Bleurgh!

I have spent the last few days moping and feeling sorry for myself, but after taking yesterday off work I am now mostly recuperated and went back to work this morning. It was nice to have everyone sympathise with my bad luck. I had spent weeks telling everyone how much I was looking forward to my first holiday in years and now I've come back and have to tell everyone how I spent most of it curled up on the sofa watching daytime telly!

Unfortunately I don't really seem to have got all that much knitting done despite all the extra sitting around time. I think our house has been a bit too warm for my clammy old hands so I have really only been knitting in fits and starts. I have, however, used the time to have a good trawl round Ravelry looking for patterns. Normally this would be a bad thing, leading to more yarn purchases and a larger queue, but in this case I was looking for patterns for sock yarn I already have. These yarns arrived last week, both Regia Color 4-ply. The white is Candy and the multi-coloured shade is Papillion. The Papillion is destined to be the first of this year's Christmas gifts (I can't be accused of not being forward thinking!) and my original plan was to make another pair of Flutterby's. I think this would be a really lovely pattern for the colourway, but I feel like I might be missing out by making the same pattern twice when there are so many sock patterns out there I haven't tried yet. I think Leyburn would also be a nice pattern for the yarn but I have shied away from them because the pattern is toe up and says things like 'using your favourite toe'. I have never made socks toe up and therefore do not have a favourite toe. I haven't really had much interest in toe up before but recently a few patterns I would like to make have turned out to be toe up – Firestarter, Nutkin, Mirror Mirror – so even though I am very happy knitting top down (and have a firm belief in if it ain't broke don't fix it) I think the balls of Regia in Candy will become my first experiment in toe up, probably Nutkin, but I am not entirely decided yet. These socks should help me towards my New Years Knitolutions goals as I am most certainly trying out new stuff and I will need to learn a new cast on as well. Plus I would like to actually use up all the sock yarn instead of having silly bits left over and as these yarns come in 50g balls in would be nice to try knitting socks until the yarn runs out.

Speaking of resolutions, this year one of my main non knitting goals was to do more exercise, with a view to fitting back in my old jeans. I didn't really want to put 'lose weight' because that sounds quite frankly depressing and really being healthy should be more of a concern. Plus I know I'm not actually fat, I'm just bigger than I was and I have got some real favourite clothes languishing in drawers which I really want to wear again. I have decided it is time to be proactive! I have ordered a couple of new healthy cook books and I'm also going to try the Lunch Box Diet, mainly as a way to get a whole heap more vegetables in my system. I'm also going to join the local council gym, which is actually really reasonable and includes the gyms in all the leisure centres, free swimming and exercise classes as well. I will try and post any progress here, mainly because that is a bit of an incentive for me. I'll have to dig out my Wii Fit again as well because that is a genius bit of kit which will tell me how many pounds I lose without actually telling me how much I weighed in the first place. Nice. I may actually have to measure my success (I am assuming success, PMA and all that) in terms of number of outgrown clothes I have fit back into. I will also have to have a rummage through my drawers and pick out a real favourite and have that as a goal, i.e. the day I fit back into that shirt is the day I know I have succeeded. There are a couple of early candidates but I'll have to have a good sort out later (and throw out anything I would never actually want to wear even if it fitted too). Watch this space.