Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Neutral Spine, Ring-ring

Last night was my first pilates class. We arrived a bit early, so got to sit in the heat and humidity of the upstairs of Waterworld. However, once we got into the crèche (where the class is held) it wasn’t so bad. We met the lady running the class, Grace, and the other class attendees. One of the improvers reminded me a bit of Andy. Anyway, there was about a half-and-half split between beginners and improvers which was nice. We had a go at standing up properly and getting neutral spine (that’s where the spine should be). Then we had a go at rolling down, which is basically bending over but in a complicated way. It wasn’t easy actually, especially getting the breathing right and relaxing and tensing in the right places! Then we did lying down properly, which was less difficult. We also did some balancing which I was rubbish at! I found the experience quite relaxing, and I am looking forwards to doing it again, but we don’t have a class next week because of the bank holiday.

We have new phones at work. They have a choice of irritating ring-tones. I have insisted that my team stick with ring-ring, although nobody seemed to want to change it anyway. We’re all glad to have turned down the ringers too. And we have voicemail. Perhaps some of the other teams around us will get the idea that you don’t need to have the phone so loud that you can hear it from outside. Eventually.

I have now finished my shrug. I sewed on the buttons last night. It looks fantastic! I’m really pleased with it – there will be pictures on my Completed Knitting Projects blog once I get around to taking them. It may have taken me about a month to knit, but I haven’t spent time on it every day, and probably no more than a couple of hours at a time. Even so, it’s been on the needles a while!
I do have a minor issue too, I have my needle roll on my size 8 needles, with my small row counter. I’m currently using my big row counter on the 6.5mm needles I have, I was using that for the shrug, now I’m using it in a slightly Heath Robinson manner for the socks. The issue I have is this: when I begin the throw I want to make sure that all of the squares of each type are the same size, for which I’ll want to count the rows. It tells me in the pattern to keep knitting to the length I want (10cm or 10 inches, I don’t remember!) and so I want to knit the first square to size and then knit all the squares of that pattern to the same size in all the different colours. That means that I need a row counter. The big row counter would be best because it’s good for the big needles I need. So, I then have no row counter for my socks. I need a row counter for the socks – so I was thinking of using the one on the needle roll. So, this leaves me with the question: do I put the needle roll onto a stitch holder for now or unravel it? Now, I don’t like “frogging” (or ripping out, undoing) my knitting, but there is a good case for this. The yarn is nice and I have almost two balls of it. Also, I now have somewhere to store my needles as I got a needle case in Simply Knitting. So, perhaps that’s the answer? We will see.

Oh, and work sucks at the moment. I’m not going to go off on a major rant about it though. It’s a shame because it’s been going well and I have all sorts of things in place to try and make sure I don’t make mistakes. Sometimes it seems that my best just isn’t good enough. I guess that it doesn’t matter though, whatever will be and all that.

It could be worse, though, I am sitting in a warm(ish) office with free tea (okay, it mings, but it is free). And maybe something good will happen.

Speaking of something good, on the way in to work this morning we saw a pair of geese with eight goslings (all cute and fluffy and yellow) and a pair of ducks with four ducklings (all fluffy and black and green – so sweet!) which cheered me up. I like this time of year!

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