Crunch Update

                                             
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So it's been a month since I decided to get serious about my fitness and weightloss. I haven't done too badly so far. I have been to the gym every week, doing a mix of cardio and weights. I am especially loving my Zumba classes. The only one that hasn't killed me so far has been the only one the instructor took 'easy'. God help me if she decides to go really hard.

I am still struggling a little with my asthma and my knee hurting. But we are improving every day. Tough I have to admit that some days the above picture sums up my whole exercise .

I lost a kilo, then added on about 700grams, but that is muscle mass. How do I know that? Because when I rechecked my measurements I have lost 5 cm around my waist and hips. And even though that doesn't sound like much all my colleagues have started to comment that I am loosing weight.

So at the moment I am going to continue as I am and try not to worry about what the scales are saying.


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Easter Hat Parade

Last Thursday as I dropped my son off at school I saw a note attached to his classroom door stating Easter Hat Parade 26th. So, just to make sure, as I am still getting use to this school bit, I asked his teacher.

And, yes, I had to make him a hat before today. So I was straight off to Spotlight for materials and inspiration. I bought a whole lot of stuff with no clear idea of what I would be doing with it, plus I bought a base hat that I had to spray paint as it was an Australia Day hat.

I had wanted J to colour in some picture eggs that I could cut out and stick around the brim but he lost interest very quickly. He wanted to add little pom pom bits but we just can't get them to stick with the glue we have.And the paper he was sticking them on went all funny, so we scrapped that idea.

 

So instead we added a whole lot of white and yellow feathers and little chickens to it. J loves it and that's all that matters. He has his parade at 10, and when I dropped him off at school, all the kids are excitedly talking about their hats. Apparently J's is a big chicken.

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Ripple Along Week 4

So it's week 4. At the moment I have done 33 rows and 16 colour stripes. I have done 3 sets of 4 double stripes and then decided to add an extra row to it. It's a little hard to see in the picture but the last stripe is made up of rows of 3.

I have also sewn in all the ends as their is no way that I want to be doing that at the end.

Ripple-along Week 3 Update

I have not done nearly as much as I wanted to this week. However I am up to my 15th colour row. This is one of 4 rows that I am doing as a 3 band instead of 2, depending on how big it is when I finish these 4 rows I might do another 4 like it.


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Clothes Clothes and More Clothes

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The last few weeks have been really busy at our house. Well probably mostly for me. I have been working every second day (when I normally only work five days a fortnight) as well as trying to organise passports and a trip overseas. Next time I won't leave the trip planning so late, though I still have seven weeks before we leave.

As a result quite a few things have been ignored lately. I have not been able to craft as much as I would normally and the housework is slowly slowly getting away from me. I have just managed to fold up and put away a big basket of laundry that has been looking at me for a few days.

While most people spring clean I have always autumn cleaned. I think it has a lot to do with a complete intolerance to heat on my behalf. (I keep telling my husband we should move to Tasmania but even they have had a fairly hot summer.) But when the weather gets cooler I get going, especially on all the big household things. One of the big things that I do is sort through all of my clothes.

Now to be honest I do go through them on a regular basis but this year I have decided that I need to get rid of over half of my clothes. There are a few motivators at the moment for me to do this. The other week on the local radio they were talking about the fact that women only wear 20% of their wardrobe. I know I do!

When I was on maternity leave a program I was watching was interviewing a lady and they showed her wardrobe, it was basically empty apart from maybe 15 items. At the time I thought I would love to be like that, I have no idea why that appeals to me it just does. Though I doubt mine will ever look like that, she lived in a much more temperate climate than I do. Unfortunately I have a lot of clothes that I have had since my teens, definitely time to get rid of it.

So today while I had half an hour of free-ish time I pulled everything out of one of my drawers and got rid of 3/4 of it. Everything I haven't worn in the last 3 months. I was mean this time, no more well I might wear it one day because lets be honest about this, there will never be a one day. For a couple of pieces I have been saying that for about 10 years. So out they have gone.

It was surprising how much I got through in just 30 minutes and now I have 4 bags of clothes to take to charity on the way to pick my son up. Yes you read it right, 4 big bags of clothes. I have a whole lot of space in my wardrobe, and lots and lots of empty coat hangers. I even have a lot more space in my drawers.

What does your wardrobe look like?

Ripple Along Week 2

So this is my week 2 update on my ripple along blanket. Considering the week that I had I am really impressed with how much I have gotten done on it. We had family staying over the weekend so I did not really work on it until last night. But I have managed to get another 14 rows done, I have a feeling that my crochet speed is starting to increase.

I even started sewing in the end threads, I find them really irritating as I go along. And to be honest, the thought of having all those ends to do when I finish is a bit horrifying. Its normally around that point that I just give up and leave the project unfinished. But I am determined on this one.

This is a update on my knitting project since I have restarted it again. I finally seem to be making good progress, there is only a single mistake in the ribbing that unless you know its there is pretty much invisible. I have been attempting to do an hour of knitting a day and so far it seems to be working for me.

How are your ripple alongs coming?

Ripple Along Week 1

 

So this is my Week 1 update on my ripple blanket. I did quite well this week and managed to get 10 rows done. My son liked the light blue colour so that got included. In fact he likes it so much that every time I get it out he asks when it will be finished, no pressure or anything. I was going to add a black strip to it as well but the navy is so dark its almost black, so the black got left out.

 I want a reasonably big blanket so I started with 213 chain foundation. At this point there is no actually number of rows selected, instead I am going to just keep going until I like the finale size. The only thing that I am going to try and do is to do a row a day. And so far I have managed to do that.

I find that all the little end bits between rows are annoying me so I am going to sew them in during the week.  I am also thinking of all the other colours that I would like to do a blanket in, though I shouldn't get to far ahead of myself yet.