Grove mittens are bringing me to my knees...

Heather is a good friend of mine - bright, beautiful, funny and generous to a fault. So when Heather recently expressed the desire to have me knit her some mittens or socks? Well, let's just say the door didn't stand a chance of hitting me in the patookus, I ran out the house in such a frenzy to get to the yarn store.

I cast on the Grove Mittens from Made in Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, the mittens were small. Small, small. The mittens might fit my mother (who has such delicate hands that they could be mistaken for a 10 year olds), but they won't fit many others. When I tried them on, I nearly cut off blood flow to my fingertips.

Nonetheless, despite the extremely narrow size, I knit on. I read a few knitting blogs, I read the Grove pattern discussion on Ravelry. People complained about the tightness of the mittens, but for some, blocking was the answer! Yay for blocking!

I finished the left mitten hand and picked up stitches for the thumb. I tried on the mitten again. I looked at how stretched out the mitten was. I knit some more on the thumb and tried on the mitten again. I attempted to tighten up the stitches. I threw the mitten across the room. I picked up the one-row scarf for Jeff's dad and knit on that while the mitten mocked me from afar. I came close to giving it to my cat to play with, but I have the one cat in the universe who cares not a flip about wool.

Part of me wants to finish it, block it and hope for something magical. (Delusional, I know.) I'm just delaying the inevitable frogging. For the the mitten to work as I want, I need a thicker yarn and larger needle. I may be sick to my stomach.

Is anyone out there? I need a pat on the back and maybe a cup of chamomile.

Flat Belly, Flat Belly...

Do you ever set a goal for yourself, get yourself revved up about it even, and then somehow take forever to get out of the starting gate? That's how I'm beginning to feel about my fitness plan.

I've not chucked it, but I am definitely taking longer to get going than I anticipated. I probably should have known better than to start around the holidays, but what can I say. I was optimistic.

So, baby steps it is. I bought the Flat Belly Diet book. I also purchased the Flat Belly Diet Pocket Guide. The first book contains a lengthy explanation of the diet, recipes, shopping lists, fast food recommendations, meal replacement bar recommendations, frozen dinners that fall within the diet's guidelines, a diet journal and exercise plan.

The pocket guide contains a 28-day meal plan with shopping lists and short recipes for the meals. Honestly, nothing seems overly complicated here, and most of it actually looks pretty decent. (Maybe it's just the four day intro plan that is so meager in options.) The pocket guide also has restaurant and product recommendations, similar to the full-sized diet book.

Daily calorie totals appear to average around 1600, which includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. I don't find anywhere in the book where it adjusts the caloric intake for men, but it's possible I haven't read far enough yet.

Both diet books include brand and product recommendations for persons who require gluten free, dairy free, soy free or vegan options.

My favorite feature is definitely the shopping lists for each of the first four weeks, as it makes it easy to clear out the cabinets and buy solely what you need to stay on course. The brand and restaurant recommendations are also pretty nice. The restaurant recommendations include options at both dine-in restaurants and fast food chains:

• Au Bon Pain
• Burger King
• Chili's
• Chipotle
• Culver's
• Dunkin Donuts
• El Pollo Loco
• Hooters
• Jamba Juice
• McDonald's
• Mimi's Cafe
• Old Spaghetti Factory
• Panda Express
• Panera Bread
• Qdoba Mexican Grill
• Red Lobster
• Sbarro
• Sizzler
• Smoothie King
• Starbucks
• Subway
• Taco Bell
• TCBY
• Wendy's

I'm not fond of all the restaurants included, but there are enough of the ones I frequent that the list is useful.

I'm shopping tomorrow for the four day anti-bloat jumpstart and week one menus. I should note that the menus are suggestions, but you can interchange the meals and to a certain extent, the ingredients. However, the authors don't suggest that you create your own meals during the first four week period, as they want you to become accustomed to the portion sizes, types of ingredients and basic meal makeup.

So is anybody in this with me? Has anyone already started?

Lesser known ways to ring in the New Year...

5. Have a head cold so brutal that your own voice echoes and ricochets inside your skull each time you speak.

4. Feel guilty about the Christmas cards lying on your bedside table, only half of which are addressed.

3. Juggle a glass of orange juice, taking care to spill the juice all over your pants.

2. Juggle a bottle of Advil, taking care to empty pills all over the bathroom floor.

1. Wonder if Parkinson's diagnosis is in near future.