201 km !

Self and I had heated words today...

After the dog walk this morning, I watched the weather for an hour or so and decided to take out the bike. Yesterday, it conveniently threatened rain all day and I used that as the perfect excuse to NOT go out on the bike. Yeah, yeah I knew perfectly well it was an excuse, but I had a sore butt, it was gonna rain, it was cold, yadda yadda, yadda.

5 minutes from the house she started:

Self - OMG, we can't do this !

Me - YES, we can, it's only 12k

Self - But, it's gonna rain, and our knees are sore, and our bum is sore and it's windy and it's faaaaaarrrrr ! whiny, whiny, whiny voice

Me - of COURSE we can, we did it Tuesday, we can do it today.

Self - but, I'm tired already and my bum's really SORE !

Me - just keep pedalling and shut up.

Self - but, but, but...

Me - lalalalalala, I'm not listening, keep pedalling.

55 minutes later self and I arrived back home after 13km (yes, she stopped complaining and kept pedalling LOL)

Not sure if I've blogged this before but I've been walking the Trans Canada Trail (tctrail.ca has an interactive map, you use a pedometer and log mileage or steps each day). This month my goal was 200 km for the month - it took 25 km on the bike to do it but I made my goal ! Happy, happy, happy :-)

Parting Shot(s)
I love that the trees completely overhang the roads in our neighbourhood. This was cottage country in the 1950s and most of the grown trees are at least that old.


Putting mileage on those little legs this week - 4k for 5 days in a row so far - and this is the result once we get home - everyone picks their spot...

Alex gets the couch:


Skippy, the sunroom carpet:


Charlie (who we have for 2 weeks rather than the expected 2 weekends) has settled in nicely and will flake out anywhere :-)

I'm a Wimp

HA ! what a whuss !


You can see where I'm going with this, right ?
That, my friends, is a picture of a torture machine (similar to treadmills, ellipticals, etc.)

For the past 3 years (hmm, maybe more) it has lived hanging from our garage ceiling. Every year I say I should get it down and use it. For the same 3 years (or more) I've started and stopped a multitude of walking programs.

THIS year I've actually made some weight loss progress ! Somewhat unintentionally at first but hey, that was just bonus. However, it has all been a result of counting calories and cutting portion sizes. There's that 4km walk most days, and while I expect it's helping some, I try not to count that, I'd rather it just be 'normal' for me.

Now, I figure I better up the ante a bit. A weight loss program should definitely include exercise and at the moment I'm going through physio for knee pain. Biking is a good idea overall.

DH tuned it up on Sunday, today I took it out for a short ride. Those knee muscles need a LOT of work.

I can walk 10-15km no problem - and did in fact start my day with the 3-dog 4km walk. But biking uses different muscles and I apparently haven't used those in a while. My short ride turned out to be an hour - 13km. It was all local on bike paths and I tried to keep it as non-hilly as possible - those inclines felt like mountains LOL. I know it was a slow speed, short distance but I gotta start somewhere and really, I`m happy I did it without having to walk up any of the inclines.

Tomorrow again, if the rain holds off - and if I can walk. Like I said, a wimp :-)

It's all about the puppies !

Rain cleared up yesterday afternoon. Today is the only sunny day on the weather report - 'course we all know how accurate they are ! LOL

After I waved DH off at the door this morning (oh I'm liking this !), I leashed up the 3 dogs and out we went. I'm bound and determined to keep my calorie count stable and my exercise up this week. Now that I've had a couple of quiet, catch-up days, I don't want to be a couch potato all week.

Here they are - ready to go...Alex and Skippy are coupled on the purple leash - after the first walk or two of the season they walk really well like this. They get enough room to sniff a bit and no knotted leashes for me :-)


We live in a residential neighbourhood and I've got a couple 4km walks mapped out. One, in the newer (more sunny) area and the other in the older, more treed area. It was already pretty sunny and hot when we left, so we went with the shady walk.

Bah, we got the walk in, but ended up circling around some roads. Why ? because some people insist on opening their doors and letting their dogs run loose ! Their big dogs. Their big dogs who, upon seeing other dogs out walking adopt a not-so-friendly pose.

I have 2 little dogs, was walking 3 little dogs this morning and two of those little dogs have big dog complexes. When they look in the mirror they see Rottie's or something LOL

With my two, I can scoop 'em up and get out of Dodge,so to speak, if necessary - not so much with three of them.

Much better to backtrack and detour around instead. We have to do this all the time and it p***ses me off.

People, if you want your dogs out, take them for a walk - leashed !
If you want to open the door and let them out loose, fence your yard !

Tomorrow, I'll go the other route :-)

Staycation - what to do, what to do...

Today is a stat holiday in Quebec, as is next Friday (Canada Day). Normally, I wouldn't take the days in between as holidays - a lot of people do and it makes for a pretty quiet week at work. This year though, I'm ready for a break - have to clear my brain. There's been a lot of stress since about November and I'm due.

The plan? There is none really. But I'm on my own, DH is not off with me.

We're babysitting Charlie, my DSIL's dog, so, along with my 2 I've got lots of company.

If the sun comes out, maybe the dogs and I'll walk, maybe I'll garden, maybe I'll nap, maybe I'll sew, maybe I'll work on my socks (or the 'almost' done sweater, maybe I'll sit on the back deck and read (or surf).

I could have gone to New Brunswick, or Toronto but I've been counting days to doing nothing for almost a month now so no travelling.

Right now I've got 10 gloriously stress-free days to fill up as I choose ! The possibilities are endless.

Gotta close the barn door

...after the horse got out !

I'm so sorry everyone, my hotmail account was spammed yesterday and as far as I can tell there may be as many as 5 emails circulating.

Update - at least 7...

Known subjects as of noon Monday -
From the bottom of my heart
Specialy for you
It's amazing
Something special for you
Nice present
Exclusively for you
Present for you

I know most people are savvy enough now to not OPEN suspicious emails (I was never so happy to receive 'undeliverables' as I was this morning) but we do tend to assume some people are safe. With a few exceptions, I don't normally send links or attachments - I hope that will ring a bell with most of my contacts as being suspicious.

Thanks to all of you who emailed to warn me. :-)

Veggie Bed

I finally got the veggie bed cleaned out, a bag of earth added and the poor, neglected new plants in the ground with a good drink of water !

Remember the before ?


And the after...


...so what's in there ?
Back L to R - sage, tarragon, tomato, cherry tomato
Front L to R - mini yellow rose (the largest it's been in 5 years), basil, yellow pepper, lavender, oregano.

The sage, tarragon, lavendar and oregano were planted 2 summers ago and I never expected them to overwinter one year nevermind growing into bushes ! So far I haven't harvested them at all, maybe it's time I figured out what to do with them.

HP - Plain and Simple - Ready for More ?

Ah patience ! I've heard it said about me in regards to the pants BUT the reason my last post was May 22 was because it got the better of me for a bit - the fit was either more wrinkly than I wanted or each tweak had too much of a snowball effect and did more bad than good. It's been on my mind but I haven't done a great deal since my last pants posts - just bits here and there. Lots more reading online and in all the books I have with pant fitting in them.

Yesterday, I got up and decided to have another go at figuring out my crotch curve. I have both a flexible ruler and lots of tinfoil and have tried this unsuccessfully before. I don't remember the results but if I had to guess, it was before I knew that the back curve being much longer and lower than the front is actually NORMAL ! LOL

After a couple of attempts...this me (or at least a reasonable facsimile)

I carefully placed this over my pants and traced it out. The faint red line is the traced curve. Actually, it's not far off my last seam other than that bump that is (or should be) the CB seam. The CF starts a bit to the left, crosses to the SA at the CF curve and at the inseam crosses back over the CB seam where it is just below my last seam to the curve after which it curves about an inch before coming back to the seamline at top of CB.

I sewed this seam from the front to back, joining the original seam at the bottom of the CB straight seam. That bit of vertical fold is STILL there in the front but the back wrinkles are minimized. Now - for the last few weeks I've followed Sew4Fun's suggestion of taking my pics with heels to be able to see the difference between sewing wrinkles and posture wrinkles - I do NOT have heels in these pics.


Didn't like the feel of the front crotch so I sewed the final seam as shown below. I followed CF with the newest line, did not cross to the SA but kept the previous curve under CF crotch, the new seam under the CB crotch and the straight-a-way up the CB seam. Make sense ? I took a pink marker to it...

BTW - you may have noticed the mess in front of the front inseam. I took a 1/2-inch wedge?dart from the CF crotch to the knee. It is the only thing that made that darned front fold less. Was it the 'right' things to try - couldn't tell you, but I'm happier with them.

My final pic - those wrinkles are actually way less than I've ever had in flat feet !


Now to unbaste and copy this on to another pair - that vertical dart worked but made these one's an unwearable muslin :-)

Hope you all had a great weekend.

3rd Blogiversary !

Wow - Kind of hard to believe I've stuck with this for 3 years ! oh, technically it was yesterday but I only noticed just now. Since I generally seem to notice way after it's past, this is pretty close to 'on time' :-)

...ok, so I just went back to see how long it took to write blogiversary posts for years 1 and 2 - I missed them both for timing but my writing is consistent ... on every one so far I've written 'kind of hard to believe' - I was going to edit it out and write something else, but it's true - I rarely keep at something so long. Maybe I'm acquiring some 'stick-to-it-iveness' in my old age LOL

Thanks for reading and commenting, I do appreciate you all.