry.

Here she is, sitting at the office. Doesn't she look ready to take on the world!

Materials:
1 skein Panda Cotton
1 skein Debbie Bliss (I will update with actual yarn name/color)
< 10 yds Regia Silk (red)
DMC Floss (red and brown)
Scrap of white wool felt
Scraps of yarn (white and green)
Pipecleaner
Stuffing
Black tech fabric
Black thread

I need to refine my technique for making doll clothes. I used the same method as I used in ~1994  to make my houpelande for the Gods and Godesses Ball, and it just doesn't work. Not even for a doll.

My technique (or what not to do) is to place the doll on a piece of paper (I used an envelope for the shorts and a page from a grocery store circular for the top, so really any paper will do), and outline the doll. Then draw a wider outline around the doll in all dimensions.

The problem with this technique is simple. This doesn't take account for the depth of the doll (or person's body). It worked fine for my houpelande, because I was using a stretchy fabric. For a tech singlet and tech shorts, not so much. This angle doesn't make it clear, but this doll is having her circulation cut off by the right leg of her shorts. Whoops!

Just in case people ask, I did this doll completely free form. I remembered some of the techniques from making a monster doll last year, but for the rest it was almost completely based on sweater techniques. There is waist shaping, short rows for the bust, raglan shaping for the shoulders along with more circular yoke decreases, etc. My happiest knitter moment was when I used a bit of short row shaping to give her a chin.

I will probably knit more of these. A couple of coworkers think I should sell them, and I might. It's not like I don't have an Etsy store full of, well, nothing. It certainly fills the sweet spot of interesting to do, relatively affordable materials, and hard enough to make to not interest every knitter or crafter. 

Of course, I should work on my sewing a bit first. Knitting is easy. Sewing is hard! I have a ton of fabric, so this would also be a good way to use some of the more fun fabrics I have.

(I did try to find a pattern first, but I couldn't really find what I was looking for on Ravelry. If you see something awesome on Ravelry, let me know. Sometimes my searching fu just doesn't measure up!)

random wednesday // more sleep edition

1. My attempts to exercise every day are still going strong. There are a few days especially earlier on that were just walking, but I am in the process of pre-training for the half marathon. That involves becoming comfortable with 30-40 minutes of running at a time with a total weekly mileage of 10-13 miles. Last week's mileage was 7, and this week so far is only 3 (I forgot my running sneakers this morning, so I will need to remember them so I can run at the gym if it is cold).

I am adding more activities. Last week I tried Tabata and felt like I was going to DIE! It was hard, especially for my out of shape self. Last night I tried Forrest Yoga, which was awesome. I know the instructor modified the class a bit to account for all of the newcomers and people with injuries, but I loved seeing that. I've had too many instructors that give as an accommodation going into Downward Dog or Child's Pose. Don't get me wrong, sometimes that works. But if you have shoulder or arm injuries, Downward Dog is not necessarily your friend.

2. I started adding in the eat healthier thing last week and it is working. I'm down almost 5 pounds. I know that my weight loss will not stay at this level, and I'm OK with that. I'd be happy to lose 12 pounds in 2 months. For me, eating healthy is restricting my sweets to one or two small pieces a day. No more bags of peanut butter m&ms for me!

3. I've been knitting up a storm, but the problem with working on 4 projects concurrently is that nothing is really moving along very fast. I'm still doing Chore Wars, which helps keep me working on some of the less interesting projects (though I need to dig out my login information, because I haven't entered anything since last Friday).

4. I have a pair of cookie ideas that I think are hilarious. I need to test them, but if they come out well then it will be cookie time (one cookie a day forever)!

5. Related to #4, I've been reading a lot of the political crap coming out from the Komen kerfuffle. It is amazing to me what is happening. I've done a breast cancer 3-day a number of years ago, so I understand what goes into it. However, if this nightmare had come out while I was training for that walk, I'm not sure I would have continued the walk.

6. The Order of the Stick reprint drive is on its way to 1000% funding. He's added coloring books, stickers, magnets, notepads and PDF free stories (for anyone over a certain $ value). One of the comments on the post actually spells out what all of the freebies are and at what $ values they are awarded at. I'd link directly, but the Kickstarter site doesn't allow for that.

7. My next (modern) character is going to be from Cockermouth, Cumbria. Just saying.

still on track

Just before New Year's I read this blog post about exercising every day. The best point made was that if you make it a daily requirement, then you are less likely to say "I don't feel like it today, and I only need to go to the gym 3 times this week..." So, I decided I was going to exercise each day. Now, my requirements aren't terribly stringent. Walking counts, and I'm only looking for 20 minutes. I've lost a lot of muscle tone over the past year or two, and figured that ramping up gently was more important than sweating up a storm.

At this point, things are going well. I have a gym membership and a pool membership, access to a treadmill and a small amount of free weights. I have done at least 20 minutes of exercise each day (the minimum appears to be the walk to the train station, which is takes between 20 and 25 minutes). I'm slowly getting back into swimming, trying to get back into running and trying new things like the rowing machine at the gym.

The worst thing about exercise is that it takes time away from my knitting. Depending on the exercise I do and when, I spend a lot of time not wanting to knit or anything afterwards. This is fine if I exercise first thing in the morning on a weekend, because there is still a lot of time to be useful in and less useful when I started yesterday as mostly being useless and moving to a complete worn out slugfest after returning from swimming.

The second worst thing is that sometimes the muscle soreness or other things make it hard to sleep. Today, for example, I've been up since 2 a.m. Completely unnecessary, and only now am I finally getting tired enough or calm enough or something to fall back to sleep (right around the time I'm supposed to start getting ready for work).

Even with these problems, the benefits are still there. I feel better over all, have less stomach issues, feel happier (barring this morning's wake up time), and have slightly better temperature regulation. I just need to combine the better exercise habits with better eating habits and then I'll be able to actually lose some of the weight I've put back on in the past couple of years.

[10 Tuesday] dreaming big dreams

10 Things You Want to Do in 2012.

Ahem. I almost feel like it would be better to say 10 things I don't want to do in 2012 (that would be drinking, drugging, whoring, phone tech support for family, cleaning, the chicken dance, pick up dog poo, UFOs, waking up before 4 a.m. and having baking failures at the last minute). Of course, some of these are going to happen.

2012 is the year I am going to clean up some of my UFOs (which I already wrote about). So, outside of the knitting circle, here are the 10 things I'd like to do in 2012.

1. Actually maintain my Etsy store. I have ideas, but a laziness about implementation that defies gravity description. If I can just put one or  two new things in there every week, I might slowly be able to transition to the crafting as a source of income.

2. Eat healthier. As the primary cook I tend to make too much of the "looked good on the blog" food, which often is super delicious and equally often is made of more butter than I probably should allow to pass my lips. My husband and I are already back on the way the food out bandwagon, because we've gotten very slack over the past 5 years or so....

3. Exercise more regularly. As in every day. I read this post a little over a week ago, and it definitely resonated with me. If I don't make it a daily habit, it is far too easy to say I'll do it after work. After work becomes I'm too tired. Maybe when I get home, and before I know it I've had a week of nothing more strenuous than baking a batch of cookies (see #2). I have a pool membership, a gym membership, hand weights and a treadmill. There is just no excuse. Of course, because I'm a wuss, walking Victor counts.

4. Manage stress better. I am a mean person when I get stressed out, and I get easily stressed out. I'm type A, and tend to think of everything as an emergency.

5. Play more board games. My husband would like to play more games, but most of the time I don't necessarily want to do something new (or something that interferes with my knitting that much), but I should be able to make time for this. Even one day a week would be better.

6. Try new things. I am the person who goes into a restaurant and has the same thing every time. My kitchen isn't really any better. For all that I love to cook, what I eat falls under 3 or 4 fairly standard categories. Most of those could be broken down into a single category: carbs. While delicious, it isn't super nutritious.

7. Lose the damn weight. It crept on as soon as I thought that I didn't need to work out as much or as often. While this is highly related to exercise every day and eat healthier, there is a goal. That goal is to fit back into my old work pants, so I don't need to go out and buy new ones.

8. Try a new craft. This year I'm thinking of finally trying quilting. I've got quilting friends and I love seeing the beautiful quilts online. Obviously I need a new hobby that uses lots of materials and space and is easy to create WIPs for. But in all honesty, I have an idea and that idea needs to become a quilt. See also, Iron Craft.

9. Drink more water. I don't enjoy drinking water, but I don't want to fill my body with Crystal Light either. So, it is time to learn to love water. Right now I'm doing well if I get through 20 ounces of water, and 2 12-ounce containers of hot chocolate or decaf coffee.

10. I want, I want to sing! I don't think I can justify being in a show in 2012, but I would like to support my friends in their shows and just sing in general. I should look for a choir. I made a brief check in that direction a couple of years ago, but never really followed through on the entire idea.

Most of these are little dreams and some of them are probably just not feasible. Others are too vague or too specific to make really work, but I'm trying and some of them are already happening now.

walking my way back to better health

About 2 years ago I burnt myself out on exercise and healthy eating, and really let myself go. It's been affecting my general health, and I'm tired of my clothing feeling tight. I've had weeks here and there where i tracked the food I ate and did some exercise, but I've not been very motivated.

Well, this week I decided that the worst thing that could happen (in a facetious way, because there are certainly worse things that can happen) is that I could gain more weight during Sorcerer. So, I've been concentrating on making healthy food choices, because exercise is hard to manage around the show schedule. This week I've managed to lose almost 3 pounds through a small amount of exercise (walking mostly) and not eating every sweet thing that happens across my path.

I'm hoping that I can keep up most of the efforts over the holidays, because it would be nice to have another year where I don't gain weight over Thanksgiving and the season of making Christmas cookies.

So, it's time for me to go to set build where I will be probably doing nothing but painting tons of flats. How much exercise is painting flats worth?

walking to mordor

I'm still doing Fitocracy, and especially the User-Created Quest Consortium, though not always with the same intensity as before. The attempt to do 5000 points in a single week at my fitness level kind of wiped out my desire for exercise for a couple of weeks.

Now I'm back, and it is because we are traveling to Mt. Doom to toss in the One Ring. This week's portion is 135 miles (it is listed as 125 on the site, but there was a bit of a correction in the comments). I got up early and jogged for 4 miles. It is a good thing that biking counts, because 19+ miles of running and walking a day would probably kill me by the end of the week. It's been a long time since I have done training to the level of the half marathon training of a couple of years ago.

Technically the quest allows you to split the distance between you and up to 8 companions (that's the amateur level), but I am pretty sure that with running, walking and the exercise bike/regular bike I will be able to do it on my own if I pace myself and get the bulk of the mileage during the work week.

I finished an interesting book at the beginning of the weekend (well, it might have been Thursday) that I have been meaning to write a review of. I'll probably post that either tomorrow or Wednesday.

finding a masculine side

Sorcerer is the second show where I will be a "guy" singing tenor in the chorus. With Pirates, my costume included a loose piratical shirt, sash, black pants, and boots. I also had a fake moustache to help encourage the illusion that I was a guy. I wore the tightest compression style sports bra I had.

This time around I'm trying a different approach. I'm considering binding, though I should practice before the dress rehearsals, so I can get an idea of how comfortable it is and how (if) it affects my singing. I'm also back to the gym. I'm doing weight lifting and running again, trying to trim down and to increase muscle strength in my upper body. I know that as a woman I am unlikely to have the hormonal balance that makes guys more likely to have the full inverted triangle when they work out, but I figured I could give it a shot. At worst I don't look anything more like a guy, but I am stronger. There really isn't a lose situation here.

Unfortunately, in my 1.5 years away from consistent working out, I have lost a lot of the strength, flexibility and speed gains I had made at the time. Yesterday I did my first run in a while, a PEB 1.5 mile test run (scores for 35-39 females). Suffice to say that if I had been actually tested, I would not have passed. I get to do this again on Friday and see if I can make a better effort. I miss the days when I had a sub 9 minute mile.

Fitocracy has been helping out in that regard. The point/leveling system and the extra rewards for trying new exercises has been a boon to encouraging me at the gym. Instead of just hopping on an exercise bike or elliptical, I am using free weights, including barbells and researching tutorials for things like deadlifts and pendlay rows. Heck, I'm even doing the 100 pushups thing, though I'm currently in the land of knee pushups. I'm not sure that I'm getting additional definition yet, but I feel like my muscles are changing. Also, I should use gloves. My left hand has a large blister from yesterday's free weight workout.

The only problem with exercise actually is that I haven't figured out how to knit and weight lift at the same time. Heck, I can barely jog and knit at the same time (though I haven't tried that since the disaster with the hippopotamasusus socks).

not done yet

My cut work is not done yet, and I know it wouldn't be done even if I had done more stitching and less of everything else.

Last night I ran 4.11 miles on the treadmill, made ice cream (more on that probably tomorrow), watched the live action Death Note movie, played Pokemon, and stitched on my cutwork. I could have worked on it more when I woke up unreasonably early this morning, but instead I read until I was finally getting sleepy again and curled up under the warm blanket in the craft room until I heard the sounds of my husband awake. I tried to sleep, but it kept eluding me and my body was doing the I'm hungry dance, mrowing like a frustrated cat.

I'm up and while I cannot promise functionality I cannot feel upset. The roses I bought over a week ago are still in their vase, drying and scenting the air with that almost spicy dried rose scent. Their yellow heads are bowed like penitents and the leaves are all curled up. I've been tempted to buy another bouquet, but I'm enjoying the faded roses in their blue vase.

Tonight I have my second training run of the week. Thank goodness I don't have to go fast. I'll plod along at my 12 minute mile until I feel like I'm getting stronger again. In a week or two I should be able to increase my speed and run slightly faster. 

Also, my husband is awesome. Knowing that I was a little disappointed at missing so much of the Red Line Yarn Crawl, he has said he will go on the kennel tour and take Victor for his kennel cough booster (rightly known as Bordetella, but I always need to look up the spelling and doesn't it just sound like a fancy Italian ham?). Last year I got home from the yarn crawl around 4 pm, but I could have easily stayed longer at Windsor Button. This year I think there is a Berocco trunk show and Ann Weaver will be there. I keep meaning to buy her book, so hopefully this will be a good opportunity to do so and to buy yarn for the Mitred Crosses blanket. 

it's not radio silence

First: There's only a few hours left till the end of the Giveaway Day, umm, giveaway. There is still time to sign up, and remember the odds might be long but they beat winning the lottery!

I have signed up for a lot of odd newsletters. I don't even know how I got even half of them at this point, but they aren't offensive (mostly) and they are sometimes interesting. A lot of them are way girlier than anything else in my life, but even those with their focus on diet, exercise and appearance come in handy.

One of today's articles was from New Scientist. In this article, the researchers (and author) suggest that imagining yourself eating food makes the food less enticing. Now, I love my peanut butter m&ms and I have a bag of them (one of the big bags) at my desk. If between food logging and visualizing myself eating them I can go from eating 15-20 m&ms at a whack to eating 10 or less, then that is a win for both my waistline and my wallet.

I don't know about you, but I love my party foods, my sweets and cheese. I also love running, but I have been off the treadmill and out of the gym for months now. Dog walking is just not enough exercise to counteract my massive sweet tooth. I will take a shot at this visualizing trick and hopefully be able to report back in a couple of weeks about how effective it was in my highly unscientific study.

nanowrimo day 25 Thanksgiving

Today's writing prompt:
It is a first Thanksgiving on an alien planet. How are you celebrating?

I have roasted pumpkin on the counter, potatoes waiting for mashing (and shallot addition) and cupcakes in the oven. Even when I don't get everything I want to do finished I am happy with what I got done.

Today I am grateful for many things:

1. My wonderful husband, Chris, who just cleaned off the counter so I can find the space to chop shallots.

2. My dog, Victor, who tried to eat my husband's lunch bag and failed and at least looked properly sheepish about it (we were gone from the house for less than 20 minutes).

3. My working kitchen. I have made food and while I don't know if it is all good, it is plentiful.

4. Potatoes. No, I really do love my mashed potatoes.

5. My job. I don't always show my appreciation, especially when I am stressed, but I love my job. It is interesting and a good blend of challenging and easy. 

6. The treadmill. I did my slow arse Turkey Trot on the treadmill today even though it was only a day after having my hair done. I need to remember that I like running and that there are things I can give up in order to find time to run.

The evidence?

I looked like I was leaking My Little Pony blood, but I am better now.