Productiveness

I promised I would try and take some photos and I have. All I can do is apologise for the shockingly bad quality, I couldn’t find the memory card for our camera so I resorted to taking some shots on my mobile phone!

2x2 ribbed scarf in black chunky acrylic yarn

I made this scarf for James, he sometimes likes to have a scarf in the winter but he insisted that it be a ‘manly’ colour/style. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. It is really thick, although because of the thickness is it also pretty stiff.

Linen Stitch Scarflet in Fuschia Chunky Yarn (Still awaiting buttons)

I made this scarflet from after I saw Kait’s attempt. I found it pretty tricky keeping track of where I was in the pattern (despite it being so simple to follow!) but I was pleased with how it turned out. Oh and I mastered yarn over’s for the buttonholes!

WIP another linen stitch scarflet in a lighter weight acrylic yarn

A lighter weight version of the scarflet above.

I mentioned in my previous post that my grandma passed away recently. When my mum and aunt were clearing out her house they came across all her knitting supplies. When I was little my grandma was a really keen knitter. She knitted us all sweaters on a regular basis and generally whenever she got a few minutes spare her needles would be heard clicking away. Over the years however she struggled more and more with her arthritis. In the last few years she has not been able to knit at all although she took great pleasure in reminding me of a few stitches a couple of months ago. As noone else in the family is big into crafty stuff, my mum and aunt let me have all of grandma’s needles, yarn, in fact anything remotely related to knitting and so I have gone from just 1 pair of knitting needles to:

Last of all, a sneak peak on my surprise project:

Do you know what it is yet?

Weekly Weigh In – Week ? – Losing track In -

I haven’t posted in a little while…. this is because I have been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, subsequently so has my weight. My grandma died on 28th March. It was not exactly unexpected as she was 97 years old and had been fading pretty fast, but it was still a shock. We buried her on a lovely spring day, the flowers were beautiful, the service sweet. Sometimes I still find it difficult to really believe that she is gone.

As for my weight, well, tonight was my first weigh in for a couple of weeks. I didn’t do as badly as I had feared, in fact, I had actually lost 1/2 a pound. So although my good intentions at the start have rather floundered I have not gone completely off the rails.

I have carried on with the crafty stuff lately. I have been knitting a fair amount, basic stuff but I am pretty proud with what I have taught myself. I can now do 2×2 ribbing, linen stitch and yarn overs. So far I have not tried anything more challenging then various scarves, but I have been looking at attempting some basic socks, it is just a matter of finding the right pattern!

I also have a secret project but I will wait until I have pictures to share that!

Weekly Weigh In – Week 6 – Getting easier…

I know I am a little late posting this, but don’t worry, it’s not because I fell off the wagon! Actually I did OK, another 1.5 lbs down (now 9.5 lbs lost in total) which considering we were fairly relaxed with our eating over the weekend was pretty good. I also increased my swimming by another 10 lengths so all in all I was pretty happy.

I had a pretty crafty week last week. Most evenings I would knit whilst I watched TV, and on Thursday evening I went to a ‘BEad Creative’ party with a colleague of James’. I made a pretty turqoise-bead-and-charm bracelet and partially completed an ‘invisible’ wire necklace. (Pics to follow).

One of the major problems I have had with all my crafts is that despite living in one of the biggest cities in the UK, there is a distinct lack of decent craft shops. There are a few dotted around, but not being able to drive has severely limited my ability to get good supplies. Of course I can always order them online, but it is just not quite the same!

Recently I have been looking for good knitting supplies, thankfully I did not buy any, because this weekend I had to do an emergency dash to my grandma’s* and whilst I was there I liberated the majority of her knitting needle stash! I have suddenly gone from 1 pair of needles to about 100!

*My grandma is pretty sick, we are not expecting her to be around for much longer. Of course this is not really all that surprising as she is 97 years old but it still doesn’t make it any easier.

Weekly Weigh In – Week 5 – On the Up (or is it down!)

SO this week I had a pretty good week. I lost another 4 lbs, making my total lost to date, 8 lbs, and back on track! We ate well all week, have a few extra meals frozen for nights that we just can’t be bothered to cook, and we even went out for dinner one night.

I think the biggest change to our diet over the past week though has been the introduction of breakfast. Well, it is not really breakfast per se, but every morning whilst we are getting ready we have a fruit smoothie. This was mainly in an effort to try and get us to eat more fruit and veg, but it really seems to be working! When I was shopping recently I found that you can buy pre-packaged ’smoothie mix’. All it really is, is a bunch of fruit (our favourite at the moment is Strawberry and Banana) which has been frozen and packaged into individual portions. All I have to do each morning is take a packet out of the freezer, chuck it in the blender with some apple juice, and voila! A healthy, low fat breakfast! I know that it is not the most environmentally friendly option with all the packaging, but to be honest at the moment it really is the cheapest (£1.50 for enough fruit for 4 breakfasts, there is no way I could get that amount of fruit, particularly strawberries, for that price).

Bookmark – Embrace the Night by Karen Chance

I have been reading a fair amount recently and have tried a number of new authors. This mainly due to James’ awesome Christmas present to me of £100 of book vouchers (I can’t believe that I have managed to have them last this long, mid-March and I have only just spent the last of them!). Another reason for the large amount of reading I do is the 1 hour commute each way to work which gives me plenty of undistracted reading time. I absolutley loved and could not put down the ‘Succubus’ series by Richelle Mead – nice easy reads full of sex, magic and girly stuff. I also am hooked on the House of Night series by PC and Kristin Cast.

What I am not loving however is Embrace the Night by Karen Chance. I picked up this book as the reviews had it on par with Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Laurell K Hamilton and JD Robb, all authors I love, however the first 2 times I picked it up I did not make it past the 3rd chapter. As I have now run out of alternative new reading material (until my next delivery arrives) I am trying it again. This time I have managed to plod through to Chapter 12, but I am still not convinced. I am not sure if I am finding it difficult to read as it is obviously not the first in the series (I think that I have unwittingly picked up book 3) or whether it is the actual writing. It has the requisite magic, vampires, sex etc for my preferred reading material, but something just does not seem to gel for me.

A brief synopsis: “Recently named the world’s chief clairvoyant, Cassandra Palmer still has a thorn in her side. As long as Cassie and a certain master vampire – the sizzling-hot Mircea – are magically bound to each other, her life will never be her own. The spell that binds them can only be broken with an incantation found in the Codex Merlini, an ancient grimoire. The Codex’s location has been lost in the present day, so Cassie will have to seek it out in the only place it can still be found – the past. But Cassie soon realizes the Codex has been lost for a reason. The book is rumored to contain dangerous spells, and retrieving it may help Cassie to deal with Mircea, but it could also endanger the world.”

It is not that the plot is slow moving, there is the normal continuous seemingly unsurmountable obstacles to overcome, however it is still not grabbing me. Actually I think it is more Cassie herself which is causing the problem for me. I am just not sure that I liker her as the protagonist. I can’t empathise with her or envy her or any of the other myriad of emotions that you normally like about a particular character. Indeed I just feel… well, meh! I am determined to slog through but if something more enticing comes along, I am sure that I will drop it at least until I run out of anything else to read again!

Having said all this, I must admit that the last book I felt this way about was Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow, although with that one, once I got into it I kicked myself for not trying harder before as I could not put it down!

Weekly Weigh In – Week 4 – Like a fish, I was!

This week I started swimming again. I think it has been almost 10 months since I last went, and I really have noticed the difference in my fitness levels (they totally suck!). I have very limited times that I can swim in the local pool as it isonly really open at times that I am at work. When I first registered for weightwatchers, I noticed that the pool (where weigh in is held) is open from 6-6:45pm. Weigh in is either at 6 or at 7, so I decided that I would endeavour to try and swim before I weigh in each week. I managed 40 lengths in 40 minutes (about 1km) which I was pretty happy with. I think my goal is to keep this up for a few weeks, and then I will try and raise it to 50, then 60 and so on… 40 minutes is not a lot of time, but I would love it if I could manage to swim 60 lengths in that time!

As for weigh in this week, well not so good. I put on half a pound. Now considering the week I have had (the diet totally went out the window as my friend Kirsten was visiting) this was actually pretty good, but it does mean I am now 2 lbs off my weekly goal. Time to really start buckling down methinks.

My friend Kirsten came over from Denmark for a long weekend. She left yesterday and I do miss her already. She is one of those people who is supportive but in a really honest way. Sometimes I really need her around to help keep me real. She tells me when I am being an idiot, but she is there with the hugs when I need them. She has also really helped me with my knitting! (Still no photos sorry).

Anyway guess I better go cook dinner!

Weekly Weigh In – Week 3 – Plateau’d

So last week I resisted the urge to dive head first into a bowl of mashed potato. This week I was not quite so restrained. I ate well for about 50% of the week, and the other half… not so much! I fully expected that the best I could hope for would be that I stayed the same, and the worst would be a 1-2 pound gain, so I was actually fairly pleased when the scales showed that I had maintained. I am not getting complacent though. I know that I have a bad weekend ahead of me (my friend Kirsten is visiting from Denmark) and to try and stave that off I have decided to head down the exercise route. Instead of catching the bus back home from weightwatchers, I walked! It is only about a mile, so it is not a major walk, but it is more than I normally do, and I did walk up a fair old sweat. Next week I am definitely going to do it again, but not only that I am promising now that I will re-start my swimming.

In other news, I finally managed to get the wedding invitations finished, so they should go out in the post by the end of the week. I am really really happy with how they have turned out. They are exactly what I wanted, and I so proud that we made them ourselves! I ordered my dress on Saturday, and I think I have found some pretty (and most importantly affordable) shoes which will not cripple me (I absolutely cannot walk in anything over 2 inches!). Now the hunt is on for a tiara (I have seen a pretty one, but I really think that for a lot less money I can make my own in a similar style).

James and I have been on a bit of a 24 marathon recently. We have just finished watching Season 4 and are halfway though 6… it is eminently addictive, and we regularly tell ourselves ‘just one more’. I love crashing out in front of the TV with James, but I always find myself itching for something to do with my hands. SO I am teaching myself to knit (with the help of youtube). Apparently it is the latest cool thing to do, and I just had to jump on the bandwagon. Actually it is quite satisfying, although my hands ache so much after an evening of knitting and I am building up callouses… oh well, not much of a sacrifice really! (Pics to follow at some point soon!)

Anyway, gotta go finish cleaning for Kirsten’s arrival tomorrow!

Classic Books Meme

Here is a meme that I have borrowed from Bookwyrm:

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – X
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – X
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – X
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – *
The Bible – X
Wuthering Heights -X
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell -X
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman -X
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens -X
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott -X
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy -X
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare 1/2 (some of them, but not all)
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien -X
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -X
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams -X
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll -X
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame -X
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis -X
Emma – Jane Austen -X
Persuasion – Jane Austen -X
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis -X
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden -X
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne -X
Animal Farm – George Orwell -X
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown -X
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -X (Do I get extra points for reading it in Spanish?!)
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery -X
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding -X
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert -*
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen -X
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon -X
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck -X
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold -*
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas -X
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding -X
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens -X
Dracula – Bram Stoker -X
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett -X
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome -X
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens -X
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro Xever
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – EB White -X
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -X
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton -X
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery -X
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams -X
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas -X
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl -X
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Total = 44 and a 1/2
Pretty pleased with that!

Weekly Weigh In – Week 2 – An emotional rollercoaster

This week has been difficult… there have been ups and downs, at this stage I am not sure which has triumphed!

In the good, I weighed in this evening and have lost 4.5 lbs. I am fairly pleased with this, considering Valentines Day was smack bang in the middle (Steak dinner!). I didn’t get to go swimming this evening as I had originally planned, as I am coming down with a cold which I really didn’t want to exarcerbate.

Another good thing, I found my wedding dress!  Over the last 3 weekends I have looked at loads and loads of dresses.  I narrowed it down to 5 and then on Saturday I went with my mum and sister to re-try on the shortlisted dresses.  This is the result:

If it is a little small to see the detailing, you can find it here (second row down on the right, just mouse over to view a larger picture).

I chose this dress as I love the subtle hint of red (my colour theme is red and cream).  I also love the way it accents my figure, using fabulous corsetry.  I have an appointment on Saturday to go and have my measurements taken, and then I will just have to wait.  The bridal shop estimates that it will take 12-16 weeks to arrive in and then I will have to go in roughly 6 weeks before the wedding date so have my first fitting… so I had better get losing some of this weight!

Now for the bad.  Yesterday lunchtime I received a phone call telling me that my friend Charlotte’s 15 week old baby son had died the day before.  Although this was not totally unexpected (he was born with a congenital birth defect) it was still an awful shock. 

So this post is for James Cameron, rest in peace precious little one, we will never forget you.

Weekly Weigh In – Week 1 – A Fresh Start

Today I started weightwatchers (again).  I would rather not share my starting weight, maybe when I have lost some I will feel a little braver and more able to share, but at the moment I am still too ashamed.  So I will start by posting a photo (from October so it is fairly recent):

My goal is to lose 2 lbs a week, this would mean that by the time the wedding comes around in August, I will have lost roughly 50 lbs (3 and a half stone).  That is not my ideal weight, but it is certainly something to start with!