EAT-- What I Learned Last Night

I am in a Bunco group.  This means that once a year it is my turn to host Bunco at my house.  Last night was that night.  This includes serving dinner for 12 people before the game. This year I decided to make it easy on myself and got pizzas from Papa Murphy's. I did my nutrition research beforehand, and decided to get one of the pizzas with their light crust, and I planned my portion along with my points. But here is what I learned: if I am faced with unlimited amounts of pizza, I will eat unlimited amounts of pizza! I had my 2 slices that I had portioned out, then a third slice of that one, and 2 more slices of the super cheesy fatty thick crust kind! The 2 pounds I had lost earlier in the week were right back on the scale when I weighed this morning, no surprise there. I think the lesson I can take from this is, pizza is my heroin, and I am rendered helpless in it's presence.  I need to just stay away from it when I can.

I Never Saw It Coming

I have a cell phone.  It is not a smart phone. I like to call it my dumb phone. It does what I want it to do.  I can call and text, take pictures, and be reminded to take out the trash and clean the cat box.   I figure if I need the internet there is always one of my friends around with a smart phone to look up whatever I need. That has always been enough for me. Until lately. Allow me to make my case for a smart phone:

EAT:  There are some really great apps from Weight Watchers that would make tracking what I eat much easier. In addition to the restaurant points guides, there is a really cool app that allows you to scan the barcode of most foods and will calculate the point value for you right there in the aisle of Walmart! These apps would allow me to be make better choices if I am on the go and have nothing planned.

KNIT:  Again with the cool apps. Tools to make the knitter's life easier abound! Not to mention, if I had a camera phone that I could beam pictures right to Ravelry with, I might be better at posting my projects on there.

BIKE: So I was on my first bike ride on Saturday with Andrea, and we were going over the rules of the road and talking about bike accessories. She mentioned how long we had been riding and how far we went.  I asked her if she had a cyclometer on her handlebars and she said no, she has an app that uses GPS to track her rides.  I said, so essentially, space is your cyclometer, and she said yes. Well,that was the last straw. I want a smart phone now!

I am sure I am not convincing any of you, as you have most likely already drank the smartphone kool-aid. So I guess the question is this.  Do I really need an iPhone, or will something else do as well?

BIKE-- Three Days In

Well, it has been three days since I got my bike.  I have ridden every day!  Granted, the rides have only been 8-10 minutes long, but hey, you have to start somewhere! I figure if I keep riding regularly, it will eventually get easier.  I hope that is true.  I was looking at a bike rack for the RAV 4, but because it doesn't have a trailer hitch I would have to get one that attaches to the spare tire mount. Those cost around $200, so it looks like if I take my bike anywhere it will be in the back of my rig for now.

I also have been thinking about what her name should be. I was going to name her Pearl because that is what I was going to name Leo but got thwarted when he came out a boy. But Pearl doesn't seem right for her.  Then I wanted to name her Betty, but it turns out that Electra already has a bike style called Betty. And frankly, it has a lot more personality than my bike, and that personality costs about $200 more, so I will be happy with my Vanilla Townie.  So because her color is vanilla, I was going to name her Millie.  Millie Vanilla, get it? But that is too dumb even for me.  So the search for a suitable name continues. I am open to any and all suggestions.

So while my bike isn't that cool looking, my helmet is another story.  As soon as I saw it I knew it was the one for me.  The checkerboard pattern reminds me of ska and I want to get a sticker of the English Beat girl  or the 2 Tone guy for the side of it. Also, the shape of the helmet reminds me of the video for "Take On Me" by a-ha. Every time I put it on I hear the song in my head! (I hope that gets old after a while and stops.)
So, if you are on the lower south hill and see a fat old woman with a cool helmet riding a bike and grinning, stop and say hi!

EAT-- What I Take

Here is another post from the WW blog, this one from 4/12/12:


This post is about nutritional supplements, which is just a fancy way to say vitamins! I am taking quite a few these days, most of them on the advice of doctors for various reasons. I take six pills and two gummy vitamins every day. Every morning when I take my pills I am reminded of when I was a teenager and my mom would take her vitamins. She didn't take a multi-vitamin, she had one bottle of every letter--A,B,C,E, etc. She was ahead of her time, since this was the 70's and the idea of taking all those pills was a foreign concept to most everyone. She kept all of her pill bottles in a wicker basket that she kept on the kitchen counter. Looking back, I do think they helped contribute to her good health.
So anyway, the wicker basket that used to hold my mom's vitamins now sits on MY kitchen counter, full of the supplements that I take! I love that I get to carry on the tradition, Mom would get a kick out of it! So here is what I take: Iron, Vitamin C, Red Yeast Rice, Flaxseed Oil, Calcium/Vitamin D, blood pressure meds, and Chewable gummy multis.
--Iron. About 9 months ago it was discovered that I was severely anemic. Probably has to do with the giant periods I had been having. My ferretin level was 8, the bottom of the normal range is 16. Today my level is 26, hooray! I no longer want to take a nap at my desk in the afternoon, that is a good thing!
--Vitamin C. Was told to take it with the iron because it helps the body absorb iron better. Of course there are other benefits too. I can tell you that during this winter cold season, I never got the bugs and viruses that were going around the office.
--Red Yeast Rice. My doctor told me to take this to help lower my cholesterol. I had never heard of it, but I went to the store and there it was! I am hoping that between my new way of eating and taking this, that my cholesterol numbers will be low enough that I won't have to go on medication.
--Flaxseed Oil. I take this to lower my cholesterol as well. I know that Fish Oil is more effective, but I do not like the fish burps, yes I have tried the good ones that say there are no fish burps, I still get them.
--Vitamin D/Calcium. I told my doctor I get really mopey in the dark of the winter and I don't want to clean my house. I asked her if there was a pill I could take that would make me want to do my dishes, and she told me Vitamin D! And that I should take it year round, since evidently we do not get enough light up here in the Northwest. It sort of works, I do my dishes more often and sit around less, although it is getting to be spring and that happens anyway.
--Gummy Multivitamins for Adults. I like the chewables because I just don't want to swallow another pill. They are not really sweet like a gummy bear, they taste more like a Sunkist fruit snack, kind of mild. And I think that because it is a chewable, that the vitamins get into your system faster. I take them before work, and by the time I get to work the B vitamins have kicked in and I'm all "WOOOOOOO! LET"S WORK!!!" My co-workers think I am crazy, I think I am healthy! I also take a prescription blood pressure medication. Hypertension runs in my family, but I hope that as I lose weight, I can lower the dose. And while I typed this, I took my pills! Have a great day!!


I still need to take pictures of my bike and talk about that, but this week is very busy for me.  I have Bunco at my house this Thursday and have a LOT still to do.

EAT--The Backstory

Here is the first post I made on the Weight Watchers blog, originally posted on 3/11/12.


"You all know how most of this story goes, so I will skip the part about how I have been overweight most of my adult life due to laziness and poor food choices. Let's skip to my last doctor's visit.

So a month or so ago, I went to the doctor for my annual physical. I worried as I fasted the night before that my blood sugar would be high and that I would get the news that I am now a diabetic, so welcome to Hell. So I was relieved when the bloodwork revealed that it was not diabetes that was going to kill me. Relief lasted about 5 seconds because I found out that what is really going to kill me is a heart attack. Maybe a stroke. Either way, it's not very pretty. My doctor had to double my blood pressure medication, and informed me I had 2 months to lower my cholesterol or she would put me on a statin drug.

I have felt hopeless about my health and my weight for quite some time. I felt powerless to do anything about it (see laziness above) and felt like at age 50 it was really too late for me to change. The good news is that my doctor told me it was NOT too late to change! She suggested Weight Watchers, which I took as a sign because I had already been to their website and had looked up the nearest meeting to me. So three weeks ago, I went.

Now, I had done WW before, about 15 years ago. They did have the points system back then, but it was different. This new program is a much better fit for me. I love the flexibility of the extra 49 points per week. If I overeat a little, I just count the points and eliminate the guilt that always led me to abandoning the program. Also, the e-tools make it so easy to track what I eat, no more writing and adding! In three weeks I have lost 9.4 pounds. This has resulted in a feeling that I had not had in many years, the feeling of hope. The feeling that maybe it's not too late to turn my health and my life around. The feeling that maybe my fifties are going to be awesome!

I am looking forward to my bloodwork in several weeks. Maybe it won't be the best, maybe I will still have to go on drugs. But today I have hope that things will change."


So there is the backstory.  Since this post I have lost another 10.6 pounds for a total of 20 exactly. This story is ongoing!

Out Of The Ashes

I have been having this huge urge to blog again. That is because whenever my life is undergoing major changes, I find I have a lot to say. I decided that I needed a blog that reflects what is going on now. So I took my knitting blog, Knitmare on Elm Street, and changed the name. This kind of makes me sad because I think Knitmare on Elm Street was the best blog name ever, seeing as how I knit AND live on Elm Street! But these things happen. Allow me to explain the change.

EAT-- About 2 1/2 months ago, I joined Weight Watchers. Even though I go to meetings, I use their website's tools to track what I am eating. On their website they have a community which includes a place to blog. I have put several posts up, but it seems silly to use their blogs when I have several blogs of my own just sitting here getting dusty. I will be reprinting some of those posts here, as well as talking about my weight loss (20 pounds so far) and what I eat.

KNIT-- As everyone and their uncle knows, I am a knitter. I made a promise to myself that I would be better at documenting what I knit. So there's that.

BIKE-- I made a list a while back of things I wanted to do when I lost weight. Number two on that list was Ride a Bike. I thought about it and decided not to wait. After weeks of research and coveting, I bought a bike yesterday! This blog will chronicle the process of me becoming a genuine bike rider. Because I am not that now.

And of course there will be posts about nothing as well. So I hope to have some readers eventually and would love it if I were an inspiration to somebody someday!

Yarn Barf

I don't know what has come over me, I just felt this overwhelming urge to post on this blog that has been neglected for so long. Here is the beauty of me: I am always changing my mind. I started this blog, half-heartedly posted to it for a minute, and then flitted off to Ravelry, which is a fantastic resource and social network. But here is the thing: I am a non-conformist. Therefore, I don't feel compelled to put every project I knit on Ravelry, frankly I think it's a pain in the ass. Even though really it's not, it's fairly easy, I just find the whole process overwhelming. What size needles did I use, I don't freakin' know! BUT, I still feel like throwing up a pic or two of my knitting, and also tell the story of what went into it, like a lot of whining, or bragging or whatever. And I also want to say that everyone besides me should keep putting their stuff up on Ravelry because I steal your ideas regularly.

So... I have been knitting almost daily for almost 4 years. This has resulted in a bit of stuff. I will start with the stuff I took pictures of when I finished it, and I have on my hard drive, that way I don't have to get up off my ass and actually photograph something. Let's see...



This is one of a pair of socks I did last year I think. I got the ruffle pattern out of a book called 101 Designer One Skein Wonders, the yarn is Socks That Rock in the colorway called Peek a Boo Peony. I happen to think these are the cutest socks ever. The ruffle looks super cute peeking out of the leg of my jeans. End of story.



Oh, I made this shawl last year too. It is my first shawl, my first project in which I tackled the dreaded yarn over. Now, yarn overs are easy but when you drop a stitch and there is a yarn over involved it results in swearing and having to unknit for a week trying to get back to where you screwed it up. Because it has to be perfect because it has been entered into the fair. Which it won a blue ribbon at. If there had been a blue ribbon for swearing I would have won that too.



These are 2 different socks. The one on the right is in Mountain Colors I think the colorway is Portland something. The one on the left still needs its mate to be knit. I knit it as a test to see if I could do a more complicated pattern because I had signed up for Sock Wars and needed to know how to knit something more that stockinette. One of these days I will make the other one. I fact, now that I think about it, I may whip up the other one and enter them into the fair!


These are just plain socks but the yarn has a story behind it. Last spring over at Gonzaga there was a weaving thing going on. There was a small marketplace there and I fell in love with this yarn from Newton's Yarn Country. It was a big skein, I made socks and the shawl above from it. It was $52.00! So I was hugging the yarn and telling it that I was sorry but I could not take it home with me because it cost too much. Then one of my friends pointed out a sign that said 50% off. Sold! We all called it the baby yarn because I was hugging it like it was a baby. The label said it was superwash but the socks still got really pill-y and I think there is a hole in the toe, so they have been well worn and well loved.



Oh and then I made these mittens out of Plymouth Encore I think. Here is where I learned how to do a Make 1 increase. It wasn't very hard but that didn't stop me from whining about it.

So there you go. I posted. Hopefully it won't be another year before I post again. As soon as I take some more pictures we can talk about the baby knitting I have been doing, and also the great fingerless glove debacle. See ya.