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January 2, 2007

New Year's Knitting

I have had a lovely New Year's holiday weekend. I spent a lot of time at home, which you know I love. I didn't nap, but I knit and that is the ultimate in relaxation. I'm quite pleased with my progress on the Baby Dale. I've started the design on the chest.

I think my stranded skills are steadily improving. I'm seeing more even stitches and less puckering as I go along and my gauge is about the same on the one and two colored portions. That is indeed progress.

Travis and I went cross-country skiing on New Year's Eve. Travis skate skis and he's trying to teach me. I've been 3 or 4 times, but this is our first outing this year. Holy crap, it is hard work. Either that or I'm a fat slacker. But, I think I'm finally starting to get the rhythm of it. Again, progress. Riley had an excellent time playing in the snow and he got a good workout. People are always amazed that he can keep up, but he really doesn't have any trouble. Those legs of his might be short, but he's fast. I would like to try to go once a weekend or every other weekend because it's good exercise and that's the only way I'll get better. We'll see how that works out.

Now, let's talk about what 2007 holds. I'm terrible about resolutions, but I always try to start the new year off with some goals - things I'd like to change or make more time for in the new year. This year I have a couple of "goals." I want to exercise more. I know. A typical resolution. But, I've signed up for Curves because I can go over my lunch hour 3 days a week. I went last week and it seems like a pretty good workout for 30 minutes. I'm also going to try to eat a bit better. My problem is that Travis is extremely active all day and so he can eat a lot of food and burn off a lot of calories. He needs way more food than I should eat and he likes foods with more calories than I need. There's no way I'm going to cook one thing for him and another thing for myself. I'm lucky if I can get one meal cooked, there's no way two would ever happen. So, I'm rereading my French Women Don't Get Fat and I've signed up on the website. Right now I'm keeping track of the food I eat and I can already tell I eat a whole lot of carbs and sweets. So, I'm sure that is going to have to change. But, the keeping track part is a couple of weeks. I'm thinking about speeding that up and doing the Leek Soup next weekend.

My second goal is to improve my photography skills. I thought about starting a photo along or joining an existing one, but as of right now I'm going to do my own Project 365. There's a Flickr group, but I'm just going to do it on my own and see how it goes. To that end, I've finally set up a Flickr account (I think if you look for Unwind you should be able to find me, but I'm not sure. I haven't got the whole thing figured out yet. That link should work, but let me know if it doesn't). I'm just going to post a picture to my account every day. I'd love it if you would stop by once and awhile and let me know what you think of my photos - constructive criticism is a good thing. Hopefully the photos improve as the year progresses.

My fiber goals are pretty simple. I'm going to try to spin every Friday evening. I usually spend the evening at home watching television and I figure it will be a good time to work on my spinning. I'm afraid that without a set evening I won't ever make time for it, so I'm setting a time and we'll see how it goes. My knitting goals are to knit as much from my stash as possible. I have yarn for a couple of great sweaters, plus I want to make finishing Butterfly a priority. I'm going to join Rebekah's Yarn Focus Challenge as some support for this goal. The first installment is for 3 months and I think it's starting soon. There will be some lace knitting in the new year because of the Victorian Today KAL, but I have yet to pick out a project. I will have to use one of my free days during the Yarn Focus Challenge to buy yarn for the project I ultimately choose.

So, that's it for me. Thanks for sticking around through my rambling post. Happy New Year and may 2007 be a truly wonderful and productive year.