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!