En dash

"It isn't the date on either end that counts,
but how they used their dash.
For that dash between the dates,
represents all the time they spent alive on earth,
and only those who loved them know,
what that little line is worth."

I've been radio silent for a little bit, as my mother died unexpectedly and suddenly a couple weeks ago. The quote above was mentioned in part by my cousin, and I plan to use my dash by being a bit more open minded, loving, and benevolent in the days, weeks and years to come.

Flock Mobile

This has been three years in the making, but I finally finished the flock mobile.

I started the project up again this past Sunday when I hunkered down on the sofa albeit with a 19 month old who used me as a climbing apparatus (thanks Frost for G's food duty that day) and proceeded to stuff, weave ends and attach wings to the birds. By 9pm Sunday night all the birds were finished save one which was missing wings. I knitted the last pair of wings tuesday afternoon and proceeded with putting it all together last night and this morning.

Now onto the sleeves of my featherweight cardigan.

Training for Derby

My 2014 season of roller derby starts in just under two weeks and I'm so excited. We've been in our off season since the beginning of November and in that time I've gone back to bootcamp at a new fantastic fitness centre in the area. The best part is that while I work out, one of the owners watches G for $2. That's right 2 bucks! How can I not work out at that price. Sometimes G is the only child there and other times there can be up to half a dozen kids ranging in age up to 6 years.

My goal during the off season was to get back into off skates work out so that I'm not just relying on roller skating for my weekly exercise. I will of course continue with bootcamp (1-2x a week) trx (1x a week) and a new class on sunday mornings call the NY challenge with is part core training part bootcamp.

This month we have a kettle bell finisher challenge optional at the end of each class. The goal is to improve on your own time. I'm happy to report that I've done this three times now. My first time was 2 minutes 35 seconds, then I got 2 minutes 23 seconds and yesterday I got 2 minutes 03 seconds. My next goal is to get under the 2 minute mark and then switch to the heavier kettle bell weights of the blue and yellow combo. My current times are with the pink and blue combo.