A third of the way through Month One

If beginning my health-and-fitness plan the day after Christmas puts me ahead of everyone who started this week, then SO BE IT. Heh.

Making December 26 my Day One of Month One might have been the smartest thing I did last year. I'm feeling very in the groove as I begin the 10th day of the umpteenth diet-and-exercise makeover. Today is a walk-and-yoga day, and I did indeed find a beginner routine for the sun salutation. I haven't tried it yet, so can't personally recommend it. This is one of many on YouTube; if it's not what I need, I'll certainly keep looking.

I haven't mentioned knitting around these parts lately. I'm still working on the endless blue-and-white garter stitch scarf. Pretty soon it'll be spring and I won't need a scarf.

My husband found a piece of paper with an outline of the five-year-old granddaughter's foot, which I thought I'd lost. She and I made the outline so I could make her a pair of slippers that actually fit. So next in the queue is a pair of child-sized Duffers.

(Mine, which I've been wearing since November 21, are already beginning to show some wear. There's a tiny hole developing in the toe of the right one. I'll probably do a quick mend until I have time to make another pair. Or until I make a pair of felted clogs, which last a very long time.)

What else, what else … I backed up my hard drive yesterday, something I hadn't done since July, according to Time Machine. Tsk, tsk. This was in preparation for purging some space-hogging tunes from said hard drive. What's stopping me from ditching all the music (since it's backed up on the external drive) is this: How would I go about loading the iPod again? I'm not done buying music or audiobooks. My laptop (a MacBook Air) only has one USB port, so I'd have to download music from the external back to the computer and then hook the iPod up to load anything new onto it.

I don't dare mention this dilemma to my husband. He would simply tell me to listen to the radio. My solution, as I mentioned a few days ago, is to delete those free-songs-I'll-never-listen-to. That should free up plenty of space. But if any of you have other ideas …

Finally, check out the new widget over in the right sidebar. DailyMile keeps a running mileage total for you, as long as you remember to log your activity. DM doesn't have an Android app, but there's an app called Daily Distance that simply and easily uploads your stats to the website. I use an Android app called Skimble to track my time-and-distance when I walk. (Skimble can track just about any fitness activity you can think of, actually, I just now looked and I can also record elliptical sessions. Yay!)

I just wish downloading and using apps burned calories like walking and yoga do.  (I'm a geek and I know it.) Maybe someone is working on that.

Two, two, two posts in one!

How very serendipitous that today's photo prompt – "what you wore" – coincides with my new slippers being knit, sewn, felted, dried and worn!

Duffers. Done.

See? (Finally! An Instagram photo of my footwear, which seems to be a very popular subject.)

These were knit using the Duffers Revisited pattern, which is probably four times more pattern than I needed. Google found the British designer's blog, where I learned that the plain old Duffers pattern (for one pound) as opposed to the Revisited pattern (for 3.75 pounds) would have sufficed.

But it's the holiday season, and it feels good to support boutique designers. Plus the money in my PayPal account is burning a hole in my virtual pocket.

(I'm going to be adding more yarn for sale on eBay very soon. Because PayPal is hungry. And I have more yarn than I'll ever knit in my ever-diminishing lifetime.)

For the Duffers I used two strands of Lite Lopi for the grey sole and one strand of a bulky wool (the label is upstairs in the garage and it's dark outside and I'm not going over there to check the brand, but maybe I'll update this later) for the upper pink part.

The only other adult slippers I've ever worn (and worn and worn and worn) are Fiber Trends Felted Clogs. I can't count how many pairs of those I've made over the years. Everyone who sees them wants a pair. (Which means family members, because who else sees you in your slippers?) I'll probably make another pair for myself soon, because, frankly, the soles on the Duffers aren't going to hold up very long.

The clog pattern has a double sole which doesn't start showing any wear for a couple of years. That accounts for the extra hour of knitting time per slipper vs. the Duffers.

Yes, that's right: Two hours per Duffer, three hours per Felted Clog. In the knitting world, that's known as instant gratification.