One lap down, 199 to go

My 500 started a little before 9 this morning, and I walked 2.5 miles in about 50 minutes. I stretched after a little warm-up and afterward, and I'm feeling really good, except for a little sunburn, but that has to do with yesterday, not the walking.

So there are a couple new links in the sidebar. One is to Timeanddate.com, which is a fabulously geeky calculation website. It's a countdown to next year's 500. The other is to my google spreadsheet where I'm planning on tracking my mileage.

As to how I'm tracking mileage - here's my two major tools: Gmaps Pedometer and a fairly standard $5 pedometer. I haven't gotten the little digital pedometer quite calibrated, but it's less egregiously undercounting than it was two weeks ago, so I'm feeling better about using it. And truly, I'd prefer it undercount than overcount. The Gmaps tool will be used for pretty much everywhere I walk or hope to walk more than once. I've already measured 1.6 and 2.5 mile routes in my neighborhood, and the block around work is .5 mile.

I hope to check-in here every week or so, and let y'all know about any cool/fun walks I run across. This Saturday I'll be taking a couple laps around the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. See, fiber hobbies don't have to be sedentary!

I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)

So this has been May, and while I've had some time to relax and not work and to think about life and goals and stuff. And to clean my house some. And meanwhile I've spent major parts of three weekends now at the racetrack. I live in Indianapolis, and a love I've learned from my husband is the race-fan love. IndyCar racing is pretty cool, and the Indy 500 is amazing. He's been watching and listening to races his whole life, and the way he gently turned me on to the sport and the event is a testament to how well he knows me.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up and walk 2.5 miles in my neighborhood. Two and a half miles is the length of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. This will be the first lap in my own Indy 500. I got back tonight from attending my fifth 500. And I have a goal to walk or run 500 miles before the next one.

I have more to say, but I'm going to leave that on the table tonight. Tomorrow will be time for details, and tracking, and all that. Tonight I'm gonna be the girl who will walk 500 miles.

Piles

Here's a pile of socks.



March's Rockin' Sock club, my March self-imposed sock club in pinky-green black, my Lost Socks in Mandie's Oceanic colorway, and that black hole in the middle? There's a sock and a half there that were first seen in this pile of socks. Yeah, that was more than eighteen months ago. They're flat black, patterned, and not for me.

Whittling down this pile is one of my break goals. I think I've knit a full sock's worth since finishing the spring semester a week ago.

I've also spun this: 2-ply shetland. Yum.



Oh, and since we're talking about piles, here's a pile of handspun yarn:
This is the yarn, minus the shetland, that I've finished since March. Yum!

Meanwhile, I'm flirting with the idea of weaving. Stay tuned.

Spinning Round and Round and Round

The Spunky Club group on Ravelry is having a Great Stash Spin-Up, where people are committing to spin down their stashes. The thread is really encouraging and inspiring, and so I've joined in. Here's what I've done since early March:


A worsted-weight chain-ply from Twisted Fiber Arts' Festive merino-silk fiber, colorway Circle. This should stripe and it's a yummy squooshy skein.


Two small skeins of fingering-weight singles, in Wensleydale fiber, colorway Cold Front. This was December's Spunky Club fiber, and it's a really neat yarn.


This is a dk-weight three-ply. I started it on my Sock Summit spindle around Thanksgiving, this is Bluefaced Leicester fiber from Spunky Eclectic, in the Diet Coke colorway. I'm so proud of this one.


And most recently, a fingering-weight three-ply. More Spunky Eclectic fiber, in the Panda base (merino/bamboo/nylon) and colorway Strawberry Fields.

There has been knitting, but not much to show lately. The mittens are stalled out while my brain is occupied with school stuff. Various socks, yeah. Spinning all kinds of good stuff as well. Yay yarn!

Down the Mitteny Rabbit Hole

I will admit, post-Olympics, I had a bit of knitting ennui. There had been some lovely victories, and I couldn't see past them. I had some kind of bizarre anti-startitis where no new project was good enough. I spent a day on Chris's neverending black socks, and then it came to me: mittens.

I'm going to a mitten retreat in Chicago in May, and I really don't have all that much experience with full-hand mitten knitting. Fingerless, sure, but I've only knit the one pair of mittens. And honestly, I'm a little tired of them. The angora/wool blend I made them from is still amazingly soft and warm, but they're sheddy and felty and not as pretty as they were back then.

I found an amazing pattern for lovely faux-traditional mittens with Seahorses. And as I spent the start of spring break (as it seems I do almost all my school breaks) trying to manage my yarn stash, I decided to break into the Smooshy collection and use two colors of that. I had followed the Yarn Harlot's Frankenmitten saga last fall, and did something similar.

I started winding yarn on Wednesday morning. Saturday morning this was finished.



I'm afraid it's going to be a longer time before my happy mitten has a mate (or a thumb)- this week has been too brain-destroying to knit colorwork, and so a week later I'm through the cuff of mitten 2. But really, is it so awful to have a longer project when it's this lovely, and squooshy? I think not.

Finished!

Right under the line, I suppose:

I cast off during the men's hockey gold medal overtime. At least, I started casting off then. Finished soon afterward.



Tonight after I finished some work stuff, I blocked it. Both of these are crappy nighttime pictures.



It's really pretty. I never stretched it out on a larger needle, so this was on a 16" circ the whole time, and I never realized how big it was getting or how striking the color striation was. I love it. Knitting it wasn't a joy-fest the way Shetland Triangle was, but part of that was the thick-and-thin nature of the handspun yarn - definitely imperfect and a little odd. Overall, I'm very pleased.

Olympics

I cast on my Knitting Olympics project at Paige's Olympic Cast-On Shindig, during the opening ceremonies. Despite a cold that knocked me out for a massive portion of the weekend, I was here by Sunday:



Here I am, a week later:



It doesn't look like much, but I promise it's progress. I have 20 g of yarn left, and my calculations make me think I can pull off one more repeat of the main chart, and then the edging chart. I may just make it!

Knitting tv has alternated between the first season of The OC and the actual Olympics. I am learning about sports I've never really watched before. Moguls skiing is awesome. All the sleddy stuff scares the crap out of me. The skating is really cool - and there are parallels in technique to auto racing (esp. short-track) that makes me want to watch more of it.

Knit on, folks. Faster, Higher, Stronger!