The Fabled Follow-Through

I did it! I, who never follow through with (hardly) anything, have finished something I said I would do. And I can safely say it was all thanks to... da, da, da, dum... Couch 2 5k! I followed the program for 9 weeks, and while there were some rough practices, I finished the program and went on to run my first 5k in... forever. A long time, in any case. I did the Raise the Roof 5k benefiting Cincinnati's Habitat for Humanity, and the course was at Sharon Woods, which was SUPER HARD! It was crazy hilly, and it went through some really pretty woods (as you might have gathered from the name of the park). My boys were there to cheer me on, and I don't think I could have done it without them, either. While I didn't reach my personal goal of finishing within 30 minutes (I finished in 35:38), I did a pretty good job, and I only walked twice for a very short distance. Oh, and I picked it up at the end. :)

Oh, and the whole point of this post was to display my headband I knitted just for this occasion. I thought it would help my inner get-up-and-go if I made something special for myself to get me motivated, and it really did. I made this beautiful headband, and it's one of the many free patterns I've gotten off ravelry. By the way, if you're a fiber crafter, and you're not on ravelry, you're seriously depriving yourself of something wonderful and pure. So do it. I used this really nice thick wool yarn in my favorite crafting color: grey! I know grey sounds like such a boring color medium, but it's so versatile. And this thing is super soft. I doubled the yarn because I wasn't sure about the lace in a headband I wanted to keep the cold out of my ears, and that did the job. It worked great, and I actually ended up taking it off the last mile and using it to wipe the sweat off my forehead. It worked great for that, too. :) In addition to the beautiful, soft grey yarn I used, I used a very cool wood-like button for the back closure. The headband took no time at all to make, and I would recommend this pattern to anyone! It was great to work with it, and I loved the end result. If you're going to make it, the thing does stretch so don't worry about gauge too terribly much.

I'm really glad I did this, and I'm actually thinking of doing more 5ks. I'm kind of worried that now that I have no goal in mind, I'll stop working out. I can't let myself do that! I will NOT let myself do that. Oh, and I have to eat better. I'll be working on that. So today's lesson is to get up and go outside! I know it's hot, but you can do it. You will feel better, I promise. Unless you pass out from heat stroke, but I trust you to listen to your body and go inside if you start to feel sick. Okay? Okay. If I can do it, you can! (I'm a lazy bum. :))

Time to Accessorize

So we've been traveling a lot, lately, and I can't really craft. That means I have to find something I can do on the road (or in the hotel) and something that will also dress up my travel gear. Enter knit and crochet flowers. I've made some of these before, but I hadn't thought about putting them on all sorts of things. They're really easy, though, and I love them. :) So that makes it awesome. I bought 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Some Lady (google it, you'll find it), and it's got the most amazing flower, leaf, fruit/vegetable, bug and leaf designs. I've been piecing together flowers to make little corsage-type things. The most recent one I made was a bouquet of trillium (They're called something else in the book, but I made them white, and now they're trillium! Voila.) with 2 large leaves and 1 small. You probably wouldn't know that if you saw it, but that's what they're called in the book: large and small leaves. I think it looks awesome on my suitcase. :)

There's really not a whole heck of a lot for me to craft right now, theoretically speaking. I can't do any of my paper crafts right now (bah!), and there are only limited knitting/crocheting capabilities because I don't want to be carting around skeins and skeins of yarn. Plus, I have a Halloween costume to finish, and that really needs to take priority. I can't wait to show that one off! Trust me, that'll be a lot more exciting than a tiny corsage. :) This was a really fun project, though, and it made me slightly more excited about moving all my crap to another state. I definitely plan on making more of these. I think I'm going to try wearing one in my hair next time. Something fall-y. We'll see how that works out.