After household chores yesterday my hands were a tad sandpaper-y again and it was back to the moisturizer, so I worked on the Lo-Tech Sweat instead of Bardot. (Sorry Girlchild - today is a major Bardot day, I promise, I have no hand-wrecking chores on the horizon.) I'm making the LTS in the 42" size, figuring this would give me a comfortably oversized amount of ease, and I've got about a foot done on the back, and I'm perfectly on gauge for once in my gauge-challenged life, but once I had a fair-sized chunk finished last night, I started fretting that this will be too big. I want it oversized, but that back piece looks awfully wide to me. And yet I'm so far into it I don't really want to frog and re-start it...and yet, I really don't want it to be hugely boxy...and the width of this back piece is bothering me. As much as I hate to say it, I think I have to frog and start over. There, now that I said it out loud I feel much better.

I'm having the same problem Bess mentioned a while back, which is trying to figure out how to knit for a new (or in my case, evolving) body shape. I'm about 10 pounds thinner than I was at Christmas, and thanks to the exercise portion of the new regime I'm definitely getting smaller, and my goal is to take off another 20 pounds and get fit enough to survive Denise Austin's Power Yoga, and if I do both those things I will be really small, because under this evenly-distributed "Oh, you don't look fat!" bulk is a very small-boned woman. I remember her. I still remember how small I used to be, underneath the evenly distributed layer of middle-aged flab I am wearing, but I don't know when I will see that precise size again. And I don't know what to do in the meantime.

An illustration - last night the heat pump was losing its battle against the chilly damp outside, so I pulled out a Mission Falls cotton pullover I'd made two years ago - just a plain v-neck in tan - and put it on to wear in the house. It's huge. It was meant to be loose and oversized and I never "filled it out" by any means, but now it hangs completely away from my body, the bottom hem at no time makes contact with my hips, and there's at least 8 inches too much width in this thing. I know I didn't lose 8 inches off my hips, and I was never big enough to fill this sweater out, but it used to look oversized but not absurd. Now it looks absurd, and would offer no warmth at all in a cool breeze, because the wind can go right under it like a parachute. That's what I mean about the redistribution of weight I'm seeing from exercise - I've lost 10 pounds, not 40, my clothes shouldn't be hanging on me like they are. So after putting on that sweater and then looking at what I have so far in the Lo-Tech Sweat, as much as it pains me to say it, I have to frog this sucker and start over. I'm starting over in the smallest size. I'm already smaller than I think I am, and my mental adjustment has to kick in so I stop thinking in terms of "picking things that won't cling to my flabby middle" because my middle ain't so flabby anymore. It's a constant mental adjustment, honestly - because when I do a workout video I'm still very conscious of how out of shape I really am. I don't want to create the impression that I've morphed into Demi Moore overnight, that's hardly the case, but the changes are happening in subtle ways.

My new favorite workout DVD: Denise Austin Power Zone. I can't keep up with the whole thing yet, I have to pause at times when she does the long balance-on-one-leg exercises, but I'm getting there, and I enjoy the challenge.