W is for WIP

My friend Donna came up with this great idea for knitting. She's started the WIP Cup! It's to coincide with the Word Cup of Soccer which, like the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics, happens every four years.

Her husband is English and very much into soccer. She's not as into it and I'm not into it at all but she thought it would be a great motivation to finish some UFO's. We started a group on Ravelry and here are the rules.

The 2010 World Cup runs from 11 June - 11 July. That’s a whole month to clear out those WIPs.

Rules (Yes there will be rules):

We will be using the Ravelympics Wip rules, projects must be dormant (no work being done) for a month before the start of the World Cup (11 May)

A finalized list of Wips/Ufos that you will be working on must be decided on a week before the start date (June 4)

Tag your projects WIPCup2010

Post all of you finished works here

To be eligible for the prize (yay prizes!) you must complete your list of Wips by 11 July (will figure out what time zone later)

The prize will be a skein of Skeindalous yarn dyed in the winning teams’ colors, a $25 gift certificate to Scout Swag and a stitch saver. It will be determined by a random drawing.

In the spirit of knitting in general, this is all for fun! There will be no knitting police to stomp your feelings if you don't finish everything you've listed for the WIP Cup. Come join our Ravelry group and break out your WIP's! The group is small which surprises both of us as Soccer is so popular worldwide. Please help us spread the word! As knitters, we all have WIP's hanging about and this is a perfect opportunity to finish them. (Also, if for whatever reason you are not on Ravelry and you still want to play along, just email me (see email addy in my sidebar) and let me know what your list is and how you're doing!)

And there's prizes! Who doesn't love prizes?

If you have any fibery prizes you'd like to donate, we'll give them lots of press and appreciation!

Initially, when Donna brought up this WIP Cup idea, I was all, "Sweet! I can cast on a bunch of stuff now, then throw it in the closet for a month before it starts!" Then I remembered I have about 15 WIP's that need attending.

My WIP list is small but mighty...
The Bed Jacket of Doom - this thing's been finished and even sewn up for two years now! I just need to crank out the edging to call it done.
Icarus - This shawl has been on the needles for close to 3 years now. Must finish...
Odessa Hat - This hat has also been on the needles for about two years. I did the lower ribbing band and then just stopped for whatever reason. Ridiculous!
Chevron Scarf - I saw so many lovely Chevron Scarves and had two single, yet mismatched, skeins of Koigu that would go great together. I started the scarf, got about 1/3 of the way through and tossed it aside. Turns out I hate making Feather and Fan stuff. I like the way it looks! but I don't like making it. Gotta finish it as it's turning out really pretty.

Those four things won't even put a dent in the amount of WIP's and UFO's I have but The World Cup is only a month long and I'm not an especially fast knitter so it will have to do.

Before Donna brought this up, I figured I'd write W is for Workout, so guess what? Bonus W!

W is for Workout
When we moved to Highlands Ranch, I found out we'd have free access to all four of the town's huge Rec Centers. Each RC has an indoor and outdoor pool and rather large and well-equipped workout gyms. The closest to us is about a mile down the road and starting last October, I began working out.

I started on the recumbent bicycle and worked my way up to 30 minutes. One of the ways I motivated myself to go was by taking a paperback that I could only read while working out. Eventually I made my way to the elliptical machines. No reading there! At least not for me. I mostly just had to concentrate on not dying. I started out with 10 minutes and then I'd go into a corner and have a little lie-down. I'd pretend I was stretching but I was actually just getting my heart rate back down to a reasonable level!

Well, it's been 6 months and I'm up to 35 minutes on the elliptical, 5 or 6 days a week. Still don't read on it but I have a series of music that I listen to while I... ellipse? And in the last ten minutes, there's three songs I listen to that have 20-40 second sprints in them. I got up to 40 minutes for about two weeks but I really hit a wall with that.

See, initially, I lost ten pounds right away - yay! But I swear to you that I have not lost one single ounce since then. It's very disheartening! My shape has changed dramatically but even that stopped! When I went up to 40 minutes I was getting very discouraged. I whinged and whined for two weeks about how even my shape stopped changing then I looked in the mirror and was all, "Hm. It's changing again!" My dark pair of jeans really don't even fit anymore, they keep falling off! (Which is weird because they are the exact same size, style and maker as my other two pair.) So I keep going. Back down to 35 minutes but I keep going.

Here's a couple of strange gym stories...

A friend gave me a bunch of T-shirts that were to go to Goodwill. All my workout T's are over ten years old and are getting too ratty even for just gym-wear. So I got these new-to-me T's. I was wearing one in particular quite a lot. It's grey and has a big blue Transformer with Asian writing on the front and some Asian writing on the back as well. There's this tiny Asian woman I see at the gym nearly every day and she's a rock star on the elliptical! She sprints the whole time and is on it for about an hour - sheesh! She walked up to me by the weights and introduced herself and we started talking. She asked if I knew how to read Asian writing and did I know what my shirt said. I explained that it was given to me and I had no idea. She said, "Oh, I thought it had something to do with your job. I thought maybe your were an Animator or something." I said, "No, not an Animator" but what I thought was, "Wow. That's random!"

Then another day, I got in a conversation with this guy. He was walking past me (I was working my arms on some weight machine) and he has these incredible full-sleeve tattoos and here's the conversation we had...
Me: Wow, that's impressive! Where did you get it?
Him: Excuse me?!
Me: I've been looking for someone to give me one since we moved here three years ago!
His Friend: What is wrong with you??
Me (confused): No, it's fine! I've got six already and I'm just looking to get some more.
Him: I don't.... know what to say... to that.
Me: Sorry. I don't mean to offend, I'm just a big fan of really great tattoos.
Him: [starts laughing really hard] I thought your were talking about this...

Here's where he points to the HUGE, and obviously recent surgical scar on his shaved head that goes from the middle of his widow's peak, around the hairline and all the way down to his ear.

Fuck.

Why does this keep happening to me? I need to learn to be a bit more observant. sigh. At least now I've got the card of a really amazing tattoo artist!

Off to the gym, Ruth!