Lately it's benn a bit of a mission trying to find new/old routines, and especially a routine in which blogging will fit. We'll just have to take baby steps for the time being and darlings, I'm afraid that you'll just get what you get. This is a cardinal blogging rule
broken (people want REGULARITY, dontcha know), but until I'm paid to blog full time about my own shit, strict regularity is just not going to happen, I'm afraid. I stop blogging when I start feeling guilty about not blogging what I thought I would blog, which leads me into a vicious cycle of procrastination that can only be broken by being kind to myself.
I have been feeling The Burn more than I have for an awfully long time. I am back at roller derby training after a somewhat unintentionally long hiatus; I've recovered from my 2009 Season Burn-out and am trying to balance out my commitments a little better this year. One of the nicest things that I've picked up, and recently with a kind of vengeance, is Astanga yoga. It's a very physical form of yoga but it works very well with the very high impact stuff that we do at derby and has helped me with my recovery time from that high impact exercise. I started with yoga because I am obsessed with the tightness in my hip flexors - they're the muscles at the top inside of your leg, which control how wide you can (ahem) spread your legs and the rotation that you can get during that spread - getting my legs rotated further would be good for skating because I want to be able to skate with my feet facing out to either side so I only present my back to the opposition as I take a corner. I saw Smarty Pants do this when she trained with us last year and it was super impressive. Some of the women I skate with can do it and it would be a fantastic thing to have in my arsenal I think.
However, I am so inflexible in my hip "flexors" it's as though my body was made of a ball of plasticine and my legs were two toothpicks jammed in the bottom. When I try to face my feet out they are never straight enough and I end up going around in circles. I don't think I've explained this very well but basically, to do this move your feet should look like this:
And mine end up more like this:
Does this at least partially explain this? I'm hoping so.
You'll be pleased to know that my flexiness is increasing. Once you start making a regular effort to do these things it's impressive how quickly the difference is obvious.
I had a weekend with my Boy and with sleeping and with knitting and it was lovely, and it happened mostly in bed. Because, yes, we are now living together (did I mention?). One of the best things about this is not having to leap out of bed in the weekends to rush home and do things, or sleep in at his knowing that I am making a trade off on "things that will be achieved". Living together means that I am achieving
and sleeping in. It's heaven, wrapped in a duvet, wrapped in bacon with a delicous coffee dipping sauce on the side.
I spent a bunch of birthday vouchers I was given by the Menfolk (and one left over from Christmas), and bought the most beautiful merino possum yarn. Merino possum yarn is the most INSANELY SOFT GORGEOUS YARN ever, like knitting with hand fulls of unicorn based loveliness wrapped in marshmallow clouds. Vouchers give one a much better excuse to buy two $15 balls of yarn. Normally, I could never justify such an expense. On Saturday then I rushed home and made a pair of handwarmers from the yarn and using a pattern from a new book that I bought at Minerva - normally I would just throw a pattern together myself but why the hell not since I bought the book? It's a lovely book too and I want to knit many many things from it.
My earlier rush of obsessive knitting has slowed to a trickle, but I've been awesomely happy with what I've produced which is a nice feeling. I bought a new set of plastic drawer thingumies for stash storage and have been relentlessly frogging disappointing early projects. It's pretty much the most awesome feeling reclaiming wool from pure hideousness mistakenry that I've been trying to wear in homage to my
perserverence. I can't recommend it enough.
