Time heals all heartache

So it’s been a long time since I last posted. A very long time. I don’t even dare to look back and see what the last post was, but I’m guessing it’s probably about 18 months or so.

A lot has happened to me over the last 18 months, and I’d like to say it’s all been good, but the truth is, life has not been kind, to myself or my family. There have been losses – oh so many losses, and sickness and just much, much heartache. I’ll admit, that most of the heartache has been my own, which I will get into later, but not this post. This post is about good things.

Like quilting.

I may have been having a pretty crap time of it, but I’m happy to say that I’ve still been quilting (and crocheting) up a storm. And then, I joined the Modern Quilt Guild. That was a shining moment for me, the day that I got my MQG pin. It sits proudly on my desk, next to my computer so I can see it all the time. It cheers me up. To know that I belong to a group of people around the world who all love to quilt. And create.

So I happily signed up for my first Fabric Challenge back in February – creating a quilted product out of some Michael Miller prints. It was exciting, being forced to extend my creativity and make a quilt out of fabrics not of my choosing. Exciting, but daunting.

Fabrics supplied for the challenge
Fabrics supplied for the challenge

When I received them, my first thought was, I would never in a million years pick those fabrics out in the store – just what am I going to do with them. But that thought was short lived, the fabrics just lent themselves to an idea I’d had floating around in my head for some time – creating a quilt that showed my move from the city, to the country – my home, a place I could never imagine not living in anymore. So I sat down, and started drawing up my design, and ordered more fabrics to go along with what I had already recieved. And then I started sewing – curves, lots of curves. Something I don’t really ever work with. But it was fun.

My first curve
My first curve

And then life got in the way again and things made me sad. I put the quilt away and forgot all about it. I’d lost the will to do the quilt and I didn’t love anything let alone my beautiful city I call home.

But eventually, the fog lifted and over the last week and a bit I pulled it out again and just like that, I had the perfect idea on just what I wanted to do with my quilt. I wanted to make something that was beautiful that I could hang up on my wall and remind myself that while there are always going to be black times, there will always come a time when the happiness is going to push that blackness in my heart away.

So again, I sat down, and quickly drew up my design (and I have to give a huge shout-out here to Caro Sheridan and her fantastic Craftsy course – Pictures to Pixel Quilts, for teaching me everything I ever needed to know about creating my own pixel quilt and working out how many squares I’d actually need. THANK YOU, your class was uber awesome) and got cutting and quilting.

So I ended up with a quilt that comes directly from my heart and I’ve called it “Time heals all heartache” – because I truly hope that is the truth.

The quilt measure 50″ by 73″ and is a two sided 2″ square pixel quilt. On the one side is heartache overwhelming everything. The black (sadness) in the heart is taking over the colour (happiness) and pushing it out. But when the quilt is flipped over, the happiness is fighting back and pushing that blackness out and up and away.

The quilt front - sadness overtaking the happiness and pushing it out of my heart.
The quilt front – sadness overtaking the happiness and pushing it out of my heart. (Click for a larger view)
Close up of the front heart
Close up of the front heart. (Click for a larger view)

The quilting was done by me on my Janome 2160DC and is quilted in a clock face. It is 60 lines – each representing a minute – to reflect that time heals.

I’ve made this quilt mostly to be a wall hanging – I don’t intend to use it as a lap quilt, but as an art piece. Oh. And in the end? I’m so glad that these fabrics were given to me to participate with. Because while I might never have actually chosen them, they worked so well with my idea and I actually really love them now. (Secretly, very glad that I ordered extra and have leftovers that I can make something else with).

The back of the quilt, where the happiness is taking over and pushing out the hurt and sadness
The back of the quilt, where the happiness is taking over and pushing out the hurt and sadness. (Click for a larger view)
A close up of the back, and the line quilting
A close up of the back, and the line quilting. (Click for a larger view)

I really hope you all love this quilt as much as I do, and I am really looking forward to getting back into my quilting with a vengeance and back into the blogging again. Now that I’m in here and typing away, I realise just how much I’ve missed it. I also intend on taking some better pictures tomorrow or over the weekend, but it’s late and dark and cold and raining outside, so those photos just weren’t happening tonight.

Welcome 2013

All

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that 2012 was a good year for you all and that 2013 will be an even better year for everyone.

I’ve spent the last few days going over the past year in my head and thinking about what I would like to achieve over the next 12 months (and beyond that as well), in all aspects of my life – not just fitness and food related goals. There are so many things that I would love to do, but I know that I can’t achieve all the things I would like to do, so I’ve had to pare my list down a little, to make it achievable. I didn’t really accomplish what I set out to last year (isn’t that the story for so many of us), in fact, I rarely accomplish my new years resolutions. To see just how much I didn’t accomplish, you can take a look at last year’s resolutions here. I think you will note by the lack of blogging over the year, the fact that my weight is only a few kilos less than when I started 2012 off and the fact that I haven’t written about my fantastic day swimming with the sharks, that I didn’t accomplish much on that list. Again…. So do I think that I’m going to be more successful this year? Of course, I have to say yes, isn’t that what we always do? Do I really believe that? Partly yes, and partly no. I would like to believe that I’m going to be more successful at achieving my goals, but I know what I’m like and the reality is that a lot of my goals will slip by the wayside pretty darn tootin’ quickly. But I will attempt, once again, to make goals and stick to them. So what are they for this year?

  1. Blog more.
    I love blogging, I love the feeling of release it gives me and the ability to get things off my chest, usually without harming anyone except myself. Sometimes though, I find it so hard to write down what I’m feeling that I bottle it all up and then it gets too hard to come back to it. But this year, I would like to blog about anything and everything, whether it’s good news or bad. If I feel it’s something I can’t share, then maybe it’s time I put to good use the fact that I can make my posts private! Blogging is good for the soul!
  2. Eat healthy and exercise more.
    These two need to go hand in hand with each other, they’re like black and white, the sun and the moon – you can’t have one without the other. Of course, I want to eat healthy and exercise more so that I can lose weight. I have about 40kg still to lose (hmmm about what I started 2012 off with – see my earlier comment about resolutions going undone!). I’d like to think I can do that in the next 12 months, but rather than say that, I would like to further add to this goal by saying that a sub-goal of mine is to:

    • Have steady weight-loss
      This is as opposed to having a set amount of weight I would like to lose this year. Of course, I would love to lose all 40kg this year, but more importantly, I want to get off this yo-yo merry-go-round. I would like to lose weight consistently this year. Not down, then up, then down, down, down then up again. Just a gradual down. If it takes me 12 months, or 24 months to lose my weight, then so be it, so long as it’s on that downward spiral only.
    • Have a steady exercise routine
      Just as I am always up and down with my weight, I’m also up and down with my exercise routine. It’s either all or nothing for me, which quite frankly, the older I get the harder I find it to cope with one week increasing my fitness, only to then slack off and six weeks later try and get back into it, feeling like every second I’m about to have a heart attack. So steady, regular exercise is going to be my mantra for this year. I have decided to join in on a goal of doing 2013 kilometers in 2013 – this can be done by either walking, running, cycling, swimming, or climbing. It’s doable, IF I am consistent.
  3. Finish off my quilting and crochet projects.
    I have so many on the go at the moment, I really need to pull my finger out and get them finished. It’s just slackness that stops me. So no more excuses.
  4. Read more.
    I love reading, but last year I found that I didn’t do much of it at all. So this year, I want to take a few hours each week and dedicate it solely to just sitting back with my Kindle and relaxing with a good book. Whether it’s a crime novel that keeps me on the edge of my chair in suspense, or even just a trashy romance novel that makes me smile at the end of it, it doesn’t matter, so long as I’m taking that time out to just enjoy reading again.
  5. Be more organised around home.
    I wish I was one of these women who was just a natural homebody who kept an immaculate house and didn’t get narky with her partner if he left her to do all the work. I’m not. I do get narky when M leaves me to do most of the housework, to the point where sometimes, I will just leave the dishes sitting in the sink for a few days out of spite. If he’s not going to put them in the dishwasher (oh yes, we have a dishwasher, I don’t even have to clean them myself…. slack aren’t I!) then why should I? This year, my aim is to keep a cleaner, more organised home. (We’ll start that one tomorrow though hmmmmm).
  6. And last, but by no means least –

  7. Save more.
    We want to buy our own home. But that’s not going to happen if I don’t stick to my budget. So this year, my aim is to create my budget (done, can check that off the list already) and to stick to it, so we can save enough and finally buy a house. I don’t even care at this point if it’s only a small one bedroom place, so long as it’s ours, though really, two bedrooms would be so much better!

So those are my goals for this year. I have a few more, but to me these ones are the important ones. The ones I need to put out there, to you all, in the hopes that you will help keep me honest and on track with them. Let’s see how I go this year. I’m looking forward to my next resolution re-cap in twelve months, hopefully checking these off the list.

Happy New Year - 2013
Happy New Year – 2013

Let the Christmas celebrations begin

Why does Christmas have to include masses of food celebrations. I mean really, aside from the gift giving aspect of Christmas, the only other thing I can really see happening is eating – eating lots and lots of food (of course, this eating is normally done with loved ones, but it’s still all about the food). Now I know I’m sounding a bit like the Grinch at the moment, and also sound like I’m complaining, but as someone who is trying to lose weight, I am already struggling – and it’s not even really Christmas yet!

I go to the shops and everywhere I look there is candy, biscuits, cakes, puddings, chocolate, rich deserts, dripping roasts and my favourite – mince pies! And I’m frustrated, because I just want to buy them all up and sit down at a table gobbling everything in sight, but I know that I can’t. So I’m getting frustrated, angry and just a little resentful, which really is not putting me in the Christmas spirit at all. I know that there would be people out there saying, well just buy one mince pie and eat that, make sure you count it into your daily calories, and work it off. To those people I say, I wish I could. But really, my self control is almost non-existant (otherwise I probably wouldn’t find myself 40kg overweight now would I?) I honestly feel like I can’t tempt myself, because I will cave in. Which just brings on that angry frustration again.

Last night we had my work Christmas dinner to attend. It was all planned weeks ago, before I had even contemplated doing 12WBT over the Christmas period, while I was stil quite content to blithely shove food into my mouth while trying to secretly convince myself that I wasn’t gaining weight and that it wouldn’t creep up on me and that I wouldn’t pay for it later (pfftttt, paying now I can tell you!). We had organised to go to a local winery who were putting on dinners where you could select from a few things on the menu and voila – instant fancy dinner. In the end we probably didn’t choose too badly and thankfully going to a winery, they don’t exactly serve up massive serving sizes, but let me tell you that I would definitely have gone over my calories yesterday.

I spent all day thinking and obsessing about food. Minimising my food intake – small fruity breakfast, little leftover serve for lunch, a snack of celery in the afternoon (with a smidge of cream cheese on it) and masses of water, all to compensate for this dinner last night. By the time we got there I was ravenous. But a funny thing happened – I didn’t gorge myself like I normally would have. As they brought out dish after dish (we had six dishes on the menu), I ate from each of the small serves very slowly. I didn’t take any of the extras that were offered to me (though I admit, I ate my bread roll – I was THAT hungry) and I had one alcoholic drink all night. I felt in control and very well full and satisfied when it was all over. So well satisfied in fact that I turned away from the chocolates that were on offer (OMG lush looking truffles too, that’s how serious I was, I turned down truffles) and I said no to dessert.

I did well – at least I think I did well, and I know I did well considering what the old me would have done. I didn’t lack for food, it was all excruciatingly delicious, I had great company while I was eating and I even allowed myself one alcoholic drink. So why do I feel like I was still missing out? On the one hand, something must be sinking into this brain of mine about eating properly and moderation and portion sizes, but on the other hand, something else in my brain is seriously lacking if I keep thinking that I was still missing out because I didn’t shovel food into my mouth, and it wasn’t all fries and schnitzels. I’m hoping that eventually something clicks in my head and it just happens and these stupid thoughts keep popping up.

So tonight, we’re off to a pizza night with friends. This one I’m really dreading, but I’m going to go through my list of 12WBT recipes and find some options that I can make. I will not undo my good work of last night! Nosireebob!

Oh and on other news – weigh in on Wednesday went really well. I was down 2.2kg – biggest loss for me in one week ever I think. Here’s to a good weigh in next Wednesday and here’s to Christmas finally being over so that the food shopping and eating can go back to some sense of normality!

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 107.0kg.
Today’s weight: 104.8kg.
2.2kg loss!

Yoga and the fat girl

So two new things have happened to me lately.

  1. I have started using the word FAT. *ugh* *shiver* I hate that word, but hey, let’s be honest, I am fat, it’s a truth I can’t deny, in fact people have called me names of so many variations of the word for almost my entire life, that I thought “hell, if I can’t beat them, I may as well join them”. I really hate the word though, so in some respects it’s a bit of a motivator for me to lose weight. So that I can stop calling myself fat. FAT FAT FAT. See I’m saying it all the time. Tina is a fat girl! It’s almost cathartic. (Almost, I won’t pretend that I like it).
  2. I tried yoga! Who knew I would ever do something as insane as that. I’m very lucky that in the town I live in we have a system set up where there are two free yoga classes offered every week (though the ones who go regularly are encouraged to make a gold donation – hell I think the least we can all do is make a gold donation, I don’t know anywhere else where I can get a yoga class for $2 at the most). I have never been before, but I have a good friend who has gone to every single class since they started six months ago and she loves it. She has tried so often to get me to go along with her, telling me how much better she feels for going, and how it just makes her feel taller and stronger. But I always associated yoga with hippies. I laughed when people would talk about doing the downward dog and other moves (I won’t pretend that I know any other names, except for the downward dog), but I have to take back everything I have ever said. I apologise to all yoga lovers and goers out there. I was wrong. I have a newfound respect for those of you that put yourself through that torture every week. You are all awesome! I swear to God!

    Turns out though, that being fat and doing yoga do not go hand in hand. Turns out that when you have a big stomach, it makes some of the moves very hard, trying to kneel and bend and touch my toes (TOES? I could barely touch my knees thanksverymuchly). It also turns out that when you have a plate in your wrist and can’t do weight bearing exercises using that wrist, it also makes it quite hard. But you know what, I did the whole class, only stopping twice to say “WTF???” but quickly getting back into it. I didn’t burn a whole lot of calories, but I’m okay with that. I get now why my friend kept going on about it. I left that class feeling stretched and pulled and overall more relaxed with myself and my life. I still don’t get the mumbo jumbo (again, sorry for offending all yoga lovers out there) that goes along with it, I can’t quite get that last relaxation part happening, I don’t lie there thinking of sandy beaches and thanking my body for being wonderful (because let’s face it, my body isn’t wonderful – yet), I lie there during the relaxing part thinking of all the things I have to do when I get home. But maybe with time, I might get that last relaxing part. Strangely, I’m looking forward to next Monday when I will be attending my second ever yoga class, and then again on Wednesday. I’m going to make the most of these free (or rather, gold coin donation) classes while they last.

So here’s to trying new things. Saying ugly words to empower yourself and not letting others hurt you with those words and to trying exercises that you only ever found to be kooky. I know I feel better for trying these new things. So what new things have you tried lately?

A loss… and a win (or two)

Tuesdays are supposed to be my super smash it day, the theory being that I get up first thing in the morning and go for a swim, do my 40 laps and then have a nice relaxing spa for ten minutes before heading home to start the day, whereupon I finish work and head back to the pool to do an aquaerobics class. That’s the theory anyway. The reality was that I spent way too long watching tv last night and ended up turning my alarm off this morning and sleeping. It was bad and it was the wrong thing to do, but I know my body well enough by now to know that if I had gotten up, by 2pm today I’d have been a walking zombie (note to self, get some more iron tablets from the chemist…) So I felt quite guilty this morning when I finally got up and Mick asked me what happened to my early morning session. I think the look I gave him was enough for him to know that this was NOT a conversation to have with me first thing without any coffee (bless him, he really is so patient and tolerant with me). So that was my loss.

But – and yes, there’s a but – I had a win. Actually I had two wins. One a physical win, and two more mental.

First off, I did actually make it to aquaerobics tonight. Got home from work and put up our new Christmas tree (not a lot involved really, it’s just a wooden one, that really doesn’t require decorations – I’m going for minimalistic this year) and pottered around and contemplated – I hate to admit it, I really did contemplate it – calling my mate and telling her that I couldn’t make it to aquaerobics. But that’s giving in and I can’t continue to do that or I’m never going to get where I want to go (and I’m still trying to decide exactly where I want to go) so I struggled through the laziness and went off to do the class. And I’m so glad that I did. It was just fantastic. I could really feel it in my core and I think I’m going to continue to feel it tomorrow. I feel so refreshed and pumped now, that I’m really sad that I didn’t go swimming this morning. But it’s okay, there’s always tomorrow and every day after that.

Second little win was a thought that I had on the way home from work. Normally, when I get home from work, I scoff down food. Sometimes it’s healthy, most times it’s not. I have no idea why I thought of it as I was driving home, but I suddenly realised that A) I only eat when I get home because it’s habit, not because I’m actually hungry and B) I haven’t done that since I started 12WBT and OMG I’m still alive and haven’t starved to death… Hmmmm. So that just made me happy, because I realise that I can come home and just do things, without having to shove food in my face and that habits can be broken. Not that I think this habit is broken yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Third little win, was again a mental thing, and actually happened last night. I was watching TV last night (the reason that I was up so late and missed swimming this morning, so maybe this isn’t a win after all…. Might call it a draw) in particular the documentary “Fat, sick and nearly dead”, about Joe Cross who started drinking fresh juice every day for two months. Not just drinking a little juice, but only juice. He stopped eating and just drank. He convinced another few people to do the same and the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking “Wow, what an easy way to lose weight” (okay, now that I’m not half asleep, rationally, I know that wouldn’t be easy, would require a lot of willpower – we know I don’t have much of that, read above to see my exercising willpower *sigh*) at the time, I really thought that would be great. I watched him lose so much weight in two months and kept thinking to myself. Two months, that’s eight weeks, that’s two weeks less than the end time of this round of 12WBT. I could totally almost get to my goal weight in that time just by drinking juice! I almost convinced myself that I should do it. But then I mentally slapped myself. What the hell was I thinking? Why would anyone in their right mind (and I’m really sorry if you’re a fan of Joe Cross – if you are, maybe stop reading now…) why would anyone who is mildly sane, willingly cut out every other food group except for fruit and veggies to lose weight? That’s all he was doing to start with, drinking juice. Not exercising, not actually cooking food up, cutting it up, chewing it and swallowing it. Just drinking. WHY? Personally, I think he took the cheat’s, easy way out (and again, I know it wouldn’t be easy…) And that’s where I’m counting my last win. For brief moments, I seriously considered cutting out my eating and just drinking juice for a couple months. But I’m so glad to say that I thought better of it. I love that on this program I don’t have to give up any food group. That I can learn about healthy eating, that I can still enjoy the occasional piece of chocolate if I so wish to. That I am learning about exercising and creating a healthy balanced life. So to Michelle Bridges, I say Thank you. Thank you for not getting me to only drink juice (and it really was vile looking juice too!)

Now here’s hoping that tomorrow morning I get my lazy butt out of bed at 6am and do some exercise.

Another round of 12WBT

This year Michelle Bridges has decided to run a holiday round of the 12WBT program, and this year I am partaking in it. After my dismal attempt at the beginning of the year, I just sort of gave up on the weight loss thing. I knew in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t and occasionally I would actually look at the food I was preparing and eating, but I didn’t let any of that register in my head. I just went on eating what I wanted, when I wanted. To the point where I gained weight and nearly got back up to my start weight of the beginning of the year. I kept trying to lose weight and exercise and “get motivated” but nothing really worked. I kept saying that this week was going to be the week that I really did something, but the weeks came and went and nothing got done and a few more hundred grams were gained (never lost).

I can’t really say what made me do this round. I get emails from the 12WBT team all the time, but mostly I just ignore them. I’d grown a bit disenchanted with the idea of 12WBT, it seemed to be all the same information repeated again and again and I didn’t want to keep paying money for the same information (no, I’d rather sink my money into junk food apparently). But I was just reading one of the emails that came out about the holiday round and something in my head just snapped. I signed up, pretty much straight away, without thinking about it, and for the first time in many months I feel like I’m a little bit more in control of my life. I didn’t really spend as much time as I should have doing the pre-season tasks, (mostly because I joined up a couple of days before the round officially started) – but I did do them and I plan on revisiting them this weekend and going a bit more in depth with them. By then I will have completed nearly three weeks of the program and I will have a bit of a better idea about what my actual excuses really are, and what I really want my goals to be, because at this stage, I just want to lose weight and get back under the 100kg mark.

I’d love to say that I’ve been better with my exercise this round, but alas, some things never change. I still avoid exercising like the plague and when I do exercise it seems to be mostly swimming that I do. I have yet to really get my confidence back up to go shuffling again, still so petrified that I’m going to fall over and hurt myself again. But I will get there. I am trying to get up at 6am and exercise and it has happened a few times, though not as many as it should have. Tomorrow will be another 6am start, for a swim session in the morning. Funny, but I seem to be able to easily get up for a 6am swim, but getting up for a 6am exercise DVD is just beyond me. But again – I WILL get there, I am determined.

So here’s to the next 10 1/2 weeks, and hopefully to the rest of my life. I need to get this weight thing under MY control and not be under IT’S control. I need to take charge of my own life. So this is where it starts.

And here returns the slackness

All

WOW for someone who was going to post every single day in October, I’ve not really done so well have I?
Let’s see what else has fallen off the bandwagon shall we?

Rocktober? Umm that’s a bust. I hadn’t exercised at all until today….

Octsober? Huh, this one was supposed to be the easiest one for me to do. Then we went to Adelaide for 5 days and had a hellish time, so I bought a bottle of Kahluah. Yep, been having a few glasses here and there throughout the weeks to add onto the Adelaide trip. So nope, Octosober is a bust.

Blogtoberfest? Well, lack of posting shows that I haven’t been doing that. I’ve tried to get crafty as well, but that’s just not happened either. Lots of good intentions, followed up by no action.

Lead up to NaNoWriMo? Also a BIG HUGE BUST. I really haven’t done much with the month so far, except crocheting. I’ve been doing a bit of that. NaNo is the one thing that has me worried though, because I really want to complete it this year and I want to do a great thing with my story.

So, do I have any excuses? Nope, none. Just general lack of caring. Add to that, more family dramas and I just lost motivation or care factor to do anything at all. But I did join a gym today. It’s only for ten days, but i’m going to see how it goes, and then see if I can find money in my budget to keep on going after that. I need to get back into doing something that makes me feel good and energised. I need to get back into losing weight. I need to stop saying I need and rather actually DO.

Speaking of weight. Weighed myself today and am quite disgusted to note that I have gone back up to 105.8kg. I’m more than when I officially started the 12WBT challenge at the beginning of the year. So I’m going to attempt to set myself another goal. By the end of this year, I would like to be 95kg. That’s only 10kg, but it should be doable. So here we go again, let’s get rocking for October and make the most of the rest of this month. And here’s to more posting and crafting 🙂

Quilting conundrum

I stopped off at my local patchwork store today and grabbed myself some luscious fabric. I grabbed four fabrics from the Mint Collection Down Under collection. I’ve had my eye on these pieces for a while now. I am having a bit of an obsession with grays and there was something about this collection that just shouted out to me with its pops of yellow and turquoise. Now I am not a yellow fan. In fact, I used to openly say that yellow was probably the one colour that I detested. But as I get older I find that I am liking it more and more, which is a little worrying to me because I have nothing in my house that will go with yellow. But, I saw this fabric and fell in love with it.

A while ago now I bought an old second hand rocking chair, with the intentions of restoring it there and then. Well, move on a few months and the rocking chair is still sitting in my study in all its ugliness, with its even uglier 70’s brown and orange cushions. I would cringe every time I saw it, except it’s piled up with so much crap that you can’t really see the cushions. Just the ugly dark wood. When I saw this Down Under collection I immediately thought of making new cushions for the rocking chair out of it. With the rocking chair stripped back and painted a nice crisp white, I think these fabrics would just look glorious. (Of course, this means I will have to eventually get off my buttski and strip and re-paint said rocking chair.)

Down Under Collection
The four corner pieces are from the Down Under Collection. The top one is a gorgeous grey chevron.

Now my dilemma. WHAT pattern am I going to use to create fantabulous cushions? I would ideally like to combine these fabrics with splashes of white and perhaps a little more yellow (omg here comes more yellow!). I have gone through Moda Bakeshop and Elizabeth Hartman’s quilt book, but I just can’t seem to find the right pattern. Any ideas? Something simple. And square. I admit, I’m truly stuck.

While I was at Patchwork Pear today though, I did pick up a few more little fat quarters in some greens. These I have plans for… But it’s all secret squirrel at the moment 🙂

Special Greens

Not so much crafting, but a lot of working

All

Why is it that when you set yourself a goal to do exercise and be crafty and to generally do things that you want to do, that something gets in the way to destroy those plans. And to generally mock you!

Such is my life today. I’ve been at work all day, come home and spent a further 4 hours working on a document to the point where I have gotten nothing else done (including cooking dinner – thank goodness for takeaway). Sadly, that means I can’t leave you with any grand crafty accomplishments for today. But I can show you a few things I’ve recently completed and started…

Hexie colour wheel blanket
These are some of my green hexies that I am making for a crocheted hexie colour wheel blanket. It’s a bit slow going, but it’s going…
Fingerless gloves
We recently went camping, and with my dodgy wrist I needed to have some gloves that would be thick and warm over my wrist, but still leaving my fingers free to stoke the fire (and eat marshmallows with). Couldn’t find any, so I made some.
Star Stitch blanket
A friend and I recently discovered Panda’s Zoomy Yarn. After hunting high and low we finally found a website that had some of this gorgeous discontinued yarn. So we bought many balls of it. With no idea what to make. After many failed attempts at making a granny square I could fall in love with in this thick, thick yarn, I finally gave up and just started searching around for fancy stitches. I found this star stitch and I have fallen in love with it. It’s so quick and easy to do and so effective. I cannot wait until this blanket is finished.
http://freevintagecrochet.com/how-to-crochet/star-stitch

And last, but not least here is my photo of the day for October…

2 October 2012 - Lunchtime
So I admit to forgetting to take my lunchtime photo, so I thought I’d share with you a part of what I had for lunch instead. I love Cup A Soups. Sooo yummy.

October – the month of many’s

All

So I’ve been seeing things all over the internet about things that are happening in October – First there’s Rocktober – which goal are you going to try and rock? Secondly there is Octsober – obviously, that’s keeping sober and not drinking all October. Thirdly, there is Blogtoberfest – a month long blogging festival. Fourthly (is fourthly a word?), there is Photo a Day for October. There was another one, but do you think I can remember it with my guppy brain? Last, but not least, October is the month before NaNoWriMo. So, which ones will I be participating in?

All of them!

Yes folks, you heard me correctly. October is going to be the month of stressing myself out.

So here are my goals:
Rocktober – My goal that I want to smash is to exercise 4 times a week – or 20 times. Do-able a lot of you out there might say, but for those who have kept track of my blog over time, you will all know that exercise is something that I struggle with. So 20 times is a big deal for me. I would also like to smash out a bit of a weight loss goal – 5kg. Time to really get back onto this weight loss gig that I’ve been struggling with – forever it seems.

Octsober – Well this one probably won’t be hard for me. I very rarely drink anyway, so not having alcohol for a month isn’t really going to faze me either way. So this one, I think is a slam dunk.

Blogtoberfest – This one I might just struggle with. I said in my last post that I wanted this blog to get away from only talking about weight loss and fitness. These are still issues very close to my heart, but it’s not all I’m about. I also love to be crafty. I love quilting, and I’ve recently come to love crocheting too. I would like to share more about the things I’m doing in that regard. I think that by joining in with Blogtoberfest I may actually get a chance to be a bit more crafty in my day to day life, rather than hiding myself behind the computer all the time as I seem to do. (Though, having just bought a new computer, tearing myself away from her, might prove a little hard…)

Photo a Day for October – I’ve been trying to do this one for the last couple of months, and every month I get a few days in, and I forget to start taking photos. So, I’m trying again. And I’ll be posting them all up here for you to see, so if you see that I miss a day, please remind me.

And last, but by no means least – Lead up to NaNoWriMo. I love NaNo, I’ve written about it a few times here. Last year, I started to do it, but just couldn’t get into it. There were so many other things going on in my life, like trying to find a job after having moved to a new city, that I just stressed myself out even thinking about NaNo. The first time I did NaNo, I just winged it. Didn’t go in with a clear thought of how I wanted to proceed, didn’t even go into it with a real storyline in mind. Just let my mind and fingers wander and let happen, what happened. It was a success. But this time, I have a plan of what I want to write. A story that has been hanging around in my head for quite some time now. I really want to do it justice. So I think this October, I will be sitting down and organising and planning exactly how this story will go – and hopefully have another NaNo success.

So that’s my plan for this month. What are your plans? Will you be joining in on any October festivities?

Before I leave you tonight, here’s my first photo of the day for October. (Phew, one day down, 30 more to go…)

Where you stood
There I am, standing in my dining room, because I couldn’t stray too far from the computer today. It just wasn’t happening. Dig the groovy slippers :)