The Knitting Revolutionary

Closed indefinitely

It's time to finish the blog. I just can't bring myself to actually hit the "delete" button, so this will have to do.

So long, and thanks for all the stitches.

Stitches, and measuring progress.

...I'm not talking about knitting or sewing here, for once. I'm talking about the "stitches" you get when you run. I was reading this article this morning and it occurred to me that I rarely get stitches any more. Eee!

One of the things about running is that progress is difficult to measure once you've gotten past the magical 5-10km barrier. Especially if you're not timing all of your runs and working toward speed. This really sucks for your motivation. Some sort of goal, and a feeling of accomplishment of those goals, are really useful for motivation.

The goal-setting, I'm working on. I made myself a cute little runner's diary with my l33t bookmaking skillz, and I love it. I can hardly believe I've been dutifully filling it out since the beginning of May, but it's become part of my daily routine to peek, scan, fill in and plan.

My goals for the year were: run the city to surf (done), get through the week of Hal Higdon's intermediate training program (ongoing). These are both pretty achievement focused and don't really tell me how I'm progressing from week to week in my regular runs.

So every now and then I get a little jolt of progress, or at least recognition of progress. One was when I did my semi-regular 10km circuit round the lake and found that instead of staggering, walking or even crawling up the bridge stairs half way round, I RAN up them. Woot! The people driving across the bridge must have thought I was completely demented, squeaking and boogeying my little victory dance at the top of the stairs, and then taking off at full pelt across to the other side. LOL.

The other was this morning when I realised that I very rarely get a stitch anymore. I think it's time to start learning how to run with a bit of food in my belly. Progress!

50 Nifties! Nifty #7 - Pink Mug Hugger

I love these - they're like tea cosies, but for takeaway coffee mugs. They stop you burning your fingers AND they keep it warm longer. Fantastic!

Photographed here for extra glam value on a wineglass. LOL. Detail photos taken to show off the delicious chaos of the handspun yarn, which is a mish-mash of alpaca, merino, ribbon and shiny shredded pink stuff (some plasticy metallic stuff from Spotlite that I didn't know what else to do with) - one of my first experiments on the drum carder a la Intertwined Crazy Batts. :) I lost my last mughugger, so I'm thinking I just may keep this one for myself *waggles eyebrows*

District 9

My take is "squicky but awesome".

And there are lots of squicky bits. I'm not much for violent movies, but there are a few exceptions, and this movie is one of them (the only other I can think of right now being Fight Club).

There's lots of meaningful underneath stuff going on there, as well as really cool things like mad alien guns with fiery bits on them (ahem). Just go see it, the message isn't hidden or even very subtle. You'll work it out.

So the story starts a bit like this:

There's this HUGE spaceship hooning around doing god-knows-what and there's an enormous grinding noise as it zooms past earth and you hear a voice from inside:

"Ah, what's that knocking sound?"

"Knocking sound? Oh, that..." *cruuunch* "ah, shit, that really doesn't sound good."

"Why are you stopping?"

"I'm not stopping, I've got my foot flat to the floor, but..."

*clunk*

"...shit!"

"Well YES, shit, I mean we're ALIENS here, we're meant to be invincible, technologically speaking at least!" (a deep sigh) "OK fine, call the NRMA."

"....."

"You *did* renew the policy this year didn't you?"

"I was really busy, and have you seen the queues in their office?"

"Aaargh!"

I was explaining the movie to one of my students the other day (complete with sound effects and wild arm gesticulation), a tough little customer who really wasn't interested in talking, and actually got a chuckle out of him at one point. Haha. But seriously, what a cool way to start a movie! :)

50 Nifties! Nifty #6 - Hot Pink Kitty

This week's stashbusting nifty thing used up almost the last bit of my handspun hot pink yarn - I just made it up as I went, knit in the round, stuffed it with a bit of merino roving I had lying around.

It'll be for my Toy Society drop, such a gorgeous idea!. I'm not sure if I'll do more Toy Society things, but they would be quite good for sucking up little leftover stashy bits.

Flat belly? Pfft!

I'm really bothered by the recent rash of ads and articles titled "secrets to a flat belly", and "flat belly diet" and any other variation flat bellies. It's really ODD.

I was reading a runner's information site this morning and was directed to this site for "delicious fat burning recipes" (OK, sounds interesting, and some of these can be quite healthy and tasty). This is the page that I get: "Flat Belly Meals". Huh??? I thought I'd accidentally gotten a pop up ad or something nasty like that, but it turned out these were my healthy meals as recommended by the running site (which was active.com, I think, and I'm seriously starting to re-think my opinion of that site as well). They're not recipes at all, but thinly disguised advertisements for a bunch of revolting looking American processed foods. How the hell is apple slices smeared with peanut butter and served with a glass of milk a meal? *rolls eyes in disgust*

Anyway, that's a little off the point, which is - what's with the flat belly obsession anyway? I lost a truckload of weight last year. I'm not thin, but I'd say with as much honesty as I can muster that I think I'm quite slim now, with plenty of bumpy rounded bits, and the ubiquitous big bum. Hey, I'm a pear - even when I was a bony teenager the big bum was there haha. The other thing that *wasn't* there when I was young, and seems to now be a permanent part of my grown-up's body, is a well-rounded tum. Now, when I say I'm slim, I mean you can quite clearly see my ribs (especially if I stretch my arms back or up). And still there's this clearly round, slightly muffin-toppish belly. My point is - this is what most women look like. Especially ones over 30. Sure I had a cute little flat tum when I was 20, it's one of the payoffs you get for being young and stupid, right? (god, there has to be some payoffs for having to go through adolescence). So, I'm pretty happy with my nice round tummy and my strong healthy body. I just wish more people were able to see through the bullshit too.

50 Nifties! Nifty #5 - UberGirly Pink Wristwarmers (with detachable Extra Girliness)

Another gift - using up almost the last of the handspun which I dyed in my Black Belt Barbie colourway. They can be worn with or without the uber-girly bow, depending on what the lucky recipient is feeling like on the day. They're being sent to Beth of the Postcard Project, who has hit a bit of a rough spot and could do with some random lovin'.

Wish me luck in City to Surf today! I'm writing this on Friday, but cheating and forwarding it to Sunday morning, so anyone who reads this as it gets updated will be doing so as I'm puffing and panting my way round Sydney in a hot pink shirt and obscenely tight running pants. Hehe. I was hoping for a good time for my first C2S, but having been so ill lately, I'm happy to just be fit enough to run the damn thing, and that's my aim - to just *run* it without having to take any walk breaks. Sub-75 will wait until next year, I'm sure. :)

Found me a new blog to drool at

So there's this thing that happens when I discover or learn something rather than being told. For instance, if I'm driving somewhere and I don't know how to get there, and my passenger does, they point at various corners as I drive, and if I ever have to get there again on my own, I would have no idea. Because my brain has been pretty much switched off the whole time. Whereas if I have to go googlemap it or a street directory, I'm fine - it's been burned into my brane as a fakt, and it's there to stay.

Happens with most things. It's what I see as one of the underpinning tenets of counselling - if people can talk to someone and work their stuff out for themselves, rather than being given advice or told what to do, it's going to be more meaningful, relevant and useful for them.

I'm sure most of the people who are reading this have seen this website - Techknitting - but I haven't. I'm sure I've been told about it, but I didn't remember it. I'm sure there's a distinct possibility that I'm the last person on the planet to know about this. But... JUST IN CASE, I'm sharing it anyways (and adding it to my sites list) - TechKNitting Blog. It's really nitty gritty stuff (do you know how close I came to typing that as knitty? LOL) - very detailed perfectionistic fine tuning knitting stuff. And I'm in luuuurv with it. This post in particular almost made me teary with joy.

I might be slow, but when I get there, it's goood. And I'm not even going to begin to expand on that analogy...

Time travel at high volume

I love stories, movies, books with time traveling theme. Any story that includes the line "could you tell me what year it is" probably has my vote. I recently read the Time Traveler's Wife recently and thought it was great, although for reasons that I won't elaborate on for fear of ruining the story, I probably wouldn't recommend it for any of my (numerous) pregnant friends.

Anyway, I've noticed this weird thing about myself lately. I'm losing my sense of time. Not as in running late for things, or losing patches of time. I mean I keep forgetting what year it is. Seriously! It's so strange. I spent some time this morning looking for Hat Attack 2010, or Sock Wars 2010, and was disappointed at finding none. Then I tried to change one of my Ravelry projects to start in March 2010, because I thought to myself, surely I couldn't have started them as long ago as March 2009, I started them this year...

Odd. I've been doing it for a while now. I reckon I'm going to be an interesting old biddy when I'm 80, I'm aiming for embarrassingly loud, a bit snarky, and completely off the planet. Haha. I think I've almost got the embarrassingly loud bit down pat already though.

I got a voicemail from my old boss after leaving him a voicemail of my own, telling me that he was delighted to hear my "stentorian tones" on his answering machine. I had to look it up, and am desperate to use it in regular conversation as soon as possible, but have had to content myself to recounting the story.

In a gleefully stentorian voice, of course.

Nifty # 4: Glam Wristwarmers

Soooo easy!

To make your own glam wristwarmers, knit a garter stitch square to fit snugly round the wrist. I knit 23 ridges and 21 stitches of sock-weight yarn on 4mm needles at a fairly firm tension. Sew the square into a tube.

Change to sequinned yarn, and with the tube inside out, work a double crochet (Americans: single crochet) between each ridge for the 1st round, then 2 dc into each dc for another round, then a round of double trebles, and the 4th and final round of loops made of 7 chains slipped into each treble stitch. I'm not sure if I explained that very well, as I'm mostly self taught with crochet, and may not be calling the stitches the correct names. Add to that the confusion of English vs American terminology and it's a bit of a mess.

This bit is worked inside out, because the sequins tend to sit at the back of the crocheted stitches, so they're on the right side when you turn them inside out.

Et voila! Verrrrrry pretty :)