The Tortoise And The Hare

"Nic would like to believe that those 600 Wii calories she just blasted have gone from somewhere noticeable, but the reality is that it's probably disappeared from behind her right earlobe, or her left knee.

My, what a skinny and attractive behind-of-earlobe you have, madam, said no-one ever."

I notice it though. I notice it when I try on something that used to fit me at my fattest, and it is loose. I notice it in the way I can walk with someone and actually join in the conversation with more than just the occasional gasp and grunt. I notice it, but it's not really hey-look noticeable yet. But it will be. I will make a difference both externally as well as internally. Because inside I KNOW there's already a difference. How can there not be? It's rather wonderful to realise that you're making a difference in your own life.

But there's a lot to go, a lot to shift, and it'll be a long, long time before there's a major physical change, but that's okay. That is, actually, the plan. Because this is for life, not just a fad few months. The more I read, the more it appears that if you lose weight slowly, over a long period of time, you have more of a chance keeping it off in the long run. There's a higher possibility that your skin will shrink with you (although I do know that as a person who has been obese since her teens, I'll most certainly be left with a goodly amount, but possibly less than if I was to lose the weight in months, instead of years). There's less stress on the heart and other organs. More of a chance of keeping the weight off. I say this twice, because I think that'll be the hardest part. Keeping it off once I get to a point when I'm no longer taking years off my life, but instead adding to it. Once I get to a point where I'm at a weight that suits my body type, without worrying about BMI - something I'm inclined to believe only works for group averages, and not individuals. Will I know when that is? At this point in my journey I can only guess, but I suspect it'll centre around the amount of loose skin I can deal with, as I won't be able to afford to remove it surgically. I've read more that one story of weight gain after massive weight loss because the person is unable to cope with the side-effects, which include excess skin, and I want to prepare myself for that possible future.

Don't get me wrong - I almost salivate over programmes on the telly that turn dangerously unfit, morbidly obese beings into demi-gods almost overnight. The voyeuristic, vicarious viewing (sorry - that alliteration was entirely an accident) gives hope in a strange and lazy way to those of us who may not be quite as fat as those on the programme, who say, well, if they can lose all that, then surely I can lose some of this? It's empowering, hypnotic, but like all 'miraculous cures' a thing of smoke and mirrors. Yes, exercise more, and eat less for sure, but it's mentally useful for us to understand that they're taking part in regimes that are unhealthy (if you believe even half the stuff written about the methods used to ensure a good televisual result) and totally untenable in the long run.

So slow and steady wins the race, at least (I hope) for me, six hundred calories at a time.

A Cake Is For Life Not Just For Christmas

"Nic is reassured: her toes are still within touching distance!"

That's the problem with those pesky holidays spent away from your modern-day weight-loss torture devices; the chances of being able to carry on where you left off after a couple of weeks spent in the bosom of your cooking and baking family back home become slimmer, for want of a kinder word, with every passing mealtime.

Now, I am not one for excluding things from my diet for the sake of short-term goals - I am in this for the long haul and because of this am a big believer of moderation in all things - but when faced with a mother's home-made meals and famous short-bread, a sister's propensity to create delicious hand-made sweetie delights, and a brother who has an uncanny knack in finding three-for-two boxes of chocolates almost everywhere he goes, even the most liberal of lifestyle changers may need to take a time out.

There are a few extra pounds to work off, now I'm back in the safe arm-extenders of my Wii and have stepped on my only-judgemental-if-you-lean-too-far-one-way-or-the-other balance board, but they were totally worth it. For this change is for life, and I jolly well mean to enjoy it, Christmas cake and all!

The Hippy Hippy...

...Socks

(earworm free of charge)

I've had this idea playing around in my head for a while now, thanks to owning some Noro Kureyon Sock yarn for which I couldn't quite find a place.  You know know how it is; they have great colourways, wonderful splashes of eclectically mixed hues (unless you get lucky and find one that's mostly all greens, or russets, or some such anomaly) that call holler your name in strangely hypnotic shrieks.  And so it was thus, with colourway 256.  A cheeky little number with what was originally thought to have a pleasant mixture of pinks, purples and blues, but with the discovery of a golden mustardy yellow and an altogether more in-your-face orangey-yellow, the cat was set amongst the pigeons.  Or the tigers amongst the macaws, if you will.  

But thus the paisley/60's-inspired Hippie Hippie Socks were brought into imagination.

Or, indeed, Flower Power, man! 

The Hippie Hippie Socks give you a daisy-chain coronet and a paisley frock, and, in keeping with the free-and-easy attitude of the 60's, you have a choice of four different paisley patterns for the main part of the sock!  You can use them all in any combination, or choose your favourite and just work that one for the whole sock!  But no matter how you make it up, this sock is absolutely perfect for those brighter shades of Noro or slow-colour-changing yarn! 

Psychedelic, dude!

Starting with Heidi Bear's 5-stitch picot cast-on, the base of the daisy chain is a simple 1x1 twisted rib.  I had originally started the sock with a turn-down cuff with a bed of daisy stitch, but  soon decided it was too fussy if I was going to add the bigger flowers on top.  A good move in the end as the i-cord daisies take all the attention anyway!

To try and imitate some of the paisley designs I've seen I decided to make four different paisley patterns for this sock - two with eyelets and two with teeny bobbles, to be used in any combination.

The heel is a peasant/afterthought heel, as when it comes to yarn like this, I like (if at all possible) to see fluency of colour from one end of the sock to the other.  Of course, as you can see, Noro does like to play tricks, the little scamp.  Using the 'Crayola 64' method of colour naming (circa 1958), we start with a warm Red-Orange, then slip daintily into Tickle-Me-Pink, touching on my very favourite, Periwinkle, then moving swiftly on to Magenta.  And then WHAM!  Goldenrod is in da house. Subtle as a brick to the temple.  There are hints of the yellow beforehand, but nothing really to prepare you for tactless  introduction of such disparate colours.  Yes, yes, I know the colours themselves are hardly shy and retiring, but at least one colour usually merges gracefully into the next without causing the need to administer emergency sunglasses.

But now, as I'm on a roll...  From Goldenrod, we smoothly transition into Salmon (see? SEE? Smooth transitions can be done with PINKS and YELLOWS!), which in turn melds intoOrange-Red, Yellow-Orange, Vivid Violet (okay, so I cheated and used an un-hippie 1998 colour...), and finishing up the graft on the heel with a touch of Blue-Green. (You'll note that the second sock had a much kinder transition between theMagenta and Goldenrod.  Noro: the Mercury of the yarn world.)

(That was fun!)

Anyhoo...  The foot is worked the same way as the leg, with another couple of sets of paisleys and the toe is worked quite simply to continue the last part of the pattern of the foot.  Should you wish to do a plain foot, you need to add some stitches to bring the circumference stitches back to a usable 16 or 17 stitches per needle, as the beginning and end of each paisley block is a smaller 13 stitches per needle.

But go with the flow, man!

The daisies are very simply made, either using a hippie French knitting dolly (the method I used) or by working an i-cord.  Either way, you need approximately 15 inches of knitting per flower.  I waited until the end of both socks before continuing with the daisies, but you can very easily make half the flowers before the second sock, or even choose a contrasting yarn for the daisies, afterthought heel and toe, for example. They're made by pinning the cord out into a 5-petalled flower (as shown in the photo below) and joining up the edges with one of the cast-on/cast-off tails. They are simple to attach by sewing the tail onto the cuff in the configuration you prefer  Try five per sock, or ten, or even just one - the sock equivalent of a flower behind the ear!

You can find the Ravelry pattern page HERE (available to anyone, not just Ravelers) or you can click the button below to buy the pattern now for just €3 (or £2.40 or $3.87 at the current rate of exchange).

Hampering Laundry

"Nic doesn't know what's more exhausting: one hour of cardio-boxing or changing one king-size duvet cover."

There's certainly not a Duvet Wrestling setting on any Wii fitness-type game, but you know? I'm pretty sure fifteen minutes of fighting with a heavy bedspread, and trying to escape from a cover that could swallow you whole is worth at least half an hour of  Wii baseball. Wii golf? Wii yoga, perhaps.  

I should contact the company. I reckon there's an untapped gaming population out there just aching to Iron their arm jiggle away, or have a satisfying game of Beat Your Carpet badminton. For the even more traditional we could have Washboard Scrub Rowing, marvellous for the upper arms, chest and back muscles; Pin The Heavy Washing To The Line Shoulder Press; or Scrub Your Floor Core. Primarily aimed at men and women who want to recapture those golden, precious times when life was unencumbered by modern, helpful, cheating technology, a time when you had to live by your wits and strength, and there was no opportunity for recreation because you were spending every waking hour trying not to die from starvation, the common cold, or overwork. For players aged thirteen or over, to be viewed on plasma screens of at least 42" for best all-round gaming experience.

But I'll stick with the late Twentieth-Century British adoption of the duvet, because as much as it's time- (but also, thankfully, calorie-) consuming to duel with a duvet and its second, it's still preferable to attempting Extreme Blanket Mountaineering, where the dangers include being buried from sheet avalanches, and contracting altitude sickness from sleeping on too many layers.

Battle Of The Waistbands

"Nic has just put on her favourite winter skirt for the first time in 7 months and it won't stay up! (Yes, it was already a bit loose by March, but still...)

This is both an epic WIN and a pain in the behind because there isn't time to take in the waist before she goes out!

Ah me! By such First World Problems are we troubled!"

I wish you knew to the extent I'm fighting an urge to whoop in delight and tell the world my news! (Well, the world on top of an already informed facebook elite!) STOP THE PRESSES! MY SKIRT IS TOO BIG!! Remind me when I get back that I need to have a quick shifty through my wardrobe to see what else might need taking in a wee bit! Hah! I don't think I've been this excited to try on clothes since my Mum made me a black circle skirt for my ballet exam when I was eight or nine! I remember watching every step of its construction; the fabric choosing, the drawing, the cutting, and seeing it all come together under the flashing needle of the sewing-machine! Man! That skirt was pirouetting heaven!

Don't mind me if I appear to acting a little... unlike myself this afternoon, for the chances are growing greater with every passing minute that I'll be channelling a delighted and twirly eight-year old, possibly scattering hastily-written handbills to the four winds, declaring that MY SKIRT IS TOO BIG! 

Twirling, scattering, and searching for shops that sell safety pins.

Every Cloud

"Nic knows stress and anxiety aren't the healthiest of fitness aids, but losing 3 lbs instead of the more usual 1 lb this week has draped a silver lining over the whole shenanigans."

I'm not usually such a vaguebooker (which is said to be basically any update on facebook that can be intentionally or unintentionally vague or ambiguous, and although primarily used by attention-seekers, it can be a useful tool to let people who already understand what you're talking about know that things are 1) okay, 2) worse, 3) the same, 4) ugh who knows - it's vaguebooking, and I should have known better) but sometimes a little cyber letting-off-steam makes you feel better! Plus, and I have to be honest here, most people knew what I was talking about anyway.

So, I hear you cry out in genuine non-vague-book interest, what was I talking about? Ah, 'twas merely the latest instalment of my ever-more bizarre history of bad neighbours, an epic of which has been shared for many years over the internet (and therefore was an already occurring theme by this update effort), and before that, the phone. (BEFORE THE INTERNET???)  I know. I show my age in that very telling of sentences.  

I don't know. It's the strangest of things. As single, fat, frightened, foreign female (oy) living in a beautiful eighteenth-century (converted) apartment block in the most-beautiful part of a medieval city, I tried my very best fit in - learning the language, and trying to be unseen and unheard by my neighbours (through years of allowing myself to be indoctrinated into the belief system that to be fat and female and single was shameful and an automatic target for hate derision) because who needs neighbour grief on top of everything else? It started well; the nine flats in my building were filled with families and working people, nice folk who were polite, friendly, and courteous. By the time I left, I was the only person in the building who wasn't a student, and most of the families and working residents had left the area, mainly because of the noise and the constant partying up and down the street. It was quite the transformation.  

I did try to begin with to courteously let my neighbours know that their noise was perhaps travelling further afield than they were aware, because sometimes people just don't realise how their noise penetrates walls and can be amplified so very easily by empty ceiling cavities. This was fine until there were more and more flats in the building being noisy night after night. It was like fighting a forest fire with a thimble of water. I became horrifically sleep-deprived, and dreadfully anxious all the time, and although the abuse from those neighbours is long in the past now (I even called the police a few times and I remember phoning during a particularly riotous party where the revellers thought it a good idea to pound on my walls and door continually for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, I was told first that they didn't understand my attempts at their language, then that the noise-makers were just students, and basically just to suck it up), it left an indelible mark on my psyche.  

So moving here to a flat at the top of a converted house of five flats that the owner assured me was filled with only working, professional women over the age of thirty, was balm to my troubled soul. And so it was until he died, his wife took over, and my quiet (only) downstairs neighbour moved out. The downstairs floor had long ago been converted into two separate rooms that would share their facilities, the stairs up to which were also the stairs to the door of my own flat, which sits in the hallway of their floor (I suspect the conversion from a massive house to flats was quite cheaply done) In came two male students, one nineteen, the other twenty-three and up surged my anxiety level. 

It was presumptuous of me to expect these blokes to behave in the same way as my previous tormentors, and I did have one week of bliss when there was only one of them here, and I found out that this one was actually working full-time to the point of exhaustion, and was not a student at all. Unfortunately that peace stopped when the real student moved in, bringing with him many friends, a love of Lady Gaga, which in itself is not really a cause for concern, and a penchant for late-night poker games, which was.  

He has never lived in a 'real' house before, so he tells me. He lived, up until becoming a student, in the basement apartment of one of his parents houses, and has his own front door so he can come and go as he pleases and party for all hours because no-one can hear him. (The other house is in the Dordogne, and he lives in one of the converted outbuildings when he goes there to ski in the winter...)

Ugh, this is all very gossipy. The crux of the matter is he doesn't like being asked to be quiet once the clocks hit midnight, and, technically, according to city ordnances, he's supposed to stop making noise that's loud enough to disturb the neighbours by ten. He was actually quite nice to begin with, but has taken against having what he considers to be his student rights to a party lifestyle criticised, and doesn't like to be reminded that he is not living in a student house, but actually in a place where he is surrounded by families, working folk, and pensioners.  

Anyway, it's time to contact the agency because being shouted at and verbally abused because I dare to complain about him holding noisy parties and boisterous poker games four times a week until three or four in the morning has gone beyond the thresholds of my patience. I feel ill. I'm not sleeping. I'm scared to leave my apartment because I have to walk through their hallway to get out.  

But I have lost three pounds this week, instead of the usual one.

Survival Of The Fittest

"Nic managed to give herself a bloody nose with an over-zealous right hook tonight, thanks to losing her grip on the Wii-remote. She has now vowed to stick to knitting, where stabbing herself is the only real danger..."

I think I've be de-selected by nature. Clumsiness in conjunction with throwing one's fists around one's face is just asking for trouble when you're me. Yes, it can be said that this evolution thing could not have foreseen the advent of pretend physical activity; of hurling oneself around a non-existent gym punching imaginary bags, but this clumsy gene? Humanity should have been rid of that a long time ago, in my humble option.

I am heartily glad this game (My Fitness Coach Cardio Workout [updated link to Amazon]) gives you the option of either using two separate Wiimotes, or one single Wiimote connected to the Nunchuck, because if it was the latter only, I'm pretty sure I'd be wearing welts around my neck and arms. Not this season's look for your Fake Boxer Around Town, I'll be the first to admit. But then, neither are blood-encrusted breathing holes. For the unbloodied rest, though, it's an awfully fun way to spend some cardiac time and perhaps I might venture into the world of reviewing once I've stopped my life-force flowing from my nostrils!

I should consider asking Santa for some spatial awareness for Christmas. And a jumbo box of Kleenex. I've a funny feeling they'll both come in handy.