race weekend

Ohmygosh yesterday was the best day ever! I'll give you some background information. It kind of starts last year.

Last year one of my bffs, Jan, had wanted to run her first marathon here in Southern Oregon. There was one just over the hill from us but since there were so many fires in the state throughout the summer the smoke was so thick and air quality terrible. So, the marathon was moved further out timewise and she picked another marathon in Eugene, OR. I think that was mid-September. I had been starting to want to run myself but not quite there. But, that was the first race that I ran in between walking, and it wasn't horrid. ha!

Slowly over the past year I've been building up my mileage. I picked a training plan for a 10K, which is 6.2 miles. Honestly, it's been hard!  But, thank God, I've been able to do it. My body is slow, but it does run and recover. It's been amazing.  So, that bring us to yesterday. It was the Providence Marathon in Medford and I did the 10K race - and ran the entire time!!!

The morning started super early - Jan had to be at her shuttle to the starting line at 6 am. The shuttle for the half marathon and 10K started at 7 am. And it was super colllldddd! I think it was about 40 degrees. Brrr. Last winter/spring I discovered I have Reynaud's disorder, which for me manifests most painfully in my toes when I get cold. If my body is cold then the blood constricts to my toes and it feels like running on marbles or just plain numb. But! I bundle up and keep on :)

Here I am at the starting line for the 10K

 The farthest I had run prior to the race was 5.6 miles. And, that last half mile has been a struggle! Oh man. I was so nervous going into this race....could I do it? Would I need to stop and walk? I tried to remind myself that I would not suddenly forget how to run - and just trust the training.

For the most part, the run felt pretty good! I started out too quickly I think - nerves and excitement. I tried to rein myself in so that I would have the continued energy for the full 6 miles. After the 5 mile point, I realized I was doing it and it felt amazing. The finish line was a straightaway after a slight hill so it was nice to be able to run across feeling strong.

Jan's daughter also ran the 10K race, and she was waiting for me at the finish line which was cool! After that, we trolled around the finish line area to see if there were snacks and swag. We were both looking forward to chocolate milk but no such luck. Boo! But, we were consoled by sugary donuts :)

Our friend Meghan ran the half marathon, 13.1 miles and got a personal record (PR) of 1:53:55! Her first half marathon under 2 hours.

After that, it was waiting for Jan to come in. A couple other friends made it in time to see her cross the finish line in 4:02:45 - 8 minutes faster than her first marathon! Not only was her time impressive, but just knowing how hard it was for her to get there - she coaches volleyball, has a full time job and a family in addition to the multiple hours of training week after week. 

Below is the breakdown of my mileage, in what's referred to as "splits". Mine is a bit lopsided - the quicker times at the beginning instead of the end. It's no biggie to me, but it's interesting information.  

This was my official race finishing time: 

 Oh! and! There just happened to be a little thing called Fiber Mania at the same fairgrounds that the race ended at! Woot! I picked up this beautiful yarn:

We had a delicious lunch and some fro-yo and then drove home. Even the drive home was fantastic - the pass is mostly evergreens but interspersed there are vibrant fall colored trees - so vivid and colorful. It was a treat.

A cross stitch project bag

So, I made a thing last weekend. I did post about it on Instagram, but... felt I had a little more to say about it than what would fit, or hold attention in a little caption. Which is kind of how I decided I needed to start the ol' blog up again. 😊

I started a cross stitch pattern 3 years ago! That has just been patiently waiting for me to want to stitch again. Which I have. The pattern is from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery called The Storytime Sampler. Each little frame is a different storybook character. 

A few weeks ago I visited my Mom and we were sorting through fabric together. She gave me a TON of fun fabric prints. One was a navy floral that sort of reminds me of a liberty print and I knew I wanted a project bag out of it. Then, last weekend I was watching YouTube videos of cross stitching, and I think there was a link or something to a tutorial by Kea Bee for a zippered pouch with a vinyl pocket. I have been wanting to make something similar for awhile so I took it as a sign that I needed to sew it up right then! First, I did make a quick Joanns trip to purchase vinyl 😏 Cuz I have a whole lot in my stash, but not that!

I only changed a couple of things. One was the size. I wanted mine to be able to hold my whole project including the q-snap frame. That was an easy adjustment! I have a 12.5 square template ruler so I used that for dimensions. 

I'm not sure exactly how to show the next thing? Since the zipper is sewn on top of the bag, it could leave a raw edge on the underside. I just really don't like raw edges so I folded the fabric around the batting for the top part of the front of the bag.

Then I quilted straight lines. I sewed the folded edge to the zipper. The raw edge sides get enclosed when the bag is sewn together and the binding added. For binding, I just used leftovers from my jar o binding.

If raw edges don't bother you, that step is unnecessary. It did make it slightly easier to keep ahold of while sewing to the zipper. One thing I might add to another bag if I make one would be a carry handle at the top. No biggie though since I'm not transporting this around. If I was that would be handy! Ha ha! See what I did there? "Handy" get it? A handle....

Anyways! Here it is empty. There really are so many ideas you could do with this simple bag - add ribbon, different dimensions of vinyl, coordinating fabric instead of all the same. 

no pictures, just chat

Yikes! I've been away from this space for a long time! Mostly, I've had some technical difficulties. And a bit of what do I have to say? Is anyone even reading this? But! I think it's just like whatever. If no one is reading it, that's fine. If anyone does, that's cool too.

So, what have I been up to lately? or, in the past 6 months or so? ha! Lots. And also nothing new. Kind of the biggest thing that I sort of talked about like 2-3 posts ago was losing weight. I've lost a lot of weight. I'm not going to put out there the exact amount. Mostly because if you're anything like me, you'll start to try and calculate what the beginning total was and I'm just not ready for that to be "out there". But, it's a lot. And I feel really good. I started the journey with an idea in my mind of a number, but also just a feeling for a goal. I made my goal and now I'm where I consider maintenance. Technically I have lost a little more and if more comes off I'll be happy with that too. 

I'm tracking food, drink, exercise and water on MyFitnessPal, which is an app on my phone. It's really helpful.

One thing that I really wanted to do from the beginning of this journey is start running. Years ago, I had a dream where I was running. Not running from anything, not a stressful running dream - like a nice peaceful enjoyable running dream. I've held onto that as a sort of goal. I knew I'd need to lose weight to get there, so that was another facet of why I wanted to lose weight. Anyways! I did start running. I won't say it was easy, because oy vey it was not!

I ran my first 5k in January and after that I was sort of like, what now? But since I had built up to running a continuous 3.1 miles I did not want to lose my conditioning so I've continued.   Some days are still a struggle - like today. Oh man, I hate, hate running in the wind. Like super hate it. But, when it's sunny and Tuesday I just want to get outside. So, I pushed through a 2 mile lunchtime run today. 

I've been mulling over goals now at this point. Like, what are they? what is my new dream? I really have no interest whatsoever of running a marathon. And kind of no interest in a half. I'm still pretty slow - running about a 12 minute mile most days. So, I sort of want to focus on getting faster or maybe adding strength to get more distance in.

Sorry if this is all lame and boring. But, it is what's on my mind right now.

I have still been knitting and sewing. Nothing changed there. It's finally getting warm and Spring-y so I have also started getting out in the yard to weed and plant and plan.  Oh, I also picked the cross stitch project that I started like 3 years ago back up. So that's exciting, right? baha! Oh! and I'm also reading The Fellowship of the Ring. After my husband died I just did not have focus to read anymore. Which is a super bummer because I really used to love reading. So, getting to where I read a couple pages a night and retain the info is encouraging.

my new friend Oskar

I finished another Sven Scandinavian pattern. His name is Oskar. And, I love him! 

I have knit this pattern once previously to make Juergen and had planned to make him a wife with my next doll. But! I was on instagram and one of the knitting ladies I follow was making the pattern with a red beard and I knew I had to also make a ginger version!

While I am making a doll I usually start to think about their personality, their story in my mind. So, even though this guy was made second, he really feels more like Juergen's cool older brother.

I was knitting this doll while in San Diego for my father in law's funeral in July. I was working on the sweater while I was there. I took a list of perspective names and my nephew helped me pick one.  Such a small detail but it's special to me.

As with my previous iteration of the doll I altered the foot. Here's a bit of a close up of the boot. I forgot to to the sock part, so he's slightly shorter than Juergen. meh.

I also decided to make his hat more of a beanie style.  I followed the notes from lorix5 (Lori times 5) on Ravelry for her Bjorn.  I did the decreases from another hat pattern I have in my library and I really like how neatly it turned out! 

 For reals this time my next version will be a female companion for one of them! I have so many ideas on hair options and outfits.

Baked mini donuts

So, something you may not know about me is that I do not like donuts.  Mostly I don't like the taste left in my mouth after eating one and the heavy feeling I'm left with. It's great because whenever someone brings donuts to the office, it's easy for me to avoid them! I was on Pinterest, just checking stuff out and saw a recipe for Baked Apple Cider Donuts and I thought "hmmmm interesting". I really had never heard of such a thing and since they are baked I thought it might be good.  I was right!

As it happens, a friend of mine had just bought a mini donut pan and offered to let me borrow it to see if I'd want to purchase one of my own.  I've linked the recipe in case you'd like to give it a go as well.

One thing the recipe says to do is put the batter in a ziploc and cut off the tip - I thought this technique worked really well.  I also did one batch dipped in butter and regular sugar and one dipped in butter then stevia. Both were fantastic! But the stevia had slightly less calories so I tried to only eat those. I entered the recipe into myfitnesspal and it came up with 83 calories per mini donut on the stevia dipped version.

I kind of want to try another recipe without the buttermilk and reducing the apple cider. I saw another recipe that called for apple butter which would probably take care of that step.

Craft happenings

As you can imagine, since I've been busy busy outside I haven't been sewing as much as usual. But! I am still keeping in touch with my crafty side.  I am currently working on a pair of socks, which I have been keeping in my desk at work. I've been knitting 2-3 rows a day, so they are progressing nicely. 

I did get around to sewing up this small notions case, the pattern is by Leigh of ShopLouleigh. I have linked both her website and her etsy. Her website has all the links where you can find her content, which includes blog, podcast, ravelry, and etsy. Anyway, she had been making and selling these little notions pouches and decided to put out the pattern for it. 

I really like the way it came out. It is actually very compact, but does fit a number of sewing or knitting notions. It would also be useful in a purse for chapstick or that kind of thing.

The outer fabric is actually an old pair of pants that I won't be wearing anymore. It's a nice weight though so I chopped them up! The inside fabric is a fun vintage piece of fabric I've had in stash for awhile.

So, in other news I have been working on my diet and exercise. This year I think it really just made sense to me to lose some weight. I didn't have a huge epiphany or anything like that....more of a dawning realization.  I'm 41 and this is not going to get easier. "This" being health, weight loss, aging. I work in the medical field and seeing some of our elderly obese patients and the struggles they had was a big part of that. Thankfully I do not have any of the conditions that come from being overweight - diabetes, hypertension I'm looking at you!  So, I really have been paying attention to what I eat, quantity, hunger levels, cravings and such.

I've always known I have a sweet tooth. So I've been looking for ways to satisfy that craving without going overboard. I was having a little looky-loo on pinterest and found a recipe for baked spiralized apple chips - here is the link. I did substitute stevia and pumpkin pie spice instead of sugar and cinnamon. It makes a nice flavor. I used my food processor which made nice, even chips. The first time I made the recipe I used the spiralizer and they were very thin chips - which were also nice!

In the top left photo, those are peach slices. I would NOT recommend using peaches to make chips. Basically they were really brown dehydrated fruit pieces. Not my fav. But, the apples turned out wonderfully! Also, that aqua bowl was the bowl my Mom used all growing up while baking. She gifted it to me one of the last trips to see her.  I love it!

and we have grass!

This update might possibly be boring for people, but it's mostly to give my Mom an update on what's going on!  So, I've talked a bit about my back yard projects and you might remember that previously it was just a bunch of dead weeds. Well, it is now transformed!

A few weeks ago now, I had sod delivered to my house and a few friends helped me lay it out into the yard. We had prepped the dirt the weekend prior. We did not bring in any dirt, additives or fertilizers. When we were digging up the weeds we found that there had previously been sod here so we figured that the dirt would support grass. Honestly I didn't think about it much until after the sod was down and I was telling people (in my excitement) and people kept asking if I had pre-treated the soil - nope.

So, this first picture is the very first day! It already looks so, so much better. You can see in the forefront that there is still some dead weed matter. I have since cleaned that up and covered the edges with weed barrier. 

The picture below is a couple days ago. You can see how lush and green it is. Also, against the fence in the background you can see the angle of the slope towards the back. During the excavation process that slope was gone over a few times and so it is more gradual now than it had been.  Plus we raked over everything to try and even out the area so make it a nice home for the grass.

And, because this is George's home too, here she is enjoying the yard.  I imagine she likes how soft and cool the grass is.

Here's a little peek at the front flower bed, which I am just LOVING! I had planted rudbekia last year and this echinachea this year at the beginning of summer. The yellow rudbekia has been bloomed for like 2 weeks! I must remember to look out for more for the back yard.