Body Maintenance

Anyone within the sound of my voice, or on the other end of my e-mail SEND button, has heard me complain about body maintenance. Grrgh.

If I am awake and not at work, or not sitting and playing with string while ignoring household chores, then you can bet I'm involved with some sort of body maintenance. Now I'm not vain nor do I have the body of Cindy Crawford. But I'm short and I like candy. Oh, and I'm not getting any younger.

How is this related to knitting? Well while I'm out slogging around (and around and around) my cul-de-sac, I can listen to various podcasts to relieve the boredom of the exercise. If I can't knit, at least I can listen to someone talk about it and maybe even review books on the subject.

I've been particularly enjoying lately those by Kelly Petkun at KnitPicks. I'm not always up-to-date in my listening, so the one I just heard was Episode 14 where Kelly discusses various ways to keep track of your knitting such as stitch markers, magnetic boards and rulers, and such helps.

I like to use a little of all that combined with my "Patented Hatch Mark System" and my handy Excel spreadsheets.

The Cranberry shawl is closer to being finished. In fact I've done all the repeats listed for the Sand Dollar Shawl design but still had some Black Cherry yarn left so I'm adding additional repeats in order to make this more of a shawl instead of a scarf and use up all the yarn possible. It was easy enough to open my Excel spreadsheet back up and chart some more numbers. Then it's a simple matter of crossing off each line as I knit it. That way if I leave it for a few days, I'll know right where to resume.

I've also just started listening to British knitter/podcaster at Lixie Knits It so I get the bonus of her accent as well as knitting related chatter. Now if only the Yarn Harlot or Mason-Dixon Knitting would start podcasting!

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"It takes six months to get into shape and two weeks to get out of shape. Once you know this you can stop being angry about other things in life and only be angry about this."

Rita Rudner, Naked Beneath My Clothes, 1992