Knitting stuff first!

California Revival Collection:  Add Sanguine Gryphon, Woolen Rabbit and possibly Becoming Art to the list of gorgeous yarn for the patterns.  The Quatrefoil fingerless mitts are being tested.  The Peacock Shawl in the Blue Sky Alpacas Melange is in progress — I have about 10″ knit.  I’m now beginning to understand the draw of lace shawls and wraps — it’s interesting to knit but knits up quickly as well.

Other knitting news:  I received yarn, MadTosh DK, for the fall Knitcircus sweater.  The yarn is so pretty — Curiosity, a soft medium violet, and Moccasin, a rich warm brown.  I’ve cast on and about 3+” inches into the design.  Oh — bottom up, in the round, shaping, sizes xs-3x.

On a sort of knitting related tangent….Dave’s parents, Rosemary & Curtis, live in Geneva, IL.  They’re pretty close to Schaumberg, IL, the site of Stitches Midwest.  We’re going to visit them in August (coincidentally, the same time as Stitches West….oh, who am I kidding, that’s on purpose!  Rosemary’s a knitter, too.).  Which involves, of course, flying.

I love flying on Virgin America (my carrier of choice for flying to Seattle), and this summer they’re starting to fly Los Angeles – Chicago.  They’re running a big promotion/marketing campaign thing, and I shamelessly posted my pic here as part of it.  Could you cast a vote for me?

And yes, I literally did run into a tree branch.

And on the topic of running….I’ve been really quiet about it on the blog, but I’ve been doing better about the whole running thing (at least with getting myself out & doing it).

And now I have a coach!  My coach is John Bryan and he’s great so far (just started Sunday).

My biggest thing is that I need to run slower but for a longer duration.  I have been just run/walking, with very short intervals (i.e. 1-1:30 to 1 ratio of running to walking) at a pretty good clip on the run portion.   Um, yes, I was basically just doing intervals.  So he’s having me do runs at a very slow pace, keeping my heart rate down, shortening my stride, increasing my cadence and increasing my forward lean.

Rigel and I ran this morning, and he totally doesn’t understand the entire ‘slow down’ thing.  He’d rather sprint as long as he could then walk til he recovered enough to sprint again.