The Savannah Boot Liners are frankly giving me fits. I’m not even through the first repeat and I already have so many errors that I will have to frog it right back and start over.
Knitting with worsted on such small pins is ridiculous, and doing so with a complex cable pattern is entirely absurd. Every stitch is a struggle. I may go up a needle size or two when I start again. Or I may simply change to a finer yarn. I certainly don’t want to end up with a wrong-sized present.
I could have saved myself time by doing a full repeat of the pattern when I swatched.
And I do feel a bit time pressured with my needlework projects. My WIPs include the quilt, which should have been finished by now, the gray jacket and the Delish Cardigan for the FAll 2016 SWAP (I’ve completed just a third of the pieces for that), and just the first of the Christmas presents.
As for the partial SWAP, it makes up a nice capsule with pieces already in my wardrobe. I thought I’d be thinner by now and had planned to have the SWAP done by the equinox, but neither of those things happened.
I completed the 21 Day Fitness Challenge on the equinox, and have lost neither a pound nor an inch. I am in fact precisely the same size as when I began.
I did not succeed in giving up sweets or even in keeping them sequestered in the morning hours and doing without them in the afternoon and evening.
My husband is hanging around when and where I want to exercise first thing in the morning, and work is so busy that once I start working I often can’t bring myself to stop working and start moving… and when I manage it, I usually get phone calls. I realize that these things are excuses, or at least that they are obstacles which a resourceful person like me should be able to surmount. But I haven’t surmounted them.
I’m reading the new Whole 30 book, Food Freedom Forever. Author Melissa Hartwig says that we can’t expect to get over our cravings if we continue to feed them. She also says that we should reset when we get off track, and that resetting is not failure, but a normal part of the process of healthy eating. I intended the Fitness Challenge to be a reset, but that didn’t happen. Hartwig says, and supports her claims with scientific evidence, that a wimpy reset won’t work.
I’ve done the Whole 30 once and attempted it a second time. Perhaps I should try it again with stronger commitment. This would be a good time of year to do so, before the holidays make it twice as difficult.
Certainly, I must make the effort to exercise more. I have sore muscles today, I’m pleased to say, from yesterday’s weights. That’s a good start.
Because after all, if I don’t persevere with the boot liners Christmas will still arrive. And if I don’t persevere with my fitness efforts next year will still arrive.
If I persevere, I might be fitter next year and have a pair of boot liners to put under the tree come Christmas.