Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

What a challenging and emotional weekend it was. On Saturday and Sunday I walked almost 40 miles through Boston and the surrounding areas (in the rain) for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I never thought walking could be so hard, but boy was it.

Here we are starting out (I'm on the left):

Look at all those people walking...there were 2800 of us:

The first day we started out walking and by mile 10 or so my ankle was killing me…I had to keep going though. At the half way mark (13.1 miles) I had to get some blisters repaired in the medical tent. Thankfully there were rest stops every 2-3 miles with water, snacks, and medical if we needed it. There were a bunch of guys with motorcycles that volunteered....they would be at major intersections to direct traffic, then they'd ride on to their next post so we saw them all day. They were so cool and encouraging!

Here's one of their decorated bikes:

And here we are with them at the end:

With no mile markers it was really tough because it seemed like we were walking so much further than they told us. I couldn’t believe when I had finished the 26.2 miles on Saturday and finally made it to camp, it was exhausting!! But we still had to set up our tent! And I thought sleeping in the tent was going to be uncomfortable, but let me tell you, I could’ve slept under rock and probably have been comfortable…all I really wanted to do was sleep.

A view of camp:

The next morning we still had 13.1 miles to go, but I had to get some blisters taken care of before we set out. The guy in the medical tent told me he was going to have to lance one of my blisters…yikes!!! Actually it wasn’t as bad as I thought and it relieved a lot of pressure so I could walk a little more comfortably. I can’t believe I made it the second day since I was so exhausted and hurting! When we were walking back to UMASS Boston and I could finally see the end in sight I got really emotional and couldn’t believe I was almost done. When we got towards the end my friend that I was walking with and I were the only two in sight at that point….there were people far ahead and behind us, so it felt like just the two of us. There was a team called Men with Heart wearing their yellow shirts standing on either side of the walk cheering us on:

They were so awesome all weekend, and just seeing them there at the end was so encouraging. We then walked up a small hill to this grassy area under some trees and there were tons of people on either side of us cheering us on saying what a good job we did and yea we did it! I started crying at that point, all of the people were so supportive and since it was only the two of us at that point it felt like they were there for us! Hehe!

Here we are, all done and so happy:

The closing ceremonies were very emotional. A woman told us her story and how she is a three year survivor!! Good for her! And then some of the breast cancer survivors who walked went on stage so we could acknowledge them. It was amazing to see those women up there and made me feel great about participating in the whole weekend. All together we raised $6.8 million in Boston to go directly to different organizations (I helped my raising $1800…yea!).

Presenting checks at the closing ceremonies:

It was an amazing weekend that I’m so glad I got to take part in....I would suggest anyone who has a walk in their area to take part in it...its really a cool experience and you are doing something amazing to help fight a horrible disease.

Birthday/Mother's Day weekend!

Well, this isn’t a knitting related post but I just wanted to share a few pictures. I went to Portland, ME this weekend for my birthday weekend. My parents have a condo up there and live part time there and part time in CT. I haven’t been there since my niece was born in October, so I thought it was time for a trip up there. It was a very nice weekend with Mother’s Day on Sunday and my birthday on Monday!

Pretty Flowers at the farmers market in the park:

The park:

This was Pinwheels for Adoption, they were thanking all of the people who are foster patents and people who adopt:

Lots of pink tulips were planted on the western promenade for a breast cancer awareness project:

Portland is such a nice little city, there's just so much to do there and I love visiting, especially at this time of the year!

Long time no blog

Well, I haven’t posted for almost a month! I need to get better at this whole blogging this. With my birthday coming up on Monday (yea!) I got an early present from my brother and SIL:

I'm so excited to put it on my next FO, which probably will be my ISE4 scarf seeing as I've only been working on it and have put everything else aside. I really need to start picking it up now, I hope that few weeks of being frustrated and taking a break won't hurt me. I figure I'm about half way through, then I'll have to block (which I've never done before). I'm going to get down to business and be very serious about it from here on in. I hope I can do it!

We're in a fight

I have a love/hate relationship with my ISE4 scarf. Being my first attempt at lace, I’ve had a few problems (see post below). It was a good thing that I was putting lifelines in because I had to frog a little bit. Everything was going fine up until Easter weekend. I traveled home to CT and thought it would be the perfect time to work on it being a quiet weekend at my parent’s house. Well….somehow I messed up again and ended up with one too many stitches yet again. I just had to put it down and didn’t pick it up again until Thursday when I finally got the courage to keep working. I frogged back to my lifeline and managed to get through 7 rows of the 8 row pattern when I realized that I was doing K2tog tbl instead of just K2tog!! Arggg!! I should’ve been paying better attention. After frogging to the lifeline and putting it back on the needles, I had one less stitch than I needed!! Where did it go?? I really have no idea; I seriously checked and checked but couldn’t find anything to make up that extra stitch. I ended up just doing an extra yo in the next row hoping that it would just blend in with the pattern (you can’t even really tell). Since we had such crummy/rainy weather this weekend in Boston, I spent a while working on my scarf. I was very careful to count my stitches at the end of each row. I keep having problems though…for some reason I think I keep skipping a yo every so often so I don’t end up with enough stitches. It’s really frustrating to keeping messing up like this. I really do love this pattern, and I want my pal to have a special scarf…but I’m beginning to think that I might be cursed on this pattern.

Lace love

Well, I finally have some pictures of my ISE4 scarf to share! After taking about a hundred pictures to find the right light and setting I think this is about the best its going to get. Here it is:

And here's an up close picture of the detail:

This is really my first attempt at knitting lace, so I was pretty nervous when I picked out the pattern but it was one that my secret had mentioned she liked. I really wanted to knit her something special that she's really going to like.

I've had a few troubles with it. I knit the border and was finishing the second repeat of the pattern when I realized that I had one too few stitches on the needle. I have no idea what happened but when I knit back and tried to start the row over, I had one too few stitches!!! Arggggg. Well, I just frogged and started over on it. This was for the best anyway because I realized that I was doing the psso wrong, so I'm actually glad I frogged it. When I had started I was dreading the rows with psso but now I love them! I don't know why but I just think there something fun about passing that slipped stitch...haha! I've gotten quite a few repeats on the pattern done now (even more than in the picture) and I've been putting in lifelines every two repeat in case I have to frog. I actually did have to frog again at one point but it made it soooooo much easier with the lifeline!

I think its coming along pretty well now and I'm really loving knitting the lace...I can't wait to be able to practice more lace patterns. I was a little worried that I wasn't going to have the scarf in time for my pal, but silly me I thought that the deadline to mail was in May. I just realized that its not until the end of June so I'll have plenty of time to work on it to make perfect for my pal!

What to choose?

I thought I'd decided on a pattern to knit for my secret scarf pal, but I'm just so confused now! I was going to knit this pattern but now I just don't think its special enough for my pal. I want her to have a really nice scarf she's going to love. She seems to lean towards lace patterns so I've looked at every single lace scarf pattern on Knitting Pattern Central. I've found a few that I think would be nice for her, but now I'm having trouble narrowing all of these down. Here's a few choices: option 1, option 2, option 3, option 4, option 5, option 7, and finally option 8. Now I'm sure you can see why I'm having such trouble with this...I have too many patterns to choose from! I just can't narrow it down. I'm new to lace so I want a pattern that's not going to be too difficult for me to knit but also it nice for my pal. Hmmm...what to do? On a brighter note, I tracked my package with the yarn I ordered and its in MA now, so hopefully it'll be in Boston by the end of the day (or at least by tomorrow)! I can start knitting soon as long as I pick a pattern.