Merry Christmas!

Yet another belated Merry Christmas!

December is always busy for me at work. Then, when I finally get to the holidays I'm too tired to even get a post together, but - finally - here I am.

We had a lovely Christmas. I thought all the gifts went down well, and I got some lovely things.

I've been catching up with some knitting:

A Gaptastic cowl for me in Twilley's Freedom Wool.

And one for J's girlfriend, J, in Merino, Alpaca and silk.

 Here I am wearing mine. It's very warm.

 I finally found a sweater that was a good match for the King Cole baby alpaca I bought on impulse in the summer. I have started three different sweaters/cardigans with this and not felt the love. This is Margot, and I really like it. I wondered if it might be a little short, but it's intended for wearing with skirts and to come just below the waist. So it works well.

I started a scarf for me. It's Hitchhiker and I'm making it in Sanguine Gryphon Bugga. The colour is a lovely mix of coppers, blues, greys and greens. It feels wonderful.

I have also picked up work on my long-languishing Fiddlehead Mittens. More of them to come later.

Oh me, of little faith!

Oh boy - I was a bit nervous about this yarn! I had three smallish pieces of roving with some blueish tones and some orangish tones in each. Not enough to do anything by themselves, really. I like to knit larger projects best of all.

So, I fractal spun them together onto two jumbo bobbins and then plied the bobbins together.

The result:

To be honest, I didn't think it would work, but I like these rather a lot! I'm going to call this North Gare.

Aftermath

We had quite a storm last night. The wind came from the west and was so strong, gusting onto the back of the house, that we wre very glad we'd taken down the eucalyptus tree in the garden this summer.

Our morning walk took us along the beach at Seaton Carew, this morning. The wind was still quite wild, blowing onto the sea.

The sand war eroded so far back by the storm that this section of rocks was exposed. We don't see these wooden piers very often.

These mature and barnacle-encrusted mussels were ripped from their mussel beds and devoured by herring gulls.


On the way home we stopped off at North Gare. It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Today it was festooned with plastic that escaped from the nearby landfill site.

This is where it came from:

It doesn't normally feature in my pictures of the area, but today it does in an attempt to shame the owners/authorities.

Bizarrely, we were reminded of the prayer flags and rubbish that are on Everest.

Reconnaissance

J and I went on a recce to Gibside, where I am planning a residential visit, this morning. The fog was thick and really unpleasant on the A1. It's unnerving how many idiots continue to drive around with no lights on. It's always idiots in silver/grey cars too. Impossible to see until you are almost on top of them.

Anyway. We got there safely and emerged from the gloom into a crisp, bright November morning, to be shown around by Melanie, who could not have been more helpful.

After we'd sussed everything out, we went for a wander. The grounds are lovely.

Back home again, this afternoon, I took the opportunity to do a bit of spinning. What with one thing and another, I haven't done any for ages.

I'm spinning three lots of top together to add to my collection of blue/brown/ginger yarns. Eventually I will have enough for the project I have in mind.

Hedonism

J and I went to The Sage at Gateshead last night to see Bellowhead.

Wonderful show! I love their sound.

Unfortunately, because we dithered about booking we left it so late that there were only seats left on the third level.

Eeek!

Another challenge to the heights/edges 'thing'.

Moving on

 I've been thinking a lot about the weight loss 'journey'. Ugghh. Sounds like I'm auditioning for the X factor! Nevermind. I can't think of a better way of expressing the process at the moment.

Anyway, I've finally realised that I'm ok. Honestly.

I actually feel like I'm moving into a new phase.
I'm not stressing about losing more weight, I'm not worrying about putting it back on. Over the past six months, my weight has hovered around the same mark. I may put a little on if I eat more carbs than are good for me and neglect my protein, but it comes straight back off when I work the programme.

Sometimes my 'fat head' rears up, but most of the time, I'm ok.

It's time to move on.

I'm leaving my surgery support groups, except the one on Ravelry, which has people at the same stage as me and seems healthy. While we have knitting, we're not all obsessing about the surgery and targets and outcomes. I need to be away from that.

I've stopped weighing myself so often. It's how I feel and how my clothes fit that guides me at the moment.

I'm also discontinuing my ticker/tracker. This is it. It marked my progress for a long time. ITo be honest, I stopped filling it in ages ago and I'm not even stressed that it doesn't show the last 3lbs I lost! For a mad moment I debated adding (subtracting?) the final amount before I deleted it, but sanity won out.
I don't think I need it any more, but I'm posting it, and the stats that sit behind it, here for posterity ;) It's not that I need to hang on to them, but just that they were important to me and it's ok to acknowledge that. It's like putting them in a memory box or time capsule, which I guess is what this blog is.

1	05/26/2011	143.0
2	05/18/2011	145.0
3	05/13/2011	146.0
4	05/06/2011	150.0
5	04/08/2011	152.0
6	03/25/2011	153.0
7	03/12/2011	154.0
8	03/03/2011	156.0
9	02/10/2011	157.0
10	02/03/2011	160.0
11	01/27/2011	162.0
12	01/20/2011	165.0
13	12/23/2010	172.0
14	12/17/2010	174.0
15	12/09/2010	175.0
16	12/02/2010	177.0
17	11/25/2010	178.0
18	11/17/2010	180.0
19	11/12/2010	182.0
20	11/05/2010	183.0
21	10/29/2010	184.0
22	10/14/2010	186.0
23	10/08/2010	189.0
24	10/01/2010	190.0
25	09/24/2010	191.0
26	09/17/2010	193.0
27	09/09/2010	195.0
28	09/03/2010	199.0
29	08/31/2010	200.0
30	08/27/2010	202.0
31	08/20/2010	205.0
32	08/13/2010	206.0
33	08/08/2010	208.0
34	07/22/2010	213.0
35	07/16/2010	216.0
36	07/09/2010	219.0
37	07/02/2010	221.0
38	06/25/2010	222.0
39	06/20/2010	224.0
40	06/18/2010	226.0
41	06/17/2010	227.0
42	06/11/2010	230.0
43	06/10/2010	231.0
44	06/04/2010	235.0
45	05/28/2010	236.0
46	05/14/2010	240.0
47	05/07/2010	243.0
48	05/05/2010	244.0
49	04/30/2010	246.0
50	04/23/2010	250.0
51	04/16/2010	253.0
52	04/09/2010	255.0
53	04/07/2010	256.0
54	03/28/2010	264.0
55	03/25/2010	265.0
56	03/23/2010	266.8
57	03/22/2010	269.8
58	02/18/2010	271.4
59	02/11/2010	273.4
60	02/06/2010	274.8
61	02/04/2010	275.8
62	01/27/2010	277.4
63	01/21/2010	280.0
64	01/16/2010	283.0
65	11/05/2009	279.0
66	10/17/2009	283.6
67	10/08/2009	284.2
68	09/26/2009	285.8
69	09/15/2009	286.4
70	09/11/2009	287.4
71	09/04/2009	290.2
72	08/30/2009	290.2
73	08/22/2009	292.4
74	08/15/2009	291.8
75	08/12/2009	294.0
76	08/03/2009	294.6
77	07/31/2009	295.6
78	07/25/2009	296.4
79	07/20/2009	297.2
80	07/11/2009	297.4
81	07/05/2009	299.0
82	07/04/2009	300.0
83	06/27/2009	300.8
84	06/26/2009	301.2
85	06/24/2009	303.0
86	06/20/2009	305.0
87	01/01/2009	325.0