Three Accomplishments

Not an exciting day but at least I got three things accomplished:)

Exercise:

I purposely slowed down by a minute this morning and I didn’t loop back to my mom. I managed to complete the whole run I planned and it recorded properly on runkeeper. I guess it was the looping that was throwing it off. I guess this just says I should take it slow down here and save my speed work for home. I really want to make it to the next mile marker though!! Unfortunately, I haven’t been out yet to determine exactly where it is and find a landmark. Thankfully I still have almost a week to get this done:)

I also got a quick workout in this evening. I did 50 squats, 50 plié squats, 50 swing lunges, 50 side kicks, 50 back leg raises, 50 high knees, 50 jabs, 50 crosses, 50 upper cuts, 50 push-ups, 50 bicep curls, 25 crunches, 50 side crunches, 25 leg drops, 25 flutter kicks, 25 reverse crunches. There again may have been more but I was just doing whatever came into my head. I was sweating by the end, but that may have been because it was warm in the trailer.🤣. It was interesting trying to find something to use as a weight in the trailer- my parent’s bottles of alcohol had to suffice. I tried out several to find the heaviest, but of course everything seems heavy after 50 reps!

Reading:

I finished listening to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte today on Librivox. Jane Eyre is excellent! At 38 chapters it is a commitment but it was well worth the time!! The reader was Elizabeth Klett and she was great! The book contains a moral like most Victorian writing does, as well as the idea that you are rewarded or punished by god for your actions. I found the book to have a good pace and lots happening. The plot carries the reader along, however, it manages to avoid being so outlandish as to be unrealistic.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Christian literature or the classics. It was a good story!

I was thinking that I would keep notes as I read in the new year so that I could write better reviews, but I’m worried it would ruin reading for me, so you may have to just put up with my short, general reviews.🤣

Knitting:

I spent a lot of today working on a vest for myself. I made up the pattern, loosely based on what I remembered of a vest I had made for my mom a few years ago. I wanted to make myself something from the black and white combination that I’ve recently used for a tea cosy and a toque. I didn’t really think I would manage to get the whole vest made with what I had left, but I did😀 I casted on 114 stitches on 6.5mm needles and joined in the round. I knitted ten rows of 2×2 twisted ribbing and then switched to straight knitting until it reached 13″. I then bound off six stitches at the mid point and at the end of the next row. I divided the front and back sections into halves and worked one quarter at a time. I decreased two stitches at the underarm and one stitch at the neckline every other row. When I had twelve stitches, I knitted 20 rows even. I bound off and repeated the exact same process for the other three sections. I then sewed the shoulder seams together.

I don’t love the side section of one part, but don’t hate it enough to rip it out and redo it. I think this will be quite useful as I can wear it on its own, but I can also wear it over a shirt at work to add a layer of warmth. I thought about crocheting around the edges, but in the end decided not to.

Amazingly I still have yarn left over!!! Maybe I’ll tackle a quick Barbie dress tomorrow so I’ll have an even thirty projects completed this year.

Baking:

I didn’t technically bake anything today, but I did make a delicious strawberry banana ice cream:) It is super easy and quick! Slice two bananas and freeze on a cookie sheet. Slice two cups of strawberries and freeze. Combine the frozen strawberries and bananas with a 1/2tsp vanilla and 2tbsp cream and blend. It is so yummy!!!! Unfortunately it’s all gone so there’s no photo:(. I used coconut cream and it was still good!

That’s really all I did today. I am now going to try and get through half a book tonight so I’ll be done before the end of the year and will have an even number of books read this year.

Have fun!

AJ