Happy Birthday Alex!

If you want to see all the pics my brother and sister have from Alex's birthday party last weekend, go to my brother's site.

The Anti-Spread Campaign

My friend Stacey (the fabulous pastor, above, singing her heart out), of The Almond Branch, devised a plan she dubs The Anti-Spread Campaign. It began after she spent a week with a bunch of other young women ministers and they were talking about the tendency of ministers to spread...around their middles. Its basically a function of a sendentary lifestyle that comes with the job. Sitting around at meetings and visiting people in hospitals aren't activities that are conducive to staying fit. Rather, I think they contribute to a general unhealthiness--tense muscles, upset stomachs, headaches and other unhappy physical symptoms--which really needs to be dealt with intentionally.

I know all about it. Over the past few years I've struggled to find ways to keep healthy, and I've not discovered any good ones on a long-term basis. I have a hard time feeling motivated to stay active when I am doing it on my own--my only successful periods have been when I have friends with whom I'm studying yoga or going to the gym. Up here in Niskayuna I haven't got anybody to exercise with. So while I am technically unemployed as a young woman minister at the moment, I'm going to join up with the Anti-Spread Campaign, in the hopes that friends on the internet will inspire me.

Stacey has decided to run/walk the distance to Rome, and is hoping to make the distance before the Catholic Church decides to ordain women. I don't think she'll have any difficulty winning the race against the church, even if she dawdles a whole lot. She's wearing a pedometer *most* of the time (except for when its clashing with her stylish outfit) and has the goal of walking or running 10,000 steps a day, which comes to about 5 miles for her. See this post to read more about her plan.

So I plan to acquire a pedometer. But I'm going to diversify the plan to include biking. I've got my bike fixed up and its working great, so I am going to incorporate bike miles into my count (though I don't think they count as much as walking or running--biking certainly doesn't tire me out in the same way). I also want to include yoga practice somehow, but I don't know how to count it. Any ideas? Maybe substitute breaths for steps?

I don't plan on posting every day about my progress--maybe once a week I'll give a tally. I am keeping track on a separate calender as to how far I've gone this week. We'll see how it goes.

Melissa's birthday contest

Guess what...? I was the runner-up in Mel's contest! So I won one of her awesome totebags! Check it out
here if you want to see all the yarn donations Melissa's contest generated for Interim House.

I ended up sending a HUGE box, because I received some donations from church people and also from my sister-in-law, who contributed many balls of Simply Soft from an abandoned afghan project. Now the yarn will got into Interim House afghans! Hooray!

Some yarn I am sending to Interim House

CrazyCatLadyMel is having a contest for her birthday; send a package to Interim House and Mel will enter you into her drawing for a prize. Here is a piece of my offering as proof that I am entering the contest!

You too can enter Mel's contest, and if you don't have a blog, just email her to let her know that you are sending yarn to Interim House. If you want more information about Mel's contest, look here.

I am sending this yarn (you can too!) to
Kathy Duffy, Social Worker
Interim House Inc.
333 W. Upsal St.
Philadelphia PA 19119

And I just got an email from a friend that she is giving me three big bags of yarn to send to IH--so I'll be able to send a nice big box. So exciting!

Both socks I am knitting in a basket of rocks

We've been up at Bill's family place in Michigan. We saw old friends, particularly our friends Bob and Jane, who were with us the entire time. In knitting news, Jane made a fabulous garter-stitch scarf--I wish I'd taken a picture of it, it is so beautiful. I worked on a present for somebody else (I can't post pictures--the recipient occasionally reads this blog) as well as these two socks. The orange and green one socks will be for me; the pink and blue will hopefully be part of a pair to be gifted to Jane. I can post this picture as she was with me as I was knitting--no surprise there. I am actually nearly done with her first sock--it remains to be seen how quickly I will finish the second sock.

I have socks on the brain--I also bought some wild green yarn at a lovely yarn store in Ludington, called Nautical Yarn to knit these socks, the Spiral Boot Socks, from the Summer 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. To be started only after I've finished the previously mentioned 2 pairs of socks.

I was going to buy pink yarn and knit the socks like in the Interweave picture above, but Jane talked me into buying some Kermit green yarn instead. Jane and I went a little bit crazy buying yarn at Nautical Yarn, but it is really such a lovely shop. The socks will remind me forever of Bill's and my trip up to the top of the Little Point Sable lighthouse near his cottage. Bill took this picture of the spiral staircase as we climbed the 130 steps to the top.

Other than a few activities like pinochle, bike riding and sitting on a towel in the sand by Lake Michigan, here is what I did for the entire time:

Want to see the rest of my Michigan pictures? go here, to my Flickr site.