Not even a WIP: Maroo mitts

How often can you run into something before you give in to its lure and just buy the damned thing? I had that with the Maroo mitts. These gorgeous little knitted mitts, with a simple construction and colour-blocked scallops, I must have run into the ad on Ravelry for that pattern at least 20 times this past week alone. They're so cute! And they look snuggly and warm and adorable. And those colours! I've seen them look amazing in variations of green, a medley of red colours, and even a halloween-themed pair in black, orange and yellow. Very cute. But the original colours really caught my eye: dark grey, with a pop of bright honey-mustard yellow, followed by an edge of silver. Gorgeous! Not my usual colours, perhaps, but I figured it was high time I strayed from my blues and greys a bit. Too many accessories in the same colours can get dull.

So this week I finally caved and went to look at the pattern again for the yarn, and then it struck me that I have this pattern in my library already! I got it for free not too long ago (I think for the designer's birthday?) so all I had to do... was buy yarn! I need a relatively small amount for them because they're just mitts, so I didn't want to buy very expensive yarn just to use a tiny bit. The yarn I settled on is Lana Grossa Cool Wool Baby, it's 100% merino and it's supersupersoft. Because of my sensitive skin I can't wear normal wool close to my skin, and in some cases even acrylics can itch and scratch like a beast, but I have never had a problem with merino.

But I can't start, not just yet. I need to finish the Sunshine Shawl still! I'm getting there, I've got about 20 grams left, if not less. I'm hoping that when it's done, it'll be a decent-sized little shawlette that is perfect to wear in this current bout of weather we're having. It's sunny and warm, but as soon as the wind picks up slightly it cuts right through your sweater. And at night it cools off rapidly, too! We've already had temperatures below 0 degrees here too, so the cold is rapidly approaching. I need to get a move on on this shawl. Maybe I need to keep this yarn out on my desk as an incentive to knit faster, so I can start on my mitts!

WIP: Sunshine shawl

This lazy blogger went to the market, this lazy blogger went home, this lazy blogger...

You get the idea. I guess the summer got in the way again, like it does every year. This year though, I've mainly been working, and only had one week off! We went to a festival, like we do every year, we had a great time, saw a boatload of great bands (and a handful of not-so-great ones), had little to no sleep, and came back home with a ton of stories and a backpack full of laundry. You know, like every year.

In the mean time, though, I have been knitting. I'm working on a Sunlight Shawl for Sad People in, almost ironically, a moody, overcast-sky coloured yarn. I'm making it for a friend who gave me a whole bag full of her old clothes because we both lost a ton of weight and now I fit in her old clothes. That, plus the fact that she's a great person who is truly knitworthy (two years or so ago I made her a hat out of clownbarf babbymelting acrylic yarn that she still wears on occasion because it keeps her head incredibly warm), and the fact that her birthday was a month ago, meant I decided to knit something really nice and soft and warm for her.

It's the first time I've ever attempted to knit something of a decent size, and it's working up really well! The pattern is very simple and is basically the pattern for a standard triangular shawl with yarnover increases, and as a modification you can add ridges, or as some people who have made the shawl did, eyelet rows. I'm trying to space the modifications out evenly. I'm not sure what I want to do with the border yet, or how much yarn I need to have left over for a border, so that will be interesting. I have quite a bit of shawl to go still though, so I'll worry about that later.

This was my first attempt at adding an eyelet row to anything this size! It's pretty cool. (Yeah, yeah, I can hear the more experienced knitters snickering behind my back... There's a first time for everything, right?) And I didn't even miss a stitch! Dropped one, yes. No worries though, I picked it up again.

I promised to have it finished before the weather turned cold and as it was only 15 degrees yesterday and raining like crazy, I probably need to get a move on!

Chocolate rum-raisin cookies

Delicious, delicious chocolate. Oh, oh my. You know, sometimes, a girl has to eat chocolate. And when there's no chocolate in the house, chocolate cookies made with the best cocoa you can find will just have to do!

Last night, as I was scouring the shelves of our cabinets trying to find something, anything chocolate related, I happened upon a very old bar of rum-raisin chocolate. Old, as in, the packaging felt brittle. Yeah. How that managed to survive this long in our cupboard without being eaten, I have no idea. It certainly is a miracle, in this house. But it gave me an idea! I grabbed a bottle of rum, a bowl of raisins, and made rum-soaked raisins to go into a fluffy, soft, pillowy chocolate cookie.

This chocolate cookie base is based off a recipe by The Pioneer Woman, my go-to website for comfort food recipes, and I think you could add practically anything that even remotely goes with chocolate, like nuts, other dried fruits, oatmeal, more chocolate... I was thinking of trying these with mocha beans, the sharp coffee flavour would be excellent in combination with the full, rich chocolate cookie base.

Oh man... I might have to get a box of mocha beans now.

Chocolate rum-raisin cookies
Makes about 18, depending on size

You will need:

- 1/2 cup golden raisins
- enough dark rum to cover
OR
- 1/2 cup rum raisins

If you want to soak your raisins yourself, put them in a bowl and cover them with the rum. Let sit for at least 24 hours. If you're in a hurry, you could try my method: Put your raisins in a bowl with a lid, cover with the rum, and close the lid. Then put the bowl in a larger bowl filled with hot water from the tap and let it sit for as long as possible. When you're ready to add them to your dough, drain them off and pat dry with paper towels. They won't have the punch of real rum raisins, but there will be a definite aftertaste!

- 140 grams of softened butter
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 6 tablespoons of cocoa
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Preheat your oven to 175 °C and prepare a cookie sheet with baking paper or a baking mat.

Cream together your butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and stir well until combined.
In a different bowl, mix your flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Sift it into your wet ingredients in batches and stir each time until just combined.
Drain your raisins if necessary and fold them into the batter.
Drop tablespoon-sized heaps of batter onto your baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies seem just set. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the sheet before transferring them to a cooling rack to further cool down. Be careful when transferring them, the cookies are pretty delicate!

Enjoy!

Lunch time: Couscous salad

Aw man, my poor neglected blog! I have been so incredibly busy, I have had little to no time to even think about blogging, let alone attempt to write something! And I was so keen to post something! Anything! I bought a new camera (a real DSLR! Yay! I've got a Real Camera for Grownups now!) and I've been dying to use it on some pictures for the blog! I'm still fiddling with settings and getting used to taking pictures with it but hopefully you can see some sort of improvement. So for my lack of posts: my sincerest apologies

But what I won't apologise for is that delicious bowl of golden yellow, enticing green and popping red, orange and pink at the top of the page. Oh boy. One of the perks of working from home has definitely been that I am able to make my lunch fresh at lunch time and since I like a bit of variation every now and then, salads have been my go-to lunch for a while now. They're so versatile! I always follow the same formula for my lunch salads: a good base, with a huge helping of veggies (usually tomato, cucumber and bell pepper), and a nice heaping pile of protein. Apart from that, it's usually a free-for-all, depending on what I have in the fridge and what I'm craving at that moment.

This salad follows my formula to a T, and then adds a few dashes of extra-special to bring it right up to the top of my favourite lunches! Have you ever eaten couscous? I hadn't, until recently. It's a semolina-based Arabic staple dish with a texture not unlike rice. Fresh couscous is made of tiny semolina pellets that are then steamed. Most supermarkets don't sell fresh couscous, however, they sell pre-steamed couscous pellets that take next to no time to prepare, making it an excellent alternative to rice or pasta. The texture is very light and fluffy, making it the perfect base for a salad dish as it's delicious both cold and hot from the pan.

This delicious lunch salad is a cinch to put together. Simply bring some water to a boil, take it off the heat, tip in your couscous, stir some spices through, and combine with the rest of the ingredients. Done! One delicious and filling salad in next to no time! And with the slight heat from the spices, the crunch from the cucumber, and the sweet and sour from the apricots and tomatoes, this is the perfect little salad for a summer day.

Couscous salad
(filling lunch salad for 1)
------------------

75 grams dried couscous
80 ml water (roughly, but follow the instructions on your packet of couscous to be sure)
5-8 cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/3 cucumber, cubed
3 slices of turkey deli meat, stacked and sliced into cubes, or a small piece of turkey breast, cooked to your liking and cubed
4-6 dried apricots, cubed
1 teaspoon hot curry spices
salt and pepper to taste

Cook your couscous according to the instructions of your packet. (It will most likely be a variation of 'bring water to a boil, take off the heat, tip in your couscous, allow to stand for 3 minutes, stir to separate and make fluffy') Once done, add your curry spices and salt and pepper to taste. I like mine spicy so I usually add about 1 teaspoon, followed with a small amount of salt and a reasonably large dash of pepper. Stir through to combine the spices and the couscous properly, and place your couscous in a deep dish or bowl. Add your veggies, meat and apricots and stir to combine. Taste and adjust spices to taste, if necessary. If not: Enjoy your lunch!

Tecrin gets fit: one year in

Okay, so it's one year and a bit. Whoops!

One year ago, on the 17th of June 2012, I made a Big Decision. I had made a few before in the previous year: I made the Big Decision to quit my job at the bookshop, I made the Big Decision to start freelancing as a translator, and on the 17th of June 2012, I made another Big Decision. I don't even quite know what brought it on, but what I do know is that on the evening of that day in June, I had had enough of what I was doing with my life and needed a big change that I had complete and utter control over, unlike my work Decisions: I decided to get fit!

Don't mind my grumpface. It was cold!

In 2010, I was probably at the very height of my weight. I don't know how much I weighed at this point, but I remember at one point having the scales tip over 115 kg. They may have even gone up past that! And I looked the part, too. Very unhappy with myself, in June 2011, I signed up at the local gym, got a summer subscription and spent at least two days at the gym each week. That may not sound like a lot, but it was definitely a step up from the zero exercise I was getting at that point. I got a simple workout routine assigned to me by a trainer, and slowly went from pushing myself out the door to actually looking forward to working out. It wasn't often that I felt like that, mind, but it happened from time to time.

Awful picture is awful. Jeesh, Stef, who taught you how to dress, monkeys?!

A year had past, and despite working out at least twice a week and trying my hardest at the gym, I couldn't see a lick of difference. This is me in June 2012, days after I made the Big Decision, at my official starting weight of 112,5 kg. I upped my gym time to 3 times a week, and started to really pay attention to what I was eating. As it turned out (and as I already knew but didn't have the willpower to change) I was eating a bucketload of crap. Unhealthy, fat, sugary muck, mostly. Days could go by without me eating a single piece of fruit or vegetable. I drank almost nothing but sugary drinks, juices, lemonades, sodas. I cut out all these sugary drinks, and switched to water entirely. I changed to eating actual breakfast, instead of eating biscuits and drinking coffee.

After about 2 months in, I could slowly start to see some changes in my face. That felt amazing!

After about a month, I learned enough about healthy food to start eating better properly. I started counting calories on an app on my phone to better keep track of the unhealthy food choices I was making, started incorporating healthy dinners, better lunches than instant soup and crackers or sandwiches layered with cheese and ham, or peanut butter, or Nutella. I learned to not finish off every last bite in the pan, that it was okay to throw away or freeze the food we hadn't eaten during dinner. Tim slowly warmed up to the idea of eating healthier and better, too!

As time ticked on, I became more and more of a gym rat: I spent at least 2 hours, 3 times a week at the gym, I started running (and ended up in physical therapy because I'm a dolt with weird muscles), I started to incorporate more weights into my workouts. At the end of 2012, I was down well over 15 kg! I could go shopping with my mother and actually fit into stuff in the regular section! No more shopping trips that ended in tears and despair! I even fit into jeans from a shop I used to love! The body image issues I talked about in my opening post a year ago still reared their heads every now and then, when I couldn't see any progress or had a shitty day and ate everything in sight. But I was slowly learning to come to terms with it!

It was 2013... And look at that! A shape, that can be described as more than just 'blob'!

In February of 2013, I got my first gym routine that was based heavily on heavy weights. It was amazing! Such an eye opening moment to realise that I loved lifting weights so much! I even started bench presses, that made me feel even more bad-ass. After working up to the weights room though, I wanted more. With help from my trainer at the gym, I weaned off the cardio to a basic warming up and cooling down, and as of May 2013, I got a real, heavy weights routine, with deadlifts, bench presses, barbell squats, kettlebell swings, barbell rows and clean and presses. I think I can safely say that I have become fairly addicted to working out and getting stronger! I recently even joined in a gym-wide timed circuit challenge and wasn't happy with my first time, so I did the circuit a second time and beat my old time by almost a full minute! The rush of personal victories that can only come from your own strength and ability is amazing, and I love it every time I put an extra plate up on the barbell or pick up a bigger dumbell.

I found support in the ranks of the members of Fitocracy when I needed it, it turning rapidly into my favourite online hangout, paired with a great group of ladies in a Ravelry group I'm a member of (Cheerclub! Fistbump!). I also found support in my family members and of course Tim. I even managed to drag my mother to the gym with me and got her to pick up some heavier weights a few times. She loves it!

Approximately 1 year difference! The sign is my trainer's way of being ironic. Burpees. How I hate them. Ugh!

After one year, I think I can say with honesty that I am damned proud of myself for the progress I have made so far. Am I done? Are you kidding? I just got started! I am going to keep working to better myself, learn more about nutrition, healthy living, get stronger, get healthier, and work like a machine to turn myself into the best version of me there can be. I can't wait to see what the next year will bring!