Tag: knitting

And the experiement proved…

1 Comment

That my hypothesis was correct – ran 3 miles before yoga, tom yum soup for tea and then yoga-ed. And managed to stay conscious for the entire relaxation at the end, no snoring, no drifting, no suddenly realising that I’ve not heard a word that the teacher has said since “lie down on your mats”. It was rather splendid.

In fact, I’ve come out of the class feeling completely blissful and chilled out. I feel like I’m smiling from inside for the first time in ages. It’s a wonderful feeling and having it has made me realise how long it is since I’ve felt like that.

The way our yoga class runs is that it’s an 8 week progressive course, but the courses run continuously so a new course starts every 8 weeks or so. New people join, old people drop out, old hands guard their mat territory like feral beasts (that’s just me then?) and we go back to basics again. I think this does us all good; I know that I pick up bad habits and it’s easy to slide into casually skipping through postures without thinking deeply about what you’re doing. This probably applies to more than just yoga and it’s maybe something I need to do a bit more through life in general. Maybe it’s something we all need to do.

In other news, I’ve finally discovered Garmin Connect. Whatever your feelings on Garmins, this appeals to my inner geek and makes far prettier graphs and maps than the training centre. I may even get brave and bore people with my (quite frankly embarassing) run stats, particularly since I’ve realised that I’m very coy about admitting what speed I go at (hint, it rhymes with ‘glow’. Very glow).

In wool news, I went to Whitby and sold a kidney to buy vast amounts of lovely but pricey yarn. So I now have 3 pending projects from the new wool pile, 1 planned from previous escapades, 3 half formed ideas, 1 half baked idea (thanks to a link on Beanz’s blog I now have a pattern for knitted cupcakes. It scares me how much this excites me) and lots of stray balls with no future plans. I must stop buying new wool.

Sporadic running. Domestic goddessing. Tiny knitting.

2 Comments

Hmmm. I’m not getting much better at getting out regularly. I’m averaging one run a week at the moment – my excuses? Um. None really, just gone from being a bit fed up with life in general and finding it a struggle to do much at all, to perking up and being motivated to anything but run.

We’ve decided to do some work on the house as we’ve been here over 2 years and it’s still chaos, so we’re on a mission… The upshot of this is that we’re now sharing our house with a our friendly local plasterer – when we get him in it’s not so much a business transaction as a social enterprise. Unpredictable, unreliable, often in the pub, but a damn good plasterer when he deems to turn up. We’re also living in the kitchen as the rest of the house is full of either (a) plasterer’s gubbins or (b) contents of other rooms, my level of domesticity has gone through the floor (which none of us thought was humanly possibly) as there doesn’t seem much point when the place is covered in dustsheets. Actually, I say that I’m not being domestic, but the truth is that I’ve abandoned cleaning whilst chanelling all of my domestic energies into the kitchen – last weekend was pies (steak and cheese, lemon meringue) and blueberry muffins (amongst other things), this weekend was slow cooking (lamb tagine and tomato/veggie soup on the stove at the moment), coconut pyramids, chocolate mousee, flatbread and hummus. I’m fat but happy.

Amid all the lard, I’ve done two runs – last weekend was 5 miles (with a bit of walking on hilly bits) and today did 3 miles there and back in the village. Highlights today – using the virtual training partner on my garmin for the way back (and won! Albeit by a second per mile) and seeing a lovely steam train chuffing along. I’m very easily pleased. I keep having to remind myself that I started running this time last year, so if I can start running in the cold and dark, I can carry on running in the cold and dark. I think it’s a bit like dieting though, it’s easier to be motivated at the beginning when the weight comes off and you can see the change (or going from running from 5 minutes one week, to ten, to twenty), but it’s harder to maintain when the rewards aren’t as obvious.

In knitting news, the deadline for the Big Knit is now this week – and these are the fruits of my labours:

21 hats for the Big Knit

21 hats for the Big Knit

I’m particularly chuffed with the little fella on the left. Behatted smoothies will be in the shops from early November.

First soup of Autumn

2 Comments

Crikey heck it’s wet up North. I’m seriously considering a second career as an ark builder and have started wearing my arm bands when I nip out to the shop. Although we’re not as bad as the Isle of Skye, it’s been somewhat damp this week. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone, but it was as if someone had flicked a switch on Monday night and turned everything from summer to autumn. I’m a great believe that times and dates are tied into our memories, experiences and beliefs about the world, and that this can manifest itself in how we feel and behave. Maybe it’s too many years in education, but even at 30 I can’t shake off that back to school feeling in September – it makes me incredibly reflective (perhaps more so than New Year, which I just can’t be arsed with) and sometimes a bit gloomy.

To counteract the gloominess, I’m doing a bit of looking on the bright side.

  • Next week it’s exactly a year since I started this running lark and struggled to do my impression of running for even a minute.
  • I’ve talked a colleague into joining the same beginners group that got me started
  • I’m the only person from that beginners group who’s still going to the club (even on my irregular basis)
  • Even though the weather’s a bit ropey, I’ll soon have frosty runs along the canal to look forward to- that means Sunday mornings that smell of bacon, cold and wood burning stoves on the barges
  • It’s Scarecrow Festival in the next village this weekend!
  • I can start making soup again – I refuse to make soup in summer and have already broken my soupfast with a lovely carrot and coriander effort
  • I’ve got two nearly completed knitting projects which means I can start knitting tiny Innocent hats very very soon

Also, it’s the weekend. Which is nice.

In other news, I’ve continued to be a bit crap this week. I’d love to blame the gloominess for my lack of motivation, but I suspect that it’s just that it took my aged carcass three days to recover from Wembley this year. I did however do 4 miles on Thursday and have a long run planned tomorrow and I’m helping out at a 5k on Sunday, which hopefully will motivate rather than drown me.