Totals and photos for the first row

The first row was completed on Friday March 27th. I took 2 pictures of the first row on it's own for posterity. This is what it looks like laid out on my dining room floor. If I was more confident about myself I would have lay beside it for scale - but I am so not there yet - so this will have to do.

Here are the stats as of the completion of the first row:

Total time: 9.45 hours

Total distance: 24.96 miles

Total calories: 3222

I missed two days in total on the project so far. And the last couple days I ate hella bad - so my weight loss is in question. (Big sigh here.) Friday I gorged at a pizza party at work and Saturday Tom and I hit Red Lobster. (And the food I ate was the equivalent of shoving a stick of butter in my mouth...So....goood.)

So I am now on row two and have sewn the first two squares on row two. I realized my stitching abilities are a little .... sad. Also - my gauge is all over the place from knitting on the treadmill. One day I power through in under 30 minutes and my square is tight and hard - the next I plod along and finish in 40 minutes and my square is loose and pliable. So this is going to look VERY homemade when I finish it. (Which is the nice way of saying Ugly as all heck.) Whatevs. Ain't nothing going to breaka my stride!

So here is what I want for row 2:

Since I am being fairly diligent with the treading every day I want to work on the food and water consumption. I can't break every time someone thrusts pizza or Red Lobster in front of my face. I need to find healthy alternatives. My day to day is a huge struggle with food. I never know what to eat and when. Mornings I am not really hungry. Lunch I tend to eat in my car while reading. And dinner? Oy. So I need to find healthy meals to eat that will make me feel good.

Probably that means more time planning out menu's and grocery shopping and cooking more. I know a carb heavy menu makes me sleepy and crabby - so I want to focus on veggies and protein. I think breakfast is the hardest because I am soooo sick of eggs and I feel like if I eat it starts the hunger up - and then I want to eat more and more. But I know I can't keep skipping breakfast either. Argh. Where are the magic food pellets when you need them.

Sometimes when you are feeling low the world smiles on you.

I had a tough week. I missed two days on my tread mill this week and Tom finally got his severance package from the EVIL EMPIRE. One of my dearest friends who I have worked with for 7 years now - today was his last day. I pigged out on pizza and came home feeling pretty low. When I went to go get the mail this evening I was surprised by a little package with some tea and a pen and a post card that read "Keep up the good work on the treadmill afghan!" (HalloweenTango - You ROCK!)

I was so touched! So I took a picture of it so I could post it up on ravelry as a proper thank you - and then put on my work out shoes and headed down to the treadmill. I completed my 16th square tonight - which means once I stitch them all together I will have completed my first row. 1/16th of the way to an afghan. Wow. I am tickled!

And now - off to a nice hot bubble bath and a glass of wine with my book. Awesome!

Tombs of Endearment

Just finished this book today and have to say it was another fun read. I don't really understand why I like these books. The "Who Done it" is always predictable, the main character is slow to figure things out - AND YET I find myself really enjoying the books. I am quite anxious to read the next one in the series. I know it comes out sometime in 2009 - just not sure when. (Guess that's a pretty easy thing to figure out though. Amazon to the rescue!)

In other news - My 15th square on my treadmill is complete. Tomorrows square will be the last one in the first row. I am already hurting in the motivation department. I suppose that will be true with any lifestyle change. *sigh* I am just looking forward to a nice bath with a glass of wine and digging into my next book before I make dinner. I think tonight (unless Tom veto's my dinner plans) will be shrimp on a bed of linguine. We will see. Last night I had a salad and 20 soda crackers with butter. Cripes. I have to figure out how to feed myself better.

Also - I should maybe start another knitting project. I want to make so many things but with the 30-40 minutes of knitting on the tread mill everyday I find my motivation at night to start a new project is pretty nill. (Not to mention finishing a project I already have going. I am talking to YOU felted bowl that is not even half done!)

Photo's from Day 12

I just finished my 12th square and thought I would take a couple of pictures to show my progress thus far.

The first picture is my afghan with the 12th square still unattached at the end there. The charcoal color was a bit adventurous for me since most of the colors I selected up to this point look kind of like an Easter egg got sick and barfed up this yarn - but in a good wool/mohair way.

The second photo is of the square I knit today. It's got a ruler under it to give a sense of scale and to show the 4 1/2" that it possesses.

I am starting to think 16 squares across might be kind of mad. Like the afghan might be insanely large. Which could be good - but I need to think about that a little. 12 squares is already the length of the table.... Hmmmm.

You can see I keep long tails on the squares. That's what I am using to attach them to each other. I am SOOOOO happy I had the brains to start attaching them as I went so I didn't go bonkers when I finished the afghan looking at a mound of squares and thinking - oh crap - I have to attach all these together! Also - I decided to attach each square in chronological order - so there is no fuss about what square to attach when. I pick each color each day based on my mood or the holiday (st. pats day was green) or my whim. When I finish the afghan it will be a visual diary of every day I spent on the treadmill.

The Origins of my Tread Mill Afghan

In an effort to trick myself into doing some exercise I decided I would start knitting while using the treadmill. I began my adventure on March 10th.

Since I have several skeins of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky in my Stash I thought I might as well use that. (Love that yarn.) The yarn recommends a size 10 1/2 needle so I grabbed my needles - picked a skein (balling it first) and a metal mixing bowl and headed down to the basement and got on the treadmill. I cast on 3 stitches and started knitting the washcloth pattern my mom taught me.

Here is the pattern:

cast on 3 stitches.

Increase rows: Slip the first stitch. Knit to the last stitch. Knit into the front and back of the last stitch.

Decrease rows: Slip the first stitch. Knit across until you have 2 stitched left. Knit the last two stitches together.

I started walking on the treadmill that day not even knowing how many rows I would knit or how big I wanted the squares. I just jumped on and started. At around 15 minutes I counted my rows and decided on 25 rows being a good number. (It ended up being the perfect number but I had no idea at the time that was the case.) My first square was completed after 33 minutes 10 seconds of walking sedately on my treadmill. I covered 1.33 miles and burned 175 calories. The color I was in the mood for was (I believe) Supreme Purple.

In case anyone is wondering why I needed a mixing bowl to knit on the treadmill - I put the ball of yarn in it and let it bounce around in the bowl while I yank the yarn from it. The thought of that yarn rolling all over my gross basement floor is just too much to handle. Yuck.

A few days into my afghan/exercise regimen I mentioned to my awesome co-worker and knitting pal that I was doing this. She's a math whiz and helped me work out the details of my afghan so I would know how many squares I wanted to make and what time line I was talking.

Here is the math:

Each square measures in at about 4 1/2" x 4 1/2".

I decided (rather randomly) that I wanted the afghan to be 6' x 6'. (Images of snuggling under this monster next winter with my husband were floating through my head.)

With those measurements we determined I would need 256 squares to get a 6' x 6' afghan.

Huh. I definitely had no idea what I was getting into. And thank Jebus for that!

So where I am currently sitting in terms of squares etc....

Current number of Squares: 11

Current number of hours on the tread mill: um... somewhere between 6 and 7 hours. Simple math is escaping me at the moment... (sad but true. I almost didn't graduate college the year I did because I was so shitty at math. But that's another story.)

Current distance walked: 17.07 miles.

Current Calories burned: 2209.

Pounds lost: 6

Yesterday is the first day I missed since starting. Let me tell you the guilt at missing one day when I was physically able to - but couldn't (aka - didn't) make time for it is rather consuming. But I can't bring the day back and today is a new day - so onward!