It’s been pretty cold the last few days. I didn’t have any coverage for my ears and I’ve been rocking the old lady shawl [ ie. I took an adorable cowl and figure-eighted it so it acted like a hood too ].
I decided to whip up this bad boy. It’s pretty warm. Not to mention cute. And it only took 20 minutes.
I might actually write up a pattern for this and put it on Ravelry. Stay tuned!
It’s getting colder outside here in Iowa, but not cold enough to bust out the full-on winter gear.
It’s the season for wrist warmers and convertible gloves and mittens.
One of my favorite men’s patterns is Cigar Gloves from knitty.com. I made a pair for Mark and one for his dad 2 Christmases ago. I really liked how they turned out. The pattern on knitty.com shows them with green and brown, but I made mine with 2 tones of gray. These are pretty easy to make, even if you’ve not made anything but scarves and hats before. It’s a good beginning pattern to try.
Do you knit or crochet? What do you make?
Since I’m too lazy to walk over and run on a treadmill in this below 0° weather… I’m taking a 10 minute break to blog it up over lunch.
Nothing too exciting is going on this week other than the fact that it’s ridiculously cold out. Temperature in Anchorage, Alaska is 41° today. Temperature here: -8°. Awesome. Anchorage isn’t in the cold part of Alaska, but still, -8°.
Several of my friends cars wouldn’t start today. One of my friends saw some jackass out running (yes, I do have a limit. I don’t go out if it’s below -10° or if the windchill is below -15°).
My apartment is frigid. Both my main heating unit and space heater are running at my apartment, which brings the temperature up to a whopping 55° according to the awesome refrigerator magnet thermometer I got for Christmas from my friend Meredith (not the best way to guage temp, I’m sure, but still).
So I’m cranking the heat here, much to the protest of my coworker who’s always too hot. Oh well… go outside for 5 minutes, then tell me it’s hot in here.
Also, on an unrelated side note, my iPod 30GB classic is dying. Sad day. I had it in my purse the other day and I took it out to put some music/movies on it and it needed to be restored. So I restored it and it went right back to the “connect to a computer and use iTunes to restore” window. I repeated the process about 5 times. I realized it could be doing this because I don’t have internet. I took it to work and repeated the process a couple times before realizing it was probably iTunes 8. I downgraded to 7.0, and it randomly restored.
I thought that was the end of the problems, but I tried to add music/movies to it today and it started making a weird grinding/cranking/squeaking noise and wouldn’t let me put much on it. Fabulous. So I went to apple.com and checked to see if it was under warranty. Of course not. It expired last August.
Then I selected “shuffle songs” as an experiment to see how far it would get before freezing up (when it was just setting on my desk). 5 songs. Exciting.
Here’s what I think: I’ve been working out with it…but have been putting it on the machines so it wouldn’t jostle around so much. I think the vibrations screwed it up enough to kill the hard drive. Which totally rocks, by the way, since I’ve been wanting an iPhone and finally decided that “no, I’m just going to get a Blackberry on USCellular because I can afford the plan that goes with it and not go over the minutes.” So NOW I will either have to get a new iPod OR a smartphone. Granted, I can live without both. I’ve got an iPod nano and I can deal with a regular phone. The Nano ONLY has my running music on it, and I’ve got very specific music that I listen to when I run. So if I want to listen to it aside from running, I’d need to put different music on it all the time, which is a hassle. Also, if I listen to the music I run with on a non-running basis, it won’t be as effective when I’m running. GRR.
Anyway, the boyfriend had gotten this iPod for me as a gift when he got his iMac in August of 2007. He informed me that he ALMOST got me an iPod touch for Christmas (which would have been about $200 over our agreed upon budget), but didn’t because he knew I was thinking of getting an iPhone. So now I’ve got to set a strict budget for Valentine’s Day so he doesn’t break it because I can’t afford to buy him something that costs that much $$… argh. Not that I don’t appreciate the gift…but still.
Anyway, my 10 minutes are up.
I’m meeting a friend for brunch today so I got up early to try to get a run in. Didn’t do so hot on 6 hours of sleep with the ice and the wind, but 5K will do.
Of course, I swear my Nike+ KNOWS when I’m tired or when I’m not motivated and decides to stop my workouts when I pause to catch my breath. Stupid thing. It’s probably the armband I’ve got but they don’t make armbands for the iPod nano that I’ve got anymore.
Anyway, I checked my goals on nikeplus.com and I acheived my goal of 5 runs in under 8:55 a mile for this month. I reset the goal to 5 runs in under 8:45 a mile for the next month. I’m also close to finishing my workout 16 times this month goal…but I think it might be because some of my workouts endeed up split. :/
It was freak-ing cold out… (8°)
Got some new under armour for Christmas. A Sub-Zero cold gear mock in — what else? — Calee pink.
...in Calee pink.
Long story short — the new underarmour rocks. I have another subzero mock in teal, but it’s the “compressed” style (so it’s tighter around the torso) so it doesn’t stay down over my butt when I put it there. This one does. So it’s my new favorite piece of gear (until it gets warm again). It worked so well that I actually was sweating
Anyway, ran Lover’s Lane again (more gravels). I came across a 50 yard patch of uncovered gravel, which rocked. All in all it was a better run than the day before because the snow had packed down solid since it was so cold.
Kinda slower than normal, but I was being cautious since the snow was packed down to ice.
Seriously.
Just went for a snow run. A REAL snow run. It must have snowed 4 inches last night and I swear to God this town doesn’t own a plow.
I went out in the country again for the most part, which again, wasn’t so bad, but there were some snomobilers that assumed I’d get out of their way. Yeah, I’m going to just run in a giant drift of snow? You have a snowmobile, you go in the snow drift.
Town was awful. The 5 citizens that did scoop their sidewalks today were dispersed between the people who hadn’t dusted off their snow shovel this year. I’m talking a foot of snow. Not cool. My knee hates it, and so do I.
But really, what else can I do at home? This rinky dink town doesn’t even have a gym (unless you count Curves, which I don’t, but I think that shut down anyway).
What I would give for a mile-long patch of clean pavement or a treadmill… I’d deal. Not as ideal as clean pavement for miles, but I’d be happy.
DAMN YOU, WINTER.
Either way, a respectable 5 miles in this crud…and a halfway decent pace. This should be my half-marathon pace (if not faster), so if I can run it in the snow for 5 miles, I’m probably set.
12.23.08
Also, this town has no gathering locations. Trying to meet up with some high school friends tonight and we’re forced to have dinner at the bowling alley.
…and the boyfriend wanted to move to Alaska to go to school. No thank you.
Brrrrrr... my legs pretty much froze at the end, in case you can't tell.
Went for a run in about -2° weather today. Not as bad as it may sound, actually. There was no wind, which made things a heck of a lot easier. There was a lot of snow and ice though so I stuck to the gravels that nobody travels, which also have better traction.
I need to buy a face mask if I’m going to do that again. My face didn’t get too cold, but my breath froze on my eyelashes and eyebrows (which was pretty awesome looking). I didn’t get a picture of it because it melted the minute I hit the garage at home.
Now off to make some Christmas sugar cookies.
