I am partaking in a yoga swap. Yesterday I received my gift from my wonderful swap partner. She definitely took a lot of time and put a lot of thought into putting my package together. For only having written one another a few times she definitely hit the nail on my interests. (Now see, this proves that I am not as hard to shop for as the boy thinks!) 
Without further ado, a photo montage:
Thank you so very much for my wonderful gift. I hope to start using it all soon. Especially those socks the next time I go on a business trip! (Someday I will have to tell you all about me doing yoga poses at a wedding reception to try and stretch out cause my knee was bothering me…)
Continue reading “Yoga Swap”
Tags: Swap, Yoga, yogaswap08
My friend won a skein of handspun yarn at Sticks N Stitches 2007/2008. She doesn’t knit so she gave it to me. I decided (perhaps with some prompting from my mother) to find something to make for her with it. I searched around on Ravelry looking for something that would highlight the handspun nature of the yarn without overpowering it with a strong and busy pattern. Plus, I only had about 200 yds so I couldn’t do anything super large. A scarf seemed like a good idea and modifying the Clapotis to scarf size looked easy enough. I hope she will wear it in the winter all the time.
Cory’s been doing a lot of modeling lately. The scarf is a little big on him.
Description: Mama T’s Handspun Scarf
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert
Yarn used: 194 yds (177m) of Coridale Sheep spun by Judy of Five Points Llamas
Care Instructions: Handwash
Needle Size: US 6 (4.0 mm)
Modifications: I modified this to be a scarf so it’s a lot smaller.
Finished Size: 5″ x 64″ (13 cm x 162 cm)
Date Started: 8/23/2008
Date Completed: 8/28/2008
Notes: This worked out pretty well. I could have probably done another repeat but I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn. I had also already ripped it back once to add in another repeat so I decided to just go with it this time.
Full length view (folded in half)
Detail view
Tags: Knitting, Ravelry, Yarn
I know most folks don’t associate Hurricanes with inland states like Ohio and Indiana. The fact is they do come inland from time to time and they can be really damaging to regions where they aren’t often seen. Hurricane Ike did just that this weekend. It blew through Indiana dumping all sorts of rain on them that caused a lot of flooding. Then it headed into Ohio with 70mph+ winds. That’s strong enough to be a category 1 hurricane - pretty strong for something that has traveled all the way from Texas in a matter of days/hours. Anyone watching the Bengals play may have noticed how all the coaches pants were whipping sharply in the wind. It was windy.
We started off our Sunday in Pennsylvania after attending the last wedding of wedding season. Drove to visit the boy’s grandparents because his grandmother’s birthday was Monday. We had a wonderful visit and then headed home where we were greeted by strong winds and widespread power outages. Once home we started to survey the damage on our back lot. None of our trees were toppled but a few large branches from our neighbors’ backyard fell onto our property (not hitting anything hooray!) and they lost a rather large cherry tree. We were pretty lucky because our power came back on Sunday night (I think we are on the same power grid the local hospital is on) however not many were that lucky. My parents were out of power until Monday evening, it came back on and then went off again. There are at least 200,000 households in central Ohio alone right now that are out of power. Schools were canceled across the state Monday, across the region today and are starting to call off again tom’w. This could spell trouble if we have the hard winter everyone is predicting.
Part of the reason for the delay in restoring our power is because our crews were down in Texas helping out those folks. I am sure the power companies never dreamed the hurricane would make it this far inland and cause so much damage. They had to recall their employees and get them home as well as get aid from neighboring states. Right now they hope to have most households turned back on by Sunday evening.
I know this hasn’t made it to the national news because it seems so minor compared to the devastation in Texas. We are all rather lucky it’s mostly an inconvenience. It has been a bit scary with all of the downed power lines and large chunks of trees blown into the road as well as people who don’t know how to treat a traffic signal that is out. If you know anyone in the area, give them a call and make sure they are doing alright. We could use some cheering up and sympathy at this point as well as hot meals and showers.
Pictures from our yard and the neighbors yard
Tags: hurricane ike
We finally snagged one yesterday. We were on the other end of town returning the boy’s tux from Saturday’s wedding (his friends’ wedding) and I wandered into the Game Stop next door to ask if they had any because I do this every single time I pass a Game Stop, to no avail I might add. The boy wandered over and found me assumed I was wasting my time and wandered around the store. But there behind the cashiers was a Wii Fit box (in fact 2 or 3 of them) without the big black prices on them. So I squirmed in line until it was my turn and was like “do you have any?!?!” And then I bought one and handed it to the boy and said “Thanks for watching my brother while I was on vacation.” He was speechless.
When we got home some number of hours later we unpacked it and hooked it up. We are both 3 yrs older than our real ages and in the 22 BMI range. When it had me set my goal I put it at 6 lbs in 2 weeks. The Wii board gave me a lot of flack about that being too fast for weight loss. I rolled my eyes and was like well since you were able to determine I was a girl you were able to express interest in me burning fat faster than my male counterpart why can’t you see that I might have a very good reason for easily dropping 4lbs in a week? 
The games are a lot of fun though. I thoroughly enjoy watching the boy who has poor balance work his way through an exercise until he does well. It would be great to see him really build some strength in his ankles. I am hoping to find a way to use the yoga routines to fill in for my lacking yoga practice. They do the poses a little differently than I am accustomed to but it’ll be good to work the exercises differently. The only drawback we have is that our basement ceiling is lower than either of us realized. I guess we hadn’t spent much time stretching our arms over our heads while standing since we moved in.
We played again tonight and I must say the really upsetting thing about dating a gamer is whenever you rock a certain game they always come up behind you and knock you out of first place. 
I need to go spend more time on the hula hoop games. I mean I should clearly win based on form, he is all over the place when he hulas!
While we were in Niagara we went on the Maid of the Mist tour. It was my very first time (the boy had been before as a young’un with his parents or scouts) and I took numerous pictures. I am quite fond of this one and plan to print it up. I hope you love it as well.
