The Heat of the Summer

I'm slowly working up to longer runs. My during-the-week runs are 5 and 6 miles and they feel pretty good. Last weekend I finally managed 7 miles again. I hadn't run that distance since before the trip to Colorado (I think the travel and altitude there set me back a bit.) My speed has been really up and down, mostly depending on just how humid it is outside on a given day. As long as I'm still getting in the mileage and not suffering any major injuries, I can't really complain.

On the injury front, I'm still having trouble with the tennis elbow. I had an MRI done early this month, and my ortho said that it didn't show any tears or ragged edges. That's good, but he didn't really have any other good suggestions. His suggested therapy is to take an anti-inflammatory medication constantly for a week and see if it has any effect. I'm taking meloxicam, and so far, several days in, I'm still having some pain in my arms. I'm so frustrated with this injury. It would have been much easier to break a bone. That heals faster and more completely. This tennis elbow has been an issue for me now for over a year!

Through it all, I'm still knitting. Slowly. And not much. As long as I don't knit for too long at a time I'm not having too much trouble. I haven't been able to bring myself to restart my daughter's second sock. It seems as if I've been knitting those socks forever. At least I only have to reknit the easy part. Grafting the reknit leg to the already-knit foot will be the big challenge.

cute but not quite matched in size

see how the top sock is shorter than the bottom sock?

Of course, despite the little knitting I've been doing, I couldn't resist starting a new project. My best  friend from high school, Miriam, is going through a rough time with her health. She lives halfway across the country and other than call her every once in a while, there's not a lot I can do from here that is helpful to her. So I decided she needed a nice warm cowl for the winter. I'm calling it a "Yarn Hug for Miriam" and bought a pattern that looked like it fit really nicely around the neck. Of course, I've spent more time tweaking the pattern than I have knitting so far. When I downloaded and read through the pattern I realized there was some odd shaping up at the neck that I didn't like. So I'm rewriting the neck portion to make it more cowl-like at the top. I'm also reworking the stitch pattern so that I can knit it in the round without changing directions, as the pattern directs. It took a lot more time up front but I think the knitting is coming out much simpler and more straightforward, and I'm getting the same stitch pattern as written in the pattern. Hopefully my changes will continue to work the way I intend them to.

the top of the cowl

We just had our last week with Jason home, before he headed back to school for his sophomore year. He was the only kid home and working this summer, poor kid, but he managed to escape his boring parents, getting out to see friends once in a while, and also found ways to socialize with faraway friends via Skype. Life is certainly easier when the kids can drive themselves. In addition to working and catching up with a few friends, Jason has had some cooking lessons. He is living off campus this coming year and none of his prospective roommates are all that interested in cooking. As he'd like to save some money by not eating out all the time, he is working on becoming Chef Jason. This has been a good thing for me. On cooking lesson days, I pull out a recipe, help him find ingredients and cooking implements, pour myself a glass of wine and sit at the kitchen island to "direct." Life is good!

Jessica was home briefly between the end of her sophomore year and the beginning of her internship in Japan. We scrambled to help her do laundry, shop for the items she'd need over the summer, clean up all the things she brought home from school and pack for Japan. She has just now finished up her summer internship and is "hanging out" in Tokyo until her junior year abroad in Tokyo starts up at the end of August. She has been able to visit with her host-sister Aya, who lives fairly close to the University. That gives me a little bit more peace of mind, knowing that Aya and her family are close by in case Jessica needs somebody. She probably won't; she has managed to get where she needed to go and take care of getting her student visa while in Japan, all on her own. My little girl is growing up. <sniff!>

The last of the news is that I turned 51 this past week. It was great to see all the happy birthday messages on facebook, I got flowers from my wonderful husband, and my son made me dinner. Yum! And I really don't feel 51, so I'm just going to enjoy the other parts of the birthday and not think about the number.

Well, I'd better finish this up so I can post it before all the news is old again. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Shelley in CT

Slow and Sweaty Wins the Race....

......or at least gets me through the summer. One of my morning runs this week was at 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) and 81% humidity. It certainly could have been worse, but it definitely was not my speediest run. Thank goodness the weather changed and this morning the temp and humidity were at much more reasonable levels. I'd love to say that it improved my time tremendously.  Oh well. 'Nuff said.

On the bright side, I haven't had any real problems lately with my hamstring. I'm trying to pick up the mileage and have been making very slow progress. I've increased mileage up to 7-mile runs, then backslid, then increased distance again, then backslid. It's been little things, like banged up toes or travel (several days at altitude in Denver, CO for a family function put me out for a week! Apparently my body doesn't handle altitude very well). I'm also still having trouble with motivation. I know I will stay in better shape if I can run at least 3 times a week, but that is easier said than done. I'm back up to 5 miles for distance and hopefully I'll keep moving in the right direction for the rest of the summer.

I'm still thinking about running a marathon sometime in the next year or so. I had talked to my older son back in June about running the Portland Marathon this coming October, but after much consideration and hemming and hawing, decided that it just didn't give me enough time, given the general age and condition of my poor legs, to adequately prepare without injury. I'm thinking October 2016.

On the knitting front, I haven't really gotten anywhere. I finally finished up my daughter's socks. When I had woven in all the ends and laid them side by side to admire them, I discovered that the sock tops don't match, size-wise. With the same needles and same stitch count, the second sock came out narrower and shorter. I must have been really stressed knitting the top of that second sock to have tightened up my stitches that much. Sheesh! I thought about trying to stretch it out to match the first sock, but realistically, that won't work. I really don't want to reknit the whole second sock though. I've already had to pull out part of the foot and reknit so the second sock would match the first. (Seems I couldn't read my own notes on what I did on the first sock.) So, rather than reknit the entire sock, I think I'll reknit just the top and kitchener the new top to the original foot, which is the correct size. And I'll think really relaxing thoughts as I knit. Whenever I get around to knitting again.

Which brings me to my next tale of woe. My tennis elbow, which has been plaguing me for over a year now, is STILL not better. After a third round of physical therapy, I've been sent back to the orthopedist to see what he's got up his sleeve. I now have an MRI scheduled, which will hopefully tell us something helpful so I can finally get some relief. I am so frustrated with this injury. In some ways, it's not as bad as a foot or leg problem since it doesn't keep me from getting around. In other ways, though, it affects just about everything I do every day.

As I have been so neglectful of the blog this year, I thought I'd offer a brief recap of my spring.

In March, hubby and I took a trip to New Orleans. I'd never been there and we thought it would be fun. We stayed at one edge of the French Quarter and could walk just about anywhere we wanted to go. The weather in early March was changeable, and we got some rain and storms, but we got some beautiful sunny days too. We took walks every day - there was a great path along the river, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. One morning the fog was so thick we couldn't actually see the water from the riverside path we were on, all of 10 feet away.

We walked down Bourbon Street:

 We took a cooking class at the cooking school next door. This is cajun style jambalaya (on the right) and gumbo (in the bowl). It was a very fun afternoon; we did all the cooking ourselves, with help and advice from the teacher, and the dinner we had at the end of it was delicious! The gumbo we ate was not the gumbo we made that day. According to our teacher, gumbo needs to sit overnight so all the flavors will combine and soak into the meat. So we ate gumbo that had been made a day earlier, and our gumbo was put into a big gallon ziplock bag and frozen solid. They assured us that there would be no problem taking the frozen gumbo home on the plane. We were skeptical, but really, what did we have to lose? Wouldn't you know, I carried it on with me in a grocery bag and it made it through the security x-ray machine, and stayed frozen solid all the way home.

The other high point of our New Orleans trip was getting to see NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" live. Yes, I know it's a radio show, so what is there really to see, but it was a lot of fun to be there for the taping. It was pure serendipity that the show was traveling to New Orleans the very week that we had planned our vacation there. And the theatre was only a few blocks up the street from our hotel! The Saenger theater in New Orleans was historic and absolutely gorgeous. The show was hilarious. I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt! It took over 2 hours to tape the 45-minute radio show, so we got to be there for the bloopers, the digressions, and a lot of extras from Paula Poundstone.

After New Orleans, we had kids come home for spring break. Youngest son was home for a week and briefly overlapped with the girls, our daughter and our host-daughter from Japan, who flew out to visit before her school year started. I took advantage of having girls here and we took the train down to NYC and saw a Broadway show!

girls in Grand Central Station

three girls taking in a show

tired out, going home on the train

After we took our host-daughter to the airport to fly home, and our daughter back to school to finish up her school year, Beatrice the cat passed away. She had been failing and we knew the end was coming. I'm really glad both girls got to spend time with her.

Sadly, Beatrice passed away in the night just after taking our daughter back to school. The cat is very important to her, so I drove up to Wellesley that day, brought her home so we could bury Beatrice, then drove her back up to school so she wouldn't miss any classes.

we buried her in the back yard

We fit in a family wedding in Philadelphia in June, followed by a wedding celebration (yes, for the same wedding) in Denver in July. Daughter is in Japan for a summer internship and younger son is home working. That's everything in a nutshell. I'm hoping for more positive things to say about my arm progress in the next blog post, which will in turn increase my knitting output and my sanity level. Stay cool!

Shelley in CT

Couch to 5K (in one day)!

Ok, I'm not really a candidate for the 'couch to 5K' programs. While I haven't been running regularly for a long time, at least 9 months, I'm not a rank beginner, and I've been dancing, walking, doing Pilates, and getting in an occasional run just so I don't feel like a complete slug. I hadn't been running because of a strained hamstring. It seemed every time I was starting to feel a little better, I'd push too hard in exercise class, or take a long drive and it would start bothering me again. HOWEVER, I think I've finally moved past it. The pivotal event was a long day of much driving. 8 hours in the car, all told, and not a twinge! Huzzah! So it was time to get back into shape. Of course, every morning that I had time to fit in a run, it rained or snowed. Last week though I finally got out. Twice! Roads are clear, nights are mostly above freezing, and there are only little bits of snow left in shady corners. Did I start out short and easy? Define short. Define easy. I started at 3 miles. I figure I have enough muscle memory to keep me going for 3 miles. I hadn't run since early February, and I hadn't been running regularly then either. I didn't have to stop and walk, and I even felt OK. I was REALLY SLOW! But I can live with that. So 2 runs last week. Four miles this morning. No snow or ice to worry about (I would hope not, after all, it's April). Maybe I'll find my stride again soon and move up to a sub-10-minute mile.

socks for dear daughter

On the knitting front, very little has been happening. I know I've written about my tennis elbow. I was in physical therapy in the fall and it was really a lot better. Then I volunteered to work backstage at my dance studio's production of the Nutcracker. Have you ever heard the phrase, "No good deed goes unpunished?" Seems the backstage work was a little harder on the arms than anticipated. That moved straight into having kids home for the holidays and all the cleaning and cooking that entailed. Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to have them all home, and it's much more satisfying to cook for a crowd than just for one or two or us, and I even got company and sometimes help in the kitchen. But it all took its toll, along with shoveling snow and clearing ice dams on the roof this winter. The pain has waxed and waned, and I've done little bits of knitting when I was feeling OK. The most progress I've made in knitting has been socks for my daughter.  I knitted on our vacation to New Orleans in March. Airplanes are great for knitting, and there was no stress on the unhappy arms while we were on vacation. Love those vacations---no cooking or cleaning!  Lately, though, both my arms have been a lot worse, so my knitting is currently not happening. I still go to knitting group, and chat and eat, and knit a little bit, and chat some more. Really, we mostly go to knitting group to chat. I'm going back to physical therapy next week and am hoping to finally get back to normal. Seems everything on my list of things I want to do involves heavy arm use.

  With all the knitting projects on the back burner, I needed a creative outlet. One was painting the kids bathroom. I find painting a room to be very satisfying because the change can be so drastic and the end result always looks clean and new and fresh. I've never been fond of the prep work involved, but it was all worth it. Our hall bathroom now looks like a lovely spa bathroom. Yay! It also helped that all the kids were out of the house and I could leave the mess when I was done painting for the day. The only thing I had to worry about was the cat peeing on my dropcloths. I was working with a deadline: I wanted to finish up before the kids got home for spring break. There are really only a few little touch-ups left, along with sanding and finishing the doors. I'll try not to let another 2 years go by before I manage to finish that up.

I've been doing more sewing lately too, also, I think, to satisfy the need to create. I made another version of"the perfect t-shirt" that I wrote about in the last post. I'm getting much closer to a really great t-shirt, and will talk more about that progress in my next post. Time to wrap up.

Shelley in CT

Snow.....and more snow!!!

OK, the first snow was pretty. But several snows into the new year, I'm tired of it, and the shoveling. And the cold. And the icy roads.

snow is higher than the snow blower mouth

Opened the garage door....

My wonderful Dear Husband snow blowing the driveway

Good thing we don't have to drive this car until everything thaws!

OK, I'm done.

The kids in town have certainly enjoyed their snow days, but let me tell you, when I'm trying to get back into harness with my running, the snow really messes things up! I find that I have to really pay attention to the weather forecast so that I can get out when the roads are clear. I did manage to get out last Sunday, wearing many layers in order to survive the cold.

It was well below freezing (but the roads weren't icy!) so I went with 2 pairs of wool socks, wicking tights and heavy polartec tights, and three layers on top. I have to say that all of these wicking fabrics are really helpful in cold weather. I wasn't cold at all. I will pass along my other trick for cold weather running: I always tuck the first shirt layer into my pants. It helps hold in the warm air and keeps drafts from wafting up inside my clothes as I run. I wasn't cold at all. Wish all of those layers had helped me run faster. Guess I'll have to take what I can get!

Since the Sunday run we've had a couple more days of snow and roads are slowly clearing again. Hopefully I can get in another good run before the next snowstorm, which, by the way, is predicted for Sunday.

Meanwhile I've been getting caught up on the laundry and housework. Today I even (finally) got the the sewing I've been wanting to do for ages. I have a T-shirt pattern I've been wanting to try, and fabric sitting with it. I decided that I could try out the pattern by making myself a pajama top in some lavender cotton waffle knit that's been sitting around the sewing room for years. Long enough that I can't remember what I bought it for in the first place. I figure that if it doesn't fit as well as I'd like, it's just a pajama top so it really only needs to be comfortable. I'm using a pattern from Pamela's Patterns called The Perfect T-shirt.

The pattern is very generously sized. According to my measurements I cut out the medium, but had to take in the shoulders and then take in the sides as well. I should have cut out the small and shortened the armscythe.  I'll try that next time. I used the same fabric for the neckband and cuffs since I don't have any coordinating or matching ribbing. I think the neck opening is a little wide for me as well. I'm not sure whether that's because this fabric is so loose and stretchy or if I would do better narrowing the neck opening for the next iteration of this pattern. I like the drape of the body, so it's worth tweaking until I get a fit I like. I left the bottom of the body circumference at the medium size, since I'll be using this shirt as a pajama top and I like the extra width for wearing with slim pajama pants or leggings. There is also a front option with darts, which I will definitely try out.

Not much else going on here. Just waiting for the next snowstorm. Sigh.

Shelley in CT

Happy 2015!!!

Happy 2015!  Wishing peace and happiness to all. 

I have enjoyed my Hanukkah-Christmas-New Year holiday with the family this year. The kids trickled in over a period of several weeks, but we managed to get all 3 (and a girlfriend!) here with us for almost a week. My husband kept a roaring fire going most days, and we played games, ate more than was good for us, and were generally lazy.

There is one more FO to share. I sent it off to my sister-in-law earlier in December for her birthday. 

It's a Multnomah shawlette, which I have knit before. I really like the pattern, and this yarn was just perfect. The yarn is hand-dyed by Ellyn Cooper, and the yarn has silver spun into it! And my sister-in-law seemed to like it, which makes it a success no matter what. I did most of the knitting in September and October, before the tennis-elbow-induced break from knitting. Sadly, I'm back to limited knitting, and probably should be doing none at all. 

At the beginning of December, my arm was declared good, on it's way to normal, and done with physical therapy. I then very cleverly managed to volunteer to work backstage at my dance studio's production of The Nutcracker, forgetting how physical that work could be. I tried valiantly to not strain my forearms, but by the end of the show I was in pain again from tennis elbow. Apparently no good deed goes unpunished.  Between the backstage work, and the cleaning and cooking for all the kids, I've made backwards progress in my recovery, and have gone back to my stretches and icing my arms (both of them this time) and avoidance of certain housework tasks in an effort to not end up back at the physical therapist's office. Once all the kids leave, it should be easier to rest my arms until the pain goes away again. Sadly, that also means no knitting. Watching a movie or tv show with tea and knitting is one of my favorite lazy winter vacation activities. And the fifth season of Downton Abbey starts this Sunday. Guess I'll watch it with my tea and ice packs. Sigh.

I'm going to make this a short post so I can put it up before the new year is old already. Wishing you and yours a wonderful new year full of fun and creativity.

Shelley in CT