FO and WIP

I'm still knitting, even though it's not horribly exciting. Well, it is to me but probably not to anyone else. I finished knitting and wove in the ends of my Mistake Rib scarf. I used 1 skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Charcoal, a plush superwash wool with lovely dark shading.It was a simple, mindless 2x2 rib with 1 extra stitch (hence the "Mistake" part of it) and I enjoyed just going back and forth while I paid attention to other things. I used size 8, 16" fixed Options circulars and I love these needles. It's my first mistake rib and I like it more than a real rib. It's stretchier and softer and the detail is nicer looking.
It's short, since I only used the 1 skein but this was just a tester, remember? I knit this so I can determine whether I can tolerate the yarn on my bare skin. It's one of the tester projects that I'll be doing before I finally attempt my first sweater (ok, sweatshirt), the Wonderful Wallaby. Now I just have to wait for it to get colder out before I can test it. It's pretty darn cool out but not quite wool scarf weather.My other current project is my Keep it Simple Scarf that I'm knitting out of Tess's Designer Yarns Superwash Merino. The scarf is a 10 row repeat with 6 rows being knit. Couldn't be easier, and it's knitting up quickly when I actually have time to pick it up. I love how the colors are coming through and the yarn is soft and handles well. I could be working on this for a while; training starts this weekend!

Passed and kept on blah blahing

Apparently I've written over 300 posts. I missed the landmark somewhere last week or the week before. Darn, I was going to have a party to celebrate! Eh, no probably not. Too many other things to keep me busy.

Speaking of keeping busy, I did my own version of a tri this weekend: run, cycle and knit. What, that's not good enough? I enjoyed it, all of it! Soon enough I'll be doing the more strenuous tri so I'll enjoy the knitting events while I can.

Saturday morning I met up with Anita and Mary Ann for an easy run along the Lafayette-Moraga Trail. It started off cool and overcast but cleared and warmed by our last couple of miles. We ran to the Senior Center and back, a total of 6 miles. I love that run because it's almost automatically negative splits, with the last mile being the fastest. Saturday was no different, we aced that last mile. It was fabulous running with the gang again, even though most of the gang was MIA. My knee? Not so good, but not so bad either. I'm slowly resigning myself to the fact that I may never run pain-free again, and those 6 miles could have been worse.

I didn't help it any by spending the next few hours gardening. I have a very low maintenance garden, but it isn't no maintenance. I pruned the lemon tree (and have the scratches and cuts from the thorns to prove it), weeded in a couple of spots, watered the dry places, tied up the peonies. I also hosed down the gazillion insects on the plants; I have a veritable bug feast growing out there. Aphids, ants (oy, are there ants), thrips, beetles, spittle bugs, gnats, moths, grasshoppers; they're all out there chowing down. I don't use any insecticide, at least I haven't for a while, but it sure is tempting. The only thing that stops me is a lot of the neighborhood cats pass through the yard, and there are lots of birds out there too. Don't want to cause any harm.

After that my knee was well and truly sore, so I iced a couple of times during the day. I'm trying to stay away from too much ibuprofen since I bruise so easily and had a glass of wine instead. At least it helped me fall asleep.Sunday morning Bree and I went for our third big bike ride. This time Mr. Garmin actually worked. Except for the altitude thing, where it's claiming we gained and lost about 1400 feet each direction. That would be a big fat no, it was more like 350. Not like we were climbing Mt. Diablo or anything. If you could actually read that chart above, the elevation is in the dark color, speed is in the purple. The reason our speed is up and down like that is that we hit every single damn stoplight as it turned red. One after another after another. Stop stop stop. Good workout for our brakes. We went 20 miles again, up and down San Ramon Valley Road from my house to Walnut Creek. I was tired afterward, but not as badly as last time. I'm improving! And my knee again felt much better after cycling than it did before I started.

The knitting was simple, mindless back and forth on my Lorna's Laces Mistake Rib scarf. I love this yarn and hope my skin will tolerate it for the Wallaby. The scarf will be much shorter than my normal scarves since I only have the one skein. I don't know how long it'll take me to finish it since I don't get too much knitting time these days.

The rest of the weekend was normal weekend stuff; laundry, errands, unpacking my mom's shit beautiful belongings, bill paying, dinner at my bro's, etc. Tired and ready to start another busy week!

Getting back to routine. Again. Again.

I've realized I have less than a month now before I start training for my first triathlon and I'm scared to pieces thrilled. This means I'm going to have to kick up both my pre-training and my diet. Not my "diet" as in "so many calories per day" or a certain company's plan, but "diet" as is "what in the world have I been shoving in my mouth??"

So in light of that, Wednesday night I took myself over to the San Ramon pool and swam for almost an hour. For a warm-up I did 200m swim, 100m kick, 100m pull. Then I did 3 sets of our earlier drills: kick/drill/swim, alternating the drills. That was another 900 meters (right? 75x4x3?). I ended it with 100m swim and called it a night. My poor math skillz total that little outing to be 1400m.

The triathlon I'm preparing for is 1500m swim so I'm almost there. Hmm? You say that 25m at a time in a pool is nothing like 1500m straight? Darn, here I thought I had that part of the tri licked! Yeah, it's looking like I'm going to have to find a place where I can swim longer distances without having the nice side of the pool to kick at every turn.

Last night I met Olivia for a run on the Iron Horse. It felt like old times, back when we were training for New York. Except it was cooler than when we trained last summer. And I wasn't breathing as well. And my knee hurt. Otherwise, exactly the same! I had convinced Ms. O that we should go my pace on the outward bound direction so that we could chat, then she could take off at her own speed for the way back. The first part of the plan worked ok, we were going slow enough that it wasn't killing me, but I was pooped on the return. We walked at least a mile of the return and the running part was slower than the first half. Oh well, we got at least 2 good miles of running and 4 miles total on our feet and that counts for something.

Since we had run earlier than normal, I got home at a decent hour and was able to knit my way peacefully through a couple of hours of trashy television. Nice to watch Survivor when it's actually airing, instead of a week later on tape. The project I'm knitting is a simple scarf to see if my body can tolerate the touch of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted. It's one of the tests I'm doing to find the perfect yarn my Wonderful Wallaby. Yes, I will someday knit a piece of clothing. It's just if I'm gong to be using a gazillion skeins of expensive yarn and knitting a project for months on end, I want to be able to wear it. I love the touch of the Lorna's Laces, I'm just not sure I can keep it on my body for hours. We'll see. Even if I have to turn on the a/c to test it!