Thursday morning I pulled on my before way to tight khakis, and they fit! I wore them to work. In celebration I bought a pair of shoes to wear with those pants! Actually I just bought the shoes because I needed them, but I’ll call them a reward.

Since my goals in this diet are pants, my rewards to myself will be below the belt. New pants, shoes, socks, sock yarn, and maybe even undies, though I don’t normally care about fancy undies. Maybe a swim suit.

Tomorrow I’ll dig out some pants from last summer and get ready to set a new goal for March 29th (two weeks from goal day- which will always be Thursdays from now on). The pants I’m thinking about are a size smaller than I’m currently wearing. So if I reach that goal, I’ll go out and get new pants!

Two weeks ago I bought a pair of stone khakis for summer. They fit, albeit a bit snug. Well now, they fit well and I even need to wear a belt with them! Woo hoo!

I’ve had no trouble keeping my eating under control. I snacked a bit more than I needed to over the weekend, but not insanely so.

This Thursday is my first try-on day for my goal pants. If they fit, then I already have yet another pair of pants I need to diet into. Heck I have pants all the way down to size 8 (I can barely believe I was that small). Not to mention a few hand knit sweaters that I want to get back into.

Yay for loose pants!

I’ve talked about my weight here before. In 2003 I joined Weight Watchers, and over the course of about 3 years I lost 85 pounds total. I went from a Size 22 to a Size 8 in clothing. Then I stalled out. Then Michael’s health problems began. Then my weight began to creep back on. I’m not surprised. I had reached my size 22 right during and after my mother’s death and pretty much stayed big for 10 years.

Well I’m not a size 22 yet. I’m an 18, which is TOO CLOSE to my old size, plus I’m 10 years older, so this has to stop. I don’t have a working scale right now, and looking at the number just makes me sick to my stomach. So I’ve come up with a plan.

The Pants Diet.

I have two pairs of pants which fit, sort of, but are just too snug for comfort. They are brand new, and I’d gained some right after I bought them. Well they are my goal for right now. In two weeks I’ll try them on again. That way I don’t have to get batteries for my scale, and I don’t have to stress over the lack of movement on the numbers. If the pants fit, it’s all good, and I have plenty more pants around here that don’t fit. Once the kahki’s fit, I have some jeans that need a bit more work before I can get into them. They’ll be my second goal.

I started tracking my food intake on March 1, 2012. Today I’ll do some walking and be very careful with my eating. The weekends are hard for me to stay on a diet, but I’m going to do it. I am using an app for my Android smartphone called My Fittness Pal calorie counter. It’s free on Amazon (there are adds). There is also a website, My Fitness Pal which synchs up with the Android app. The cool part of this app is that you can scan barcodes on just about any food from the grocery store and it loads into the app. I eat a lot of frozen Lean Cuisine and such meals for lunch at work. The food database on My Fitness Pal is really big, too.

I’m excited to do this again! Yes I really am. See, I know I can do it. I’ve done it before. Now it’s a matter of carrying out the steps, and trying on those pants. My rewards to myself will all be clothes related. New pants, shoes, and I’ll treat myself to new earrings every single size I go down (which comes to about every 10 lbs).

Here’s my swatch. My size 5 needles made it to the perfect gauge, row and stitch.

Now to cast this baby on! Blümchen Cardigan by Anne Hanson.

This is based on the Sprossling pattern I knit last spring which turned into my favorite sweater. I’ve wanted a purple sweater since I started to knit again. This is going to be the one, I think.

The Fallberry pattern set has been released today! You can see the gorgeous photographs here on Knitspot.

You can buy the pattern here at the Knitspot Pattern Shop.

And you can get your Roast Carrots or From Dusk Til Dawn in Pathway Sport, plus ten other colors.

Use “fallberry” as a discount code to get 10% off of your yarn order, good through December 20th.

Anne Hanson is working on a pattern set using Pathway Sport in Roast Carrots.

Here’s a preview of the scarf from her blog.

She’s also made a hat!

Which has been tried on by everyone on her travels. There will be two color selections, Roast Carrots and From Dusk Til Dawn. I have already uploaded my first batch of both of these colors and I’ll be dyeing more this weekend, plus a few companion colors.

The pattern should be out in a week or two!

Plus, check out my Stalwart Sock collection! I have uploaded a big batch of blues, purples, and a bit of green.

I know the blog has been quiet, but it’s been months and months and months of 100 degree weather, and I have been doing zero knitting. Bad knitter, bad bad bad…

As usual I am behind on getting the second half of my vacation pictures up.

Day 4 was the Road to Hana tour. I took a tour because I did not want to drive that windy road all by myself. Here are a few pictures from this day-long tour.

Here’s an example of the road. Pretty much 127 miles of windy twisty bendy road with jungle on one side and ocean on the other. Some places are VERY high up in the air (along a cliff, even) and some places at sea level. It’s NOT a place to drive if you are afraid of heights.

See the black sand? Hana road in the background.

Ocean and lava rocks. This is on a pinennsula. I don’t have my map in front of me, so I forgot the name. It’s been populated for over 200 years, and the natives brought soil down from the mountain and created the land. It was all lava rock before that.

One of the many waterfalls on the road.

One of my favorite pictures from my trip. I put this on my background on my work computer. It is on the South side of the island, right before the dry side. It is a missionary church. Imagine being the minister who’s newly married and dropped off on this remote place in the 1800s…

And this is what the dry side of the island looks like. There are places where they have to have propane stoves and fridges, and tote water in 500 gallon canisters in a pickup.

Plus, the dry side is where they raised cattle. There was an area where the Hawaian cowboys swam the cattle out to the waiting ship, beating off sharks with their lariats. Now THAT’s a cowboy!

It was a fantastic tour given by Discover Hawaii. I learned tons of cool trivia about the island.

Day 5

Tired! I stayed home and read my book on the lanai (porch) while looking at the ocean.

I got up early on Tuesday to go to the Maui Ocean Center in Ma’akena right as it opened. I have never been to an aquarium where I didn’t have to battle through 50 kids to see an exhibit. It was marvelous. It wasn’t empty, but it had few people there. The center opens at 9 am, and I was third in line as the doors opened.

Ma’akena is across the harbor from Kihei. The photo shows the Kihei coastline.

The Ocean Center had the usual exhibits and a really big shark tank with really giant rays and hammer heads in it.

I discovered that my camera takes pretty good pictures through the glass of the aquarium. The hammerheads were difficult. They moved fast and seemed to turn away just as I got them into focus.

But I did manage to get one picture, this is a Scalloped Hammerhead.

After looking through the exhibits, I wandered around the Ocean Center Village (shopping ctr) and went into the Pacific Whale Foundation store. In there I signed up for a 5 hour cruise and snorkeling expediton on Friday morning (6 am yikes). They will take me to 2 sites for an hour’s snorkeling each, feed me breakfast and lunch, and I can even rent an underwater digital camera in order to take pictures of the reef.

This will be my second time going snorkeling, and I’m excited about it. I can take a memory chip to put in the rented digital camera. I hope to get some pictures I can print and frame. We’ll see…

After the Maui Ocean Center, I went to Lahaina and north on Hwy 30. I went far, FAR north and almost ended up on a 1 lane dirt road on the Northeast part of the island. I found a place to turn around. I got confused when the north/south road was labeled east/west. There’s a lot of that going on around here. But I figured it out when the ocean was on the wrong side of the car. It was just a matter of finding a place to turn around, which is not always easy. There were some spectacular views of ocean and cliffs but no place to stop and take pictures that weren’t already full of cars.

It was a great day, and I got back to the condo at about 4 pm. I rested for a bit and ate salad for supper. I was still full of a $18 Cuban pulled pork sandwich.

Today I got up sore and sunburned. I have not been swimming in a LONG time, and my SPF 50 works great, but I apparently missed quite a few spots. I’m Hot Lips Pink at the moment, or at least my shoulders are. Doesn’t hurt much anymore.

I took my morning swim and then came back for a shower. Then I hung out a bit and tried to figure out where to go today. I decided to take a drive down south to Wailea and then on to the Makena State Park. I took lots of pretty pictures.

This is the entrance to an estate. The gardeners were working out front. What would it be like to garden with such a lush and tropical pallete of plants? Boy the things I could do…

A fallen tree. The beach is over the rise just behind it. I just thought it looked cool.

Beach

Lava rock beach and tree. See the Kayaks? Lots of Eco-tours and rentals to be had here.

More lava rock beach.

Look at the color of that water. There are always clouds nearby, but it has not rained once yet. Not even an afternoon tropical rain.

I was taking pictures of the surf when the surfer walked by.

Makena State Park:

The mountain is behind everything. I think it’s a preserve, because I do not see any signs of habitation on it at all.

The lava rock here was a rusty dark reddish brown. I drove through on a tiny road with lava on both sides. Very alien landscape.

More lava rock in water.

and more

and that’s it for today! Came back to the condo, hung out and read my book. Cooked chicken for supper, which was very good. Aloha!