Greetings!
Well, I awoke to a cloudy Friday here in Seattle. I was supposed to be at Boeing Field for a flight test at 6:30 AM, but luckily I had the presence of mind to call our flight test hotline (useful little bugger!) and see what the status was. My instincts on Not Wasting Time were right on - the flight had been delayed by 4 hours. I was able to come home, change clothes, and book it to the gym for a 6 AM Crossfit class that left my arms pretty much useless. The trainer had us stack up weight plates - 5 kg, 10 kg, 15 kg, 20 kg, and 25 kg in a pile from heaviest to lightest. One person laid on the floor, knees bent, and arms overhead. Their partner handed them a plate (25 kg being first up) and the person on the floor did 10 "floor presses" (basically a bench press but you're holding a disc and you're on the floor, not n a bench). As soon as you had finished 10, your partner took away that plate and handed you the next lightest one. When you got to the 5 kg plate, you did 20 presses, then you worked your way back up to 25 kg. Oh. My. God.
I did have a nice moment in class, though - we were practicing engaging our lats against a partner - and the trainer was my partner, and he commented, "Wow, you're strong, Mel!" Teehee! Hopefully he wasn't just stroking my ego.
Anyway, back to the flight testing. As I was writing the above paragraphs, I got a call from a coworker who would be on the flight test with me, and he said the test director had cancelled the test for today (yay!) but upper management was still pushing for it (boo!). So I have to call into a teleconference soon to figure out which side will win.
Here is a great picture I got out of a window this past summer as we were doing low altitude testing near Catalina Island (this could be Catalina or a Channel Island, I'm not totally sure).
One benefit to flight testing is that, because the tests we do are boring and long, I tend to get a lot of knitting done. Sometimes you can get a catnap in, but really you are supposed to be alert and watching your computer monitor for signs of machinery misbehaving. So, I knit. I knit a lot. In 2010, I finished most of a sweater on flight tests, and remember losing my ball of yarn 150 feet back into a freighter airplane because we took off quickly and I had not secured it under anything! (The flight test guys had a good laugh about that - me unbuckling and running after it before it got tangled in the maze of test equipment being stored in the back of the airplane).
I had planned to keep knitting on my Evendim sweater. I cast on for a size smaller than I would normally knit, because I just finished losing about 15 lb! I am very excited. I haven't been a size 8, well, since I can remember! Yes, my goal is to be strong and healthy, but dang if I don't want to look good naked, too! Back to the knitting (ahem) - As you can see below, I have knit the body up to the point where you separate for the front and back, and add the sleeves:
The red color is a little washed out in this picture. It's actually much more of a blood red / pomegranate color of Madelinetosh Vintage in Tart.
I cast on for the first sleeve last night, and got a couple of rows in before bed.
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In other news, Daniel and I are going to go down to the Hood River Valley along the OR / WA border this weekend, and help some friends crush 2 tons of grapes for wine. They actually should have crushed 1 ton by the time we get there. This is their biggest harvest yet, and I am looking forward to drinking the results in good time!
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