Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Famine
Well, the important stuff first. I weighed in last night. Down 3 pounds!! Whoo hoo! That brings the total up to 4.6 so far. Next week I'll get my 5 pounds bookmarker. I'm quivering with excitement. {{{:-)}}} (That's me...quivering.) It was a hard week. There were several times that I had to resort to the WW bb's for support. My entries always seemed to be posted around 11 am. One day I discovered that the "salad" I ordered was going to be 13 points! And I was shaking from hunger already. That produced a great outpouring of support. So yeah, I'm on my weigh.
My brother directed me to a site yesterday that kinda weirded me out. www.kuhrquads.org. Check out the pictures gallery, under NICU, near the bottom, when all the kids are coming home. Having pictures of them in the car seat just gives you the perspective you need to realize how teeny they're going to be. Cringe.
I've been undergoing a famine recently of all things knitty. Yes, despite knitting on the way to church on Sunday and actually considering taking the knitting INTO church with me, I haven't had a chance to do much this week. Saturday I got a few good hours in on my first sock. (Picture pending) And Sunday I got a great start on the first in a second pair of socks. Yeah, I'm having that problem with FINISHING the first one of a pair, let alone the second one. I offer no justification, however. I admit it's a weakness. The rest of the week was spent working, working out, making the upstairs "company ready at a moment's notice," spending time with Justin, and fretting over my financial aid application for McCormick.
Last night, however, with the application out of the way and 3 pounds down the drain, I relaxed last night. I cleaned out my knitting basket while watching "Colonial House" on PBS last. I encourage everyone to check it out. It's on in Pittsburgh on Mondays at 8, I think. But WQED changes their evening schedule so much, it's hard to know. It's like Reality TV...but edumacational. I'm just waiting for the Baptist preacher from Waco to take out the Religious studies prof. from the University of California.
Have a good day all. Call me on the carpet if I don't get pictures out by tomorrow morning.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Let's talk about socks.
The title of today's blog entry comes from the various parodies I heard at the middle school bus stop of the immortal Salt N' Peppa song Let's Talk about Sex. Katie Kuder's version follows:
Let's talk about socks, baby
Let's talk about shoes and feet.
Let's talk about all the white ones and the striped ones that may be.
Let's talk abooouut socks.
Let's talk about socks.
As I mentioned previously, the sock yarn came in. Actually, I loved the first shipment so much, that I went and bought some more. It came in today. :-D Some of it, I'm looking forward to casting onto my new bamboo needles.
And some of it, I've already attacked. I'm so proud of myself ! :-D
The cuff's done and I'm about to "turn the heel." This seems to be where things get complicated...because it's been a piece of cake so far. Actually, from what I hear, the hardest part about knitting socks is having the stamina to start all over on the second sock after the first one is finished.
I feel like I'm knitting with toothpicks! Anyone else have this experience?
Some random thoughts:
I think the e-bay yarn (see below) will forever be known as my first knitting impulse buy gone awry. I can't stand to even look at this stuff. It would have made great baby stuff if it didn't feel like burlap, very fine burlap, but burlap nonetheless. I can't wrap my nieces and nephews in this stuff! What now? Dog sweaters? Can you see Big-D wearing something this color? Blech. Maybe I'll sell it on e-bay.
Everything else I bought in the past two weeks I love. Even the loud Koigu yarn. Those are going to be some funky socks.
Weight Watchers was tonight and I'm down 1.6lbs. to 155.4 which means that I lost the weight of about 3 apples. Yay(wn).
Although I really shouldn't be complaining, there were at least 4 meals during the week that I found myself at a loss in terms of what to get...meaning that salad was not an option.
Also, when Justin and I went to the Pirate game on Saturday, I crossed my arms and noticed that I have "guns" developing. Right now, granted, they're the equivalent of the "noisy cricket" in the Men In Black movie, but muscle weighs more than fat, so we'll use that as an excuse. Any excuse in a storm, right?
Well, off to bed.
Tuesday, May 4, 2004
The Swan
Supplemental Entry today, boy aren't you lucky! :-)
Last night the Seminarian decided to start Weight Watchers again. Entering weight which I am not afraid to truthfully post on the internet so that BOTH of you can see it: 157. The reason why I'm not afraid? It's actually 11 pounds LOWER than my weight when I entered Weight Watchers for the first time last August. You do the math. :-) And it's only 12 pounds higher than when I left Weight Watchers last May. Considering the 6 months of cooking and eating fried chicken and using whole fat mayo, I think I'm doing pretty good. Only a pound a month, not bad. :-)
The scary thing is that Weight Watchers sets your first goal as losing 10% of your body weight. This new 10% marker would put me LOWER than my lowest weight the last time around. That's just scary. Don't know why, just scary. It would mean that my very first goal is not something I've done before, lowered myself to that new weight...but I could meander on about this for awhile.
So I come home from Weight Watchers (after stopping for dinner at Taco Bell...hey, I'm starting slow), and what's on TV but this new Fox show, The Swan. Have any of you been watching this? I have a certain soft spot in my heart for offensive reality TV shows. I was an Apprentice addict, even though I spent the first episode yelling at the opening credits, "WHY don't they pan up from the legs of the MALE contestants???" It was like a car wreck, I couldn't look away. :-)
I'll give you the run down if you're unfamiliar with the program. From what I understand, they take these "ugly" (read: NORMAL) looking women and give them radical plastic surgery. Liposuction is a foregone conclusion for everyone -- "it's for body contouring, not weight loss." Right. They also do boob reductions, boob enhancements, brow lifts, taking fat from your butt and putting it in your lips, acne scar removal, usually all on one woman. The woman is also involved in an extensive weight loss/exercise program so as to supplement the liposuction. There's also therapy to help the women "beautify on the inside." Each week, you hear two women's stories and then several judges vote on one of them to be entered into this beauty pageant at the end of the show. The winner of the beauty pageant wins hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes.
Last night were two very different contestants. At the end, one of them's transformation wasn't all that dramatic, by American standards not beauty queen material, but she had really made strides to overcome her tendency of choosing abusive men...letting her anger out, etc. The second one had a fairly dramatic change. She didn't lose that much weight, but her face was completely different. She looked like Miss America material.
The interesting thing was that, in the end, the one who made a greater "inner change" was chosen for the beauty pageant. But all the focus was on the bodily transformation for 90% of the show. You know that the girl they picked (btw: why are MEN never the subject of these extreme makeovers??) will never win a beauty contest. The way we look at our bodies is so screwed up.
"So why do a weight loss program?" you ask. Because I'm not ashamed of the way I look. I'm ashamed at the lack of control I have over how much I eat...and what I eat. I let my emotions control what goes in my mouth and what goes in my mouth control my emotions. Gotta stop that.
Tune in every Tuesday for the "weigh-in" spectacular.
Christmas!!!
Christmas came a little early at the Morris house last night. However, it was a Christmas that I funded completely with my own bank account. But it still counts!
The stitch markers came in and are absolutely ADORABLE. 
I started a hat to match the purple keyhole scarf and decided to jazz it up last night by putting the stitch markers around for when I decrease.
Ok, so I didn't need to do that for another 6 inches. Gimme some credit here, I was excited. Like when I was kid and would get new summer clothing for my birthday in mid-March. It didn't matter if it was 30 degrees out, the first weekend I could, I was wearing those new shorts! I am so in love with these stitch markers that I had to make the picture fuzzy, like when gel lenses were used in old movies to highlight the "love interest."
The yarn I ordered on e-bay also came in. 
The color was about what I had expected, but it was much rougher than it looked on the screen. I guess that's what you get when you can't "squeeze the Charmin" before you buy.
Although, that's not always the case. I got my first stash of sock yarn yesterday as well. :-D Man, is this stuff great. Even the wool feels soft! All the colors are fairly plain, I just can't get into Koigu socks yet. The needles should be arriving any day now! Tee hee!!!
Hope your day is exciting as mine was yesterday. :-D
Saturday, May 1, 2004
The Hat that Would Not Start...Muhahaha!
I was told I laugh like a witch the other day, that my laugh is pseudo-eeevil. I just had to include that with the "muhaha" in the title today.
Alright, here's the blog plan. I pledge, for the time being, to write as much as I can during the week, on the weekdays. However, these entries will rarely be "picture intensive". You'll have to wait til Saturday to get all of those. I think that this blogging thing just takes practice. I was amazed by my speed at transferring, editing, uploading & linking all of the pictures for the past few entries today. Although Justin, who is patiently reading over my shoulder, may have a different opinion. ;-)
Anyway, today's adventure finds us in bed...well, ME in bed. It's 7 in the morning. I've decided that instead of going downstairs, I'm going to finish my latest Netflix selection Amadeus. "It won eight Oscars!" I've also decided that I'm going to attempt to re-cast-on the baby hat I started last night.
Trying to cast-on during "movie night" was a mistake. You're expected to either be making eye contact with everyone present or sitting in total darkness focused solely on the movie. Not suprisingly, this means I fell asleep and missed what I believe to be a crucial part of Big Fish.
Back to this morning. I FROGged what little bit was on the needles, and started over. By 10AM, this is where I was.
Yeah, there's about 2 rows of knitting on there. When I was first learning to knit, my roommate/teacher was teaching herself how to knit in the round. She was continuously frustrated by the enigmatic instruction "be careful not to twist the stitches." Having knit about half a dozen hats on dpn's in as many months, I never understood her frustration. Ah, the Greeks were right. Hubris is our downfall. The important reason not to twist the stitches is not seen on the needles, but where the needles intersect. A twist there will lead to the needles lining up wrong, will lead to the whole knitting project twisting. That's what I learned on my second attempt. (The first lesson being "it's impossible to cast-on in the dark") The third attempt's lesson was a simple dropped stitch, and the FOURTH'S was to choose your pattern carefully.
As I embarked this morning, I decided to use this pattern that I found while insanely bored at work on Friday.
I learned several things on my fourth attempt at casting on. 1. Patterns that are written for straight knitting are very hard to transfer into circular knitting, especially if spacial relations is not your strong point. When I thought I had that problem solved, I encountered my second lesson. 2. When converting straight pattern to circular, they assume that you'll be flipping the knitting around and starting at the "end" of the last row. But when you're doing things in a circular way, you start at the beginning of the last row and don't finish til the end of that row. Clear as mud, class? Yeah, well it makes sense in MY mind, anyway. Finally, my 3rd and final lesson, the one that made me give up for the day at 10 AM, was this one, the one my mother has been teaching me forever. READ ALL THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING!!!
Take a look at the link again. You see that little throw away instruction at the bottom? "Note: Use a selvedge st on each side as row 3 ends with SSK." WHAT THE HELL IS A SELVEDGE STITCH?????
So, I have to abandon this absolutely adorable stitch pattern and start over for the fifth time. UGH!
Off to South Park to relax.
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