The Muses

I must have angered the writing muses by stating I would write consistently! Who would have guessed they could be so swift in their retaliation! And thus today is another day.

I am still logging in the hours on the Tour de France. I am continuing the journaling to keep track of eating habits and exercise. What I am finding is burning fat is hard work! Desire is key to results. Keeping it going is another matter. This Wednesday the desire is high. Desire drives the machine and fire burns the fuel. With the high level of desire I anticipate some effective fat burning. As we say here at THE FIRE fat burning personal training studios, I am a furnace of fat burning fire!

Day THREE

I want to whine. My biceps hurt. Straightening out the arm is close to impossible. I worked out with Kam yesterday evening. There is some crazed competitive person that emerges when I am doing anything athletic with her. I try so hard to impress knowing that there is no way I could ever out do her in any physical task. Thus, today I am paying for my eagerness. Now, I will not deny my own desire to reduce the amount of stored energy (read FAT) and increase the amount of potential force (read MUSCLE) in my body. However, this does not inspire me to get on the bike and do another 25 miles (my legs are sore today too). Perhaps some Tylenol would help.

OK enough of that! What about those sock pics? I have completed the Peppermint Candy Socks and started the baby ones. Oh, did I forget to mention they are "Mommy and Me" socks for a friend who is having a baby girl? Those pics will have to wait until the little ones are complete. I think they will be much better as a set.


These are Edelweiss Socks Socks from Vogue Knitting in sock it to me. They took a very long time to complete. The pattern is intricate and full of switches between knit, knit to the back, and purl. The V-patterning is beautiful though and I think they will be well received even though they are 4 months late for the birthday. What was I thinking? Knit a hard pattern at the same time that I am graduating from college and my father is ending his battle with cancer? I must have been out of my mind. (Glad it is back!! I need to complete spinning the yarn for Kam's new hoodie! Then complete all my other projects and clean the house and dispose of old clutter and apply to grad school and...)


These are my reward socks. After taking the 2 hour exam to become a personal trainer in Dallas last June I found a yarn shop and bought yarn for me. These are not complete yet. I have about an inch and a half of the second sock on the needles. The yarn is pure bliss to work with (I can't find a link for this one. It is Collette hand painted from Whales in Sahara.) and the pattern easy to memorize. (Again I do have a math mind that puts me in line for psycho-therapy but all is well, I have a degree in psychology!) I am sure that I will have these completed by the time the weather turns cold and my beach-girl feet can stand to have warm socks on them.

Wow! Two days in a row. I am really on a roll for writing this week. Well, yes, I do know that today is only Tuesday and it really is tempting the writer's muse to state my intentions for my writing so early in the week. But I feel like flying in the face of danger at the moment! And why not, I have pictures to share! I walked through the fires of downloading the camera hell and survived to tell the tale. My laptop did not come with one of the marvelous SD ports. My desktop, which has an SD port, refuses to connect to the internet; never mind that there is currently something wrong with the router this was way before the wireless trauma of late summer. I love my camera. It takes fabulous pictures. I have had it for over three years now. There is no telling where the USB cable is. I went to Best Buy yesterday to find a replacement cable. Seems likely that such a simple purchase would make my life easier. NO! The cable is too old or too funky or too something and they offered this cool substitute. I now have an external SD port which connects to my laptop or any other computer with a USB port. Unfortunately there is something within my laptop that says it does not want any new program data downloaded to it. Additionally I could not get any program to recognize the pictures! I gave up and watched a movie. I would recommend watching The Spiderwick Chronicles it was a fun lighthearted movie. Definitely changed my mood from the computer fuss. So how did I manage to get photos for today? A flash drive and the desktop computer with the magical SD port! I could have done that before but didn't. No excuses there just not interested in the upstairs-downstairs game.

This is the beautiful Celie. A bit out of focus though. Here she is relaxing and proving that she really is a girl!
These are the Victorian Lace Shawl I made and finally blocked! Lesson here is to have a large enough bed or free floor space for blocking. I had extra shawl over the edge of the queen size bed!
What are these pictures of yarn for? Well, the rust red is the Sweater Girl for Kam that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. The other is my hand spun mohair. I have started a scarf/stole using this yarn but am not sure which it will be until it is blocked, I am suspicious it will be growing in width!

More pictures next time! I have SOCKS to show off. Now how exciting is that pictures of socks and feet wearing socks! Try not to hyperventilate!

Fall Goals

Wow that was a busy week! Amazing how much energy it takes to assist someone in a healing process. Now here we all are on the first day of September looking at a new month and before the month is out we will be in a whole new season of the year.

The season change takes place in three weeks. What a great time to get going on fitness again. Three weeks from now is half way to reaching a fitness goal. Not a huge one that requires a year of training or a monumental one like burning 40 pounds of fat, but an average goal of reaching the next level. My current level of cardio is 20-25 miles daily on the exercise bike. I am planning to add 3 ~ 15-20 minute walks to my daily cardio. I know that seems like too much. Keep in mind that the biking is done in about 75 minutes. This burns about 600 calories! (Joy Bliss) Also, Celie has put on a little bit of fat. Celie is my beautiful little dog. She thinks she is helping me by walking and does not realize that it is really her that needs the extra exercise. For me this will burn about 300 extra calories in my day. I am only biking 6 days each week but poor Celie will need to walk every day. I found this calorie counter and calculated my expenditure while weight lifting. That is a whopping 366! Weight lifting is 5 days weekly.

I am a math type person. I need to see it all broken down. On my weight training days I will be burning about 1266 calories just in my workouts! So mathematically speaking I should be burning about 2 pounds of stored energy! (That is politically correct terminology for shedding 2 pounds of fat!!) I am interested in changing some of my stored energy (fat) for potential strength (muscle). The goal is to drop 3 percentage points in my fat in the next 6 weeks. Therefore, by the time the season changes I could be down 6 pounds of fat or 1.5 percentage points in my total body fat. (You may want to watch for the smoke of the burning fat coming from east Asheville!)Added bonus to the amazingly long cardio sessions on the exercise bike? I am almost finished with the peppermint candy socks. I think I will just get another basket (hehehe) and fill it with sock yarn to keep me busy while I bike across the French countryside. There are a few babies in my life and some new ones coming too so I have a use for all those bits of "leftovers" from my grownup projects. I got the new Interweave Knits magazine yesterday. I waited patiently, it came out on August 19th and I waited until the 31st!! Well that is not going to happen again! When I got there it was the only one left! I am either going to have to subscribe or I will have to get out as soon as it hits the newsstands! So I have all sorts of stuff going and want to get going and have added more to the list of want to do! Kam is in need of cool stuff. She is always in need of me making her cool stuff. But this issue has a great vest that I want to make her for the Holiday Gift Giving Season. I think she will look handsome in it and it will help her to stay warm as the weather changes to COLD.