Lots of introspection this month!

Up until mid summer I feel I was doing pretty well with workouts.  I was improving running, feeling stronger, etc.

Then I started coughing.  And coughing.  I’d have bouts where I’d nearly throw up.  Bouts that stopped me running.

I was also tired all the time.  I was waking up at 3 am and not being able to fall back to sleep.  I was so frustrated.

I’m feeling better now — the asthma seems under control, and I think my tiredness was in large part due to the stress of getting CRK to the publisher in what, in hindsight, was a terribly short (self-imposed) deadline.

So here are the goals:

Hiking:  Go on a hike once or twice a month.

I have several books for hiking in Southern & Central California.  Obviously, if I’m planning a hike once or twice a month, it needs to be a day trip, so that’s going to limit just how far south or north we venture.  However, despite urban sprawl, there’s a lot of open space here, too:  the San Gabriel mountains, the Santa Monica mountains, all sorts of beaches.

This last weekend we went to Eaton Canyon, a very popular (honestly, too crowded for our tastes) hike in foothills of the San Gabriels.  I’d never been there before, so it was fun to see something new.  Rosemary & Curtis came with us.  Curtis made it to the falls, Rosemary stopped before all the stream crossings (quite wisely;  on our way back we saw a poor woman with a hideous compound fracture — luckily, the park is so close to civilization there was cell phone service, so her friend called 911).  It’s an easy hike, but the stream crossings can be a bit treacherous if you’re not good at bouncing about on rocks.

How to make this goal work?  Research & plan at the end of each month what we’ll do for the next month.  I don’t have any set goals regarding distance or duration.  I just want to be outside.

Walk/running:  I’ve started run/walking again, and am planning on starting up Couch to 5k officially next week (since I’m leaving for TNNA at 5 am tomorrow morning).

I am planning on going for a run/walk this morning with Rigel.

I’ll come up with subsequent goals at the completion of the 9 weeks.  Overarching goal?  I’d like to do a half marathon next winter.  We’ll see.  I’ve not done one of those in quite a while.  If nothing else, I’d like to do one of the XTerra trail runs, probably the 11k Pt Magu run.

Bicycling:  go on a weekly ride with Dave (probably on the weekend).  We have some nice places to bike around here.  The PV peninsula is great on a quiet Sunday morning.  I actually like riding on the Strand, by the beach,  in areas where there aren’t many pedestrians ignoring the rules that it’s a bike path, bikes only, no peds.

I should include some gym/core/stretching goals, but I need to dwell on that a bit.

Agh.  I’ve been horribly procrastinating about really getting back into the habit of running again.  So I’m going to do Couch to 5k.  I’ve uploaded the workouts to my calendar (something that seems to help or at least induces guilt if I don’t adhere to it). It starts off very slow and is actually a bit less than what I was doing (albeit doing sporadically), but in my mind the key is the ability to (re)form the habit.

Anyone want to join me?

Sigh….I’ll resort to bribery.  I’ll set up a thread in the Ravelry group with all the details.  Anyone who completes the program with me gets their choice of three of my individual patterns available as Ravelry downloads.

The program will end, if we officially start next week), the week of Christmas.  What better holiday gift to yourself (and your loved ones) but improved health?

We got back home from a great visit with my parents in Austin this past Monday.

Awaiting me was soft, sunny yarn (Melange in a new color, Saffron) from Blue Sky Alpacas for a sweater for the Winter Knitcircus; gorgeous soft alpaca/merino/silk from Spirit Trail Fiberworks for the hat for the Fresh Designs book; and 2 balls of pretty blue Wool Bam Boo for mitts for Classic Elite.   I’m still waiting for yarn for a couple projects (raven mitts for Knitting Iceland, some yarn from Mackintosh for the 2nd iteration of the stranded mitts).

The new sweater is coming along swimmingly — it’s top down, seamless, with a scoop neck and cabling and a lace pattern adapted from one of the Japanese stitch dictionaries (very like the one in my Kelpie mitts).  It’s going to have some gentle waist shaping as well (darts).

I’ve noticed that sometimes I become very disenchanted with a design in the early to mid design stages.  I’ve learned I need to persevere through the angst;  the vast majority of the time I’m happy with the end product.  With the winter sweater  (I need a working name, if not the final name!  it’s in Rav as Sweet Cicely, but that’s not quite doing it for me ) there was  a brief hiccup with the final choice of stitch patterns (I ended up changing it a bit) but I’m actually very pleased with it.  I’m still on the upper back and have a couple inches on it to go before I start doing the armhole shaping (I’m going to work the back & the front at the same time) but I’ve done enough to get a really good feel for the stitch pattern.  The problem with large cable (or lace) motifs is that you have to do a fair bit of work, of course, to really see how it’s going to look (yes, even with having swatched, at least for me).

Otherwise I’ve been busy with veterinary work and tech editing.

Rosemary and Curtis, my in-laws, are visiting.  Rosemary is a knitter so we get to do fun knitterly things together (including a knitting cruise around Alamitos Bay next Wednesday!).

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On gardening:

We need to start focusing on our fall garden:  revitalizing the earthboxes, pruning the tomatoes, checking & distributing compost, going through seeds and ordering more if needed.   The native plants (especially the sages and Artemesia spp) also need a bit of pruning.

On working out:

I’m thinking I might want to do Vineman 70.3 next summer.  Just sayin’.

…as of earlier this week.  Our mornings are dawning brilliantly clear.  The ocean temp’s gone up a few degrees just over the past week (I’ve been in twice, went body boarding Wednesday a.m. and splashing about (in the June gloom) last week).  The water’s now in the mid 60s — a little cold at first but refreshing and cooling.

Of course that means we’re not experiencing the unseasonally cooler air temps anymore.  I’ve turned into a weather wimp since moving back to California.  I wilt in heat (heat being anything mid 80s and up).  I know, pathetic, especially from the girl who grew up in Arizona (it’s a DRY heat) and has lived in New York state (very hot & steamy in the summer) and Austin and Bryan/College Station Texas (even hotter & steamier).

Zylphia‘s nearly done & Emily‘s been started.  I tweeted about my moment of happiness — the 344 lace stitches of the flounce successfully joined in the round without twisting.  Emily is going to have some rather interesting construction techniques;  I foresee a video tutorial.  I’m planning on having all the bottom portion of the skirt — all the fiddly lace & intarsia bits — done before heading to the Madrona Mittens workshop next week (but am planning on bringing the skirt to work on in the evenings).

I hope everyone is having a wonderful 4th of July.  Franklin Habit has a wonderful post for today (and I have to admit, his comment re: comments made me giggle).

We (Dave, me, Rigel) met Tina for a run this morning.  So many people out already at 8 a.m., walking their dogs, running, biking, setting up for beach volleyball tournaments.  The LA Tri Club 8 a.m. Manhattan Beach ocean swim was on — we could see some people out swimming.  It’s June gloom-y, but it was lovely to be out.  A little girl in a stroller was thoroughly entranced by Rigel — her mom was fine with Rigel coming up to her for a petting.  I love seeing kids who are so excited about dogs, and comfortable with them.

We’re planning an otherwise quiet day — grilling some chicken from the Farmer’s Market for a late lunch, potato salad, fresh fruit salad (we got some wonderful nectarines and blueberries yesterday), drinking some pink wine.

Knitting-wise, I’m going to try to get Zylphia done to the armholes and one sleeve at least started today.

I started a group on Ravelry for my designs.  I was a bit worried about doing so — what if no one joined???  But people have, yay!  I’m hoping to get some KALs going and to post some techniques links and tutorials there (will have here on the blog as well).

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Probably the most exciting thing that happened this week was Rigel breaking a window.

The squirrel that sometimes sits in our pine tree was there, chittering at Rigel.  Rigel got so excited he lunged at the window with both front paws and BROKE THE WINDOW.  He didn’t go through it, and he didn’t cut his paws, though he was startled.

Dave (with help from me) took out the rest of the broken glass (with the VARMINT chittering at Dave all the while), took apart the window (old aluminum slider window, the fixed window was the broken one, but you have to take out the slider window first to take out the fixed window), and took it to a local glass store.  They cut the glass and re-assembled the aluminum frame & gasket around it, and Dave and I reinstalled the  windows.  Apparently the old glass was thinner than it was supposed to be, which I’m sure contributed to it breaking when hit just so.

So…the new window is fine, Rigel is fine, the darned squirrel (which is now referred to by a variety of obscene names) is fine.  Dave was fine for the whole process.  I was a bit of a basket case.

The second most exciting thing…I got a loom!  It’s an antique high castle four harness loom.  Its previous owner just wanted to find it a home.  We’re going to set it up in the cat room (the bedroom/library where the cats stay during the daytime so they don’t use Rigel’s dog door and go outside;  they are indoor-only cats).  Pics to follow.