One more little finished thing:



I finished the Blueflame socks. These are just simple socks, 64 sts on size 1 needles, a little ribbing at the top, v-heel, and what I think of as the "Socka" toe because it's the pattern of toe decreases the old Socka sock pattern books used to use. (I learned to knit socks, pretty much, using the Socka books).

The yarn is called "Blueflame" (though as I said, it looks more autumnal to me) from Lisa Souza Dyeworks. I like her yarns; not only are they dyed very nicely (this is actually one of the more overly-bright colorways), but the base yarn she uses feels good and knits up well.

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Three other things I have to be happy about today:

1. My leaves are gone. A couple of the Youth Group kids came out yesterday and raked them up and the grandmother of one of them is going to take them to use as mulch in her gardens. The two kids who came out are going to one of the bowl games with the high school marching band, so they needed to earn some money. I paid them each $30 - I have a small yard but they worked HARD (there are something like 25 bags of leaves, so you know there were a lot of leaves) and one of them even climbed up on my roof and pushed the leaves that had accumulated in the "valley" of the roof off.

2. The predicted "freezing rain or freezing drizzle" that they were talking about for Monday has been pushed back in time. I am greatly relieved by this because I was worrying about driving to the train station on Monday - I even told my Youth Group co-leader that if it looked Sunday afternoon like it was going to be unsafe to drive on Monday, I was going to have to bail on Youth Group and drive down there a day early and either stay overnight or see if I could change my ticket. But now I don't think that's going to happen. Once I'm on the train I don't worry; they can travel through most kinds of bad weather, no problem. But getting to the station in Mineola did concern me a bit.

3. I think come January (or perhaps before) I am going to add a few crunches or something to my exercise routine. In the process of trying on some unworn clothes (to see if I should just give up on ever wearing them again and take them to the local Clothes Closet), I discovered that several of the smaller-sized pairs of slacks I have in my closet fit again - I can zip and button them and while they're not COMFORTABLE to wear, if I could lose even one inch off my waist, they would be. (And it seems the easiest way to lose that inch is to tighten up the muscles, hence the crunches.) So I guess I've dropped a tiny bit of weight this fall, or at least tightened up some. Any shrinkage-in-size is a welcome thing, because I worry about the middle-aged tendency to spread: I have friends who bemoan that they can eat less and less with each coming year, and I don't want to have to wind up as one of those people who has to count every calorie.

I think I will also make an effort to walk or use the treadmill my parents have during break so I can hopefully keep up with the smaller size.

(They're not TINY sizes, understand - the pair of slacks I really rejoiced over being able to wear was a 14 "regular." But even that's a little victory for me. And I don't think I'd ever be TINY, except for the equally-undesirable situations of a widespread famine or some kind of severe illness on my part. And even then - I have broad hips, bone-wise, so I don't think I'd ever get smaller than perhaps a 10 even with a starvation diet - which isn't healthy anyway. I'm just content to remain the same or get a tiny bit smaller in size.)

I do know these past couple of weeks I've felt healthier than I have in a while so maybe the exercise is finally starting to show a real payoff.