Learning Curves...

 The first of anything--hour of the day, day of the week, week of the month, etc--is a great time to make changes for the better.  Being a new day and a new month in a new year is especially propitious for these changes.

There are multiple places on social media encouraging us to improve our health this new year.  I bought into it.  So I did it!  And thus enjoyed, in a manner of speaking, the beginning of a new learning curve.

Before the end of the last year I saw challenges to walk a mile every day in January so I decided to do it.  On New Year's Day I got up, did my morning ritual (bathroom, health numbers, scripture reading, reviewed names on the Get Involved App from FamilySearch.org, DuoLingo), made a pot of oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon (and ate a good serving) as per The Oatmeal Cure--more on that later--, put my headset on, got the big stroller out of the truck bed where we store it, turned on Map My Walk, and started out.

It was a great morning for a walk.  Fresh air, a little cloudy, not a lot of people out driving around after a night of potentially carousing in the New Year, just a perfect time to walk.  I put on a book I have been reading: The New Testament Environment by Eduard Lohse and really enjoyed myself.  My idea was to walk the whole perimeter of our housing complex...to get in a mile of walking AND to find out how far it was around that perimeter.

May I say that it was a great walk for the first while: past MonaLisa's house, up Niblick,  left on Glenmorangie, then onto Masters out to US 15, back down Masters to Talisker then picked up the other end of Master, left onto Macallan, and then a problem struck: the top of my left foot began to call my name. In a most unpleasant way.  I was almost to Abelour where I would turn left to move into the second part of the perimeter.  I could either take Abelour or continue straight, go past Niblick/Lagavulin  and then to our street, OR I could just keep walking along the greenspace by the neighbor's house and get home pretty fast.  Each step along Macallan said, "Go home faster..."  so I did.  

When I got home I actually did fold up the stroller and reinstall it in the truck bed before squeezing past the truck and into the house where I sat in my wonderful 40-year-old rocker.  And stayed there for an hour or more.  The bad news is that I did not complete my quest.  The good news is that it was 1.37 miles so that part of the goal was accomplished.  As I sat there recovering I decided that I would go past MonaLisa's house and turn left over the dam to complete the perimeter walk going the other direction the next day.  Did not happen.  Some part of that same leg's knee caused me fits.  

As far as health goals go, I have a fair amount to learn.  Often I get excited and do more than turns out to be reasonable.  On 2 January I did no perimeter walk but I did have to go out and did store walking or rather store sauntering and got in nearly an hour of that.  Still, that knee screamed at me.

Now it is 3 January.  I am trying to gird up my loins to try the second half of the perimeter.  There are some housecleaning goals I have for today so I am unsure about the wisdom of doing the perimeter walk but we shall see.  (I get deflected by pain. And many other things...)

On the First after dragging myself back up to my knitting chair I worked on a project for the kind friend who had come over the previous Friday and pruned the Abelia bushes in front of the house.  I had decided to make him a hat.  This is the hat I made:

The hat is called the Boxed Button Hat by Cori Eichelbeharger of Irocknits.  The little squares between the upright sections of Knit 2 stitches are meant to have nifty buttons sewed on.  My friend, being an adult male, did not seem like a person who wanted sheep buttons or fish pole buttons or rainbow buttons or any other cool buttons installed, so I did not do it.  His wife can sew them on if he wants them...!

Because we had some nice white Patons Classic Wool yarn  (the same wool as the red) left from the Christmas Advent Stocking knit along, and since I had just heard someone speaking of corrugated ribbings, I decided to make a corrugated rib.  Starting from a place of no knowledge.  I just did it.

Not such a great idea!  

You will notice that even though there is a ribbing on the hat, the edge curls out as all stockinette work does.  While sleeping it came to me to crochet on a single crochet edging to see if that would straighten it out.  You can see by the completed hat that it did.

So today you see learning curves in both walking and knitting!

What I learned about knitting corrugated ribbing:  the cast on needs to be be followed by a round of plain knitting before starting the corrugation.  At least that is what I am going to try on my next hat to see if that solves the problem.  Stay tuned. More yarn is on the way and I plan to make four hats soon. It may be that the cast on should be two-color.  I may try that, too.