Finished Object Dance

Now that the holidays are over, it has struck me this week how much doing the Peacock Shawl between Thanksgiving and December 19th sucked the life out of me. Yes, I'm glad it's done and yes, I'm proud of myself for setting an ambitious goal and finishing it, but the cost was higher than I would have thought.

Admittedly, following it almost immediately with the Anti-Blather Nalgar for days on end didn't help.

• My hands are giving me problems to the point that these days I wake up with them hurting and the thumbs not working quite right for the first 20 minutes of the day.

• I gained four pounds in December, largely due to lack of regular exercise.

• I returned 2 books to the library this week, each of which had been renewed, but never cracked open in the weeks I had had them.
  

There are other, more subtle things that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's time to recover. Cutting back on the compulsive knitting is one of the first just to give my hands and wrists a rest. I'm how many digests behind in reading the Knitlist and Knitu, even with them loaded onto my Palm for reading while out and about (not that there's anything that exciting going on, but why bother subscribing if you're not going to read).

Stretching is going to be a priority. Par had given me stretches to be doing daily during the last summer and those have completely gone by the wayside over the last few months.

We went cross-country skiing today at Windblown. I made out mostly okay, though got some interesting numbers on glucose uptake during and after exercise. A couple different falls into the snow showed that wool mittens are indeed the best thing for the hands. They were caked with packed snow and still warm to wear. Some knitting on the fischu happened in the lodge waiting for Himself to do one last trail (I was worn out) and sock knitting happened on the way up, but I realized that I had planned the projects to get the socks done to the point where the foot would be ready to knit straight in case we came back in the dark and then work on the fischu just to make progress, and it got less fun after that.

I wonder what's going to hurt tomorrow.