I'm still working through getting my old posts up on the website. I've gotten July 2002 and part of August 2002 up...links are on the sidebar. There's still work to do on formatting my master Knitting Page but I may try and get that hammered out this week.

I didn't work out yesterday so I intend to do a Leg/Back/Bi workout tonight when I get home from work if things don't get totally crazy. I'm taking tomorrow off and will be doing a lot of baking and pre-cooking and prep work for Turkey day. My plans are to eat around 4pm on Thursday so I'm looking forward to a leisurely day of parades, football, and the final last minute cooking. Who knows? I may even be able to knit a row or 2 on my Tartan Plaid jacket.

I do have to confess that I couldn't keep my hands out of the Hanne Falkenberg Mermaid kit and have cast on for the initial i-cord. I had to go up from the recommended 3.5mm needle to 7.5mm needle for the i-cord to keep it loose enough, even though I got body gauge on the recommended 3mm needles. Go figure! I must really knit i-cord TIGHT!!

On my writing note, I have a complete writer's block on my novel effort. I really don't have a good plot outline or a plan and it's just ground to a halt. I don't like the idea that I'm not going to hit 50K words by Nov 30, but I need to be realistic about it. This rough draft is just spinning it's wheels and going nowhere. I do think it got me out of my initial noveling funk and I proved to myself that I can do the writing...I just need to get my idea/theme down and get my plot semi-outlined so that I have some sort of structure to use.

Time to go back to the grindstone...

I finally got a workout in this morning. I've been slacking for the past couple of weeks, even though I've still been losing weight, both fat pounds and a little bit of LBM. Anyway, it was a short one, but I know I'll be feeling this one tomorrow. I just picked up my routine where I had left off 2 weeks ago. No cardio afterwards today as we're cleaning house, getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Treadmill w/u for 5 min

Phase 2, Week 5, Workout 3
Weights (45 sec rest between sets)
CHEST
Incline Press Bowflex
15x40#
10x50#
8x50#
6x50#

Decline Press Bowflex
10x40#
8x40#

SHOULDERS
Lateral Raise Dumbbells
12x7.5#each hand
10x5#each hand

Shrugs Dumbbells
15x5#each hand
12x5#each hand x 2 sets

TRICEPS
Pushdown Bowflex
12x40#
10x40#
8x40#

Bench Dips
3reps x 3 sets (I was trying to do 10, 8, and 6 reps)

ABS
Crunches
20reps, 8reps, 7reps

OK, so I have like, tons of posts that need to be caught up so I'll just tackle them a little at a time. The cold weather is really throwing me into a knitting mood so I don't want to waste too much time messing around with the website. I couldn't resist digging into my Mermaid kit that arrived last week from Cucumberpatch in the UK. Great service!!! I will definitely buy from them again when the money builds up some. So there's quite a few things on my plate right now.

Also, my NaNoWriMo effort is now at 3872 words out of 50,000...woefully short right now. Although I did start a week late, I want to get a decent volume of writing done this weekend. My personal goal is to hit 10,000 words by Monday. You don't know how badly I want to win this. I mean, it's not like there's any external prize, but I need to prove to myself that I can get through a novel. I've had so many false starts over the years and I don't want another year of my life to go by with another false start. I want to finish this! I'll have to let you know Monday how the writing went. Yes, I am convinced that I am a little bit crazy.

I'm in the process of pulling all my previous year's posts into this single blog. This may take me some time as I've had quite a few blog entries, but well worth it for my own personal satisfaction. I've got a lot of crap laying around on my website and as I sort through it, I should be able to put up links to all my family, knitting, and spinning pix.

I find it very interesting that my knitting has picked back up as the winter approaches. I've always knit as a year round endeavor until this year when it seemed to work a little differently. This summer I definitely did NO knitting and concentrated on exercising and weight training. But once the dog days of summer left us, I found myself turning again to my knitting. It's inherently an activity that one wants to do curled up in a comfy chair, next to a roaring fire, with a caffe mocha on the table, and the snow falling outside. Reading a book invokes the same kind of imagery and for me, writing one as well. I could very easily take that scene and see myself sitting in that easy chair with a laptop, cranking out page after page of the great American novel.

Speaking of which, I continue to write in my novel for NaNoWriMo. I've written about 4 pages worth and decided it was time to stop and do some plot brainstorming, especially since I just dove in and started putting word to computer screen. I switched to ye-olde pen and paper and knocked out a pretty good beginning to the plot for my suspense/mystery novel. That should keep me going fast and furiously toward the 50,000 word requirement by the end of November. I still need to flush out a bit more on the plot but at least now I have a start and a basic premise, motivation, and direction. The working title for the book right now is "No Time for Me".

Did more knitting on the Tartan Jacket yesterday during lunch. I met a girlfriend for lunch today so I didn't get any knitting done at lunch. I'll pick it back up tonight and keep plugging away at it. I need to do a weight training workout tonight, though. I guess I'll have to do the workout, then get supper for the girls and myself (Mike's working late tonight), and then I'll be able to get back to the Tartan. I don't think I'll be doing any writing tonight unless the muse hits me and it rarely hits me that late at night. Luckily, I managed to drag myself out of bed and did a 15 minute sprint intervals workout on the treadmill this morning so all I have to do tonight is hit the weights (or resistance rods as it were on my Bowflex). I'm planning to keep my total workout down to 30 minutes, taking as little time as possible between sets.

I know I haven't posted in a while but I'm still around! Had to travel to North Carolina last weekend for my nephew's wedding and that has kind of thrown my workouts off kilter. I'm still losing fat per my weigh-in last Friday and I had a pretty good workout last night on Chest/Shoulders/Tri's. I can't say I'm back up to exercising 6 days a week like I was before, but something is better than nothing. I do know that I will need to keep the intensity up if I'm going to meet my January 6 goal of 20% body fat. I've beefed up my intervals training to be sprints at 6.5, 7.0, and 7.5 mph...those are kicking my butt!

On other fronts, I finished knitting Kelly a poncho yesterday and she wore it to school today. She was so proud of it!!! (blush) My next knitting project is to finish the plaid Tartan Jacket from Interweave Knits Fall 2004 for me.



This was originally designed for Brown Sheep Bulky but my LYS Stitches and Scones only had worsted. So I bought a color palette very similar to that shown in the picture and reworked the pattern for the worsted gauge yarn. I just finished the armhole shaping on the back and am working my way toward finishing it. It's a fabulous knit albeit time consuming with the slip stitch design in intarsia none-the-less. Not a pattern for the faint of heart.

Wendy Johnson's latest knitting project of Mermaid by Hanne Falkenberg forced me to go out and buy it!



The colorway shown is the one I bought. I've always loved Falkenberg's designs but they only come as kits and they are usually in the $250 range. I luckily found the Cucumber Patch in the UK and was able to order it for $112 which included shipping! I haven't received it yet, but assuming no major problems with delivery, I will definitely be frequenting their website more often and buying more HF kits in the future!! This kit will be wrapped and placed under the tree for my Christmas present, assuming I can keep my itchy knitting fingers out of it until then! I'm sure if I just put my head down and concentrate on my Tartan Jacket, I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

I also decided that I didn't have enough to keep me stressed out so I joined the NaNoWriMo effort. (That's National Novel Writing Month). From the website...

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
...
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Uhhhh, I only joined yesterday so I started out a week behind. But nevermind that, I'll plug along anyway. I might even publish my novel up here on the website when finished!