PT (test, not therapy)

Charlie horses in the bottoms of ones feet are not a really great time. There you are, lying down and drifting off to sleep when you feel this small twinge in the bottom of your foot. Which foot?
Why not both of them to make it really special!

Stretching carefully, it seems to let up. Then, striking with a vengeful hot iron, both of my feet cramped.

A couple of deep breaths later, my feet relaxed only to have both calves go.

Perhaps this gives you an indication of the day?

Not being terribly intelligent, I spent the morning cranking through my must do list and attending a promotion ceremony. All of a sudden it was 1530 and one of my favorite NCOs came looking for me. PT test time, and I had been waiting for him to return.

I didn’t have my PT gear, but since it is a 2 1/2 mile timed walk, I saw no harm in doing it in boots. But it was freezing and sleeting out there. cold! and slippery, let us not forget the slippery. Slithering and sliding on the two corners with cobblestones, I did not have a great time doing the almost 7 loops. I guess it is better than 11.8 loops around a standard track, but really. Passing the same scenery over and over.

No MP3 player allowed, nor can you take a dog along. That would fall into the category of potential assist.

Overall a sucking time was had by me for most of the walk. One of our great young sargents was finishing up a detail and hiked with me for the last round, talking about her MIL. Said MIL is a knitter and had just left after a visit. They had found some yarn, but not all that many shops. Reminds me that I need to provide Joy (the current wonderul list person) an updated German Yarn Store List. Besides being an ancient site (in WWW terms) Emily’s Woolworks is a great on-line resource. The pattern section includes many of the patterns posted on the original KnitList in 1995-97.

Viking Ship Sweater

In case you need music to put you in the Viking Mood – there are Muppets.

I am enjoying the pattern, the waves are clearly swirling and the keel is beginning to show.
viking3jan07b.jpg

But it is not for the faint of heart with regards to dealing with floats. There are some tremendously long sections of white. Really long, when I look at the sections that cross from front to back under the arms.

viking3jan07a.jpg

At this gauge, 5-6 stitch floats work fine and the fabric feels good. Longer floats would not be a good idea. Even so – I may wind up lining this sweater with a featherweight fleece. It is heavy enough to be a winter only sweater. Having used up almost 2 full balls of white, right now I am not sure that I will have enough yarn for sleeves since I am getting about 10 cm per ball of white. There isn’t much interesting about the sleeves – so that might not be a real loss. We will have to see. I am not making any decisions till I get to the armhole area.

Books

About to crawl off to bed with Double Take by Catherine Coulter.

Tomorrow I have to deal with an orders amendment, housing, the bank, medical, dental, the kids schooling and then make a number of phone calls while working on the performance appraisals in between.

I am going to be counting the hours to Shabbas from when I get up!

-Holly

This entry was posted in Books & Tapes, Knitting, Military, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to PT (test, not therapy)

  1. Ebony says:

    I am very impressed that you did a timed PT test in boots. I can’t even imagine doing that.

    That sweater is wonderful, btw. I’m sticking to the small projects for my stranded knitting right now, and maybe some day will work my way up to fair isle with it’s shorter floats. And then there are those Bohus sweaters! Maybe in 2009 I’ll try to tackle one of those.

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