Yarn Tree!
In the continuing insanity that is blogging, whereby your heroine is overcome by the urge to take photographs of her knitting in public places, I give you:
The farmer, tractor driver and a dozen sheep wondered what the hell I was up to. I’m planning to use this photograph to send to people I want to encourage to visit New Zealand and tell them that yes, laceweight really does grow on trees over here.
This is Touch Yarn and I don’t know what colorway or weight it is (I think it is laceweight) and I’ve been swatching for a scarf for a friend all week. And frogging. A lot.
I know that the colours are perfect for my friend and I know she would love a scarf but every stitch pattern I tried (and believe me I tried many!) just clashed with the variegated yarn and it looked like a pile of poo.
I keep rushing to my knitting books and obsessively reading them over and over again – the bit where they tell me that knitted lace always looks like noodle bricks until you block it. Because this thing is looking like a merino/mohair potscrubber and I’m awfully tempted to call it Kermit and start again.
On the other hand, having settled on plain old garter stitch to show off the colours and forget the lace patterns, it is nice mindless knitting on larger needles than my callously abandoned socks and it’s keeping my hands out of the biscuit tin in the evenings. On which note, it has come as somewhat of a shock to me that all those healthy living articles, medical professionals and my mother (dammit) are right. About just about everything (except the need to iron your sheets. That’s not right, that’s just nuts and my mother should get out more). Clearly I should call the newspapers: Bossy Woman Admits That Someone Else Might Just Be Right!
Since my appointment with the Cosmetic Inquisition last week I’ve been following her advice. Not because I agreed with her (although I didn’t actually disagree, it’s just kind of a habit to acknowledge and ignore advice, believing, as I do, that I already know everything) but because I’m a little bit scared of the woman and I’ve got another appointment with her next month and she ordered me to do a few things that cause me less grief than the thought of going back and admitting that I’ve not done as I was told.
She told me that my face was puffy and my skin was in terrible condition because I didn’t drink enough water. She asked me how much water I drank every day. It turns out that you can’t count 8 cups of coffee a day as drinking lots of water. Well, who knew? (She did, before I even told her) and I’ve been banned from alcohol. And my diet? 90% carbohydrate actually as I’ve kind of fallen off the healthy eating wagon since the houseguests/flood/work-went-crazy.
So for the past week I’ve been drinking 2 litres of water a day (it doesn’t half make you wee a lot, I now know the location of every public toilet for miles!) I have to carry around a big bottle with me and keep going till it’s all gone. I’m not allowed coffee until all the water is drunk. And no coffee after 5pm (apparently I’m not getting enough sleep. Gosh, could that insomnia have anything to do with the 8 big mugs of coffee you consume in a day? Do you think?)
And no carbohydrates except for vegetables. Real ones (onion rings don’t count, apparently). And no prepared or processed forms of the vegetables either (no cornflour, no white rice etcetera). And I have to eat two pieces of fruit every day. Two whole fruit.
She promised me my skin would stop looking like the stuff we scrape off the bottom of the bath, that the headaches (pretty constant) would improve and that I would sleep better. And because I am incredibly vain despite looking like a frazzled mother-of-three on a caffeine jag who hasn’t slept through the night for four years (Gosh, I wonder why that would be?) and because I have this fabulous holiday planned with a revoltingly glamorous friend and I don’t want to look like something the cat spat up, I obeyed.
And, bloody hell, I feel better. (Please duck to avoid flying pigs)
And I’ve lost five pounds.
I’m so impressed with the results after just one week that I’m maybe, just maybe, considering that perhaps some of the other propaganda might be true. Like that sit-ups give you a flatter stomach and that it really is possible to live without icecream. (Steady on)
Stay tuned. This week I’m going for a stroll. 9.4km in the hope that it is not inevitable that my bum will meet the backs of my knees.
