"Take the time to always check your gauge." Those instructions are on every knitting pattern, and if you are a knitter, you already know what they mean. For those of you that are not knitters, What it means it to knit a sample with the yarn you will be using following the pattern, number of stitches, and size needles specified. The directions tell you how many stitches and rows equals the correct gauge. If your sample does not make the correct gauge, you find out before putting all the time and energy into knitting something that doesn't fit. You can tweak the number of stitches, and/or the size of needles you are using early in the knitting process, to end up with a perfect finished item. If you choose to begin knitting without checking the gauge, your knitting MAY turn out fine, (and lots of people do just this). I guess it depends on how comfortable you are with risk taking.

So..... I am starting a new sweater (jacket) for my husband for Valentine's day, and as I was looking over the directions I got to thinking that if I had taken the time to "check my gauge" in other areas of my life, I could have avoided lots of false starts and back-tracking to make things turn out. I have started many diets, because someone else said they were great and had worked for them. Not once did I follow the small print that says to check with your health care professional before starting the diet. As far as I know, I have not done any real damage to my health, but I will also never know if some silly diet I went on in my twenties will come back to haunt me in my senior years. If I had taken some time to check my gauge before dieting, I may have been able to tweak the diet to suit my specific needs so the diet could become a healthy life style that I could adapt as a way of life. Instead I made the choice of going on a diet, which always always entails going off a diet. As soon as it was over (sometimes in just a day or two), I went back to my previous habits, and beat myself up for failing yet again. NO MORE DIETS FOR ME..... No matter how promising they sound. Instead, I am going to fuel my body in moderation, and listen to my bodies response to what I am putting in it. Along the way, I will tweak what needs tweaking, and end up all the better for it.

Last year, when I made a commitment to get on the treadmill five times per week, I did check my gauge in a way. What I mean, is I started off slow, and did what felt right for my body each time I got on the treadmill. I choose not to have a lot of rules (as to how fast and far I would go overeach day), and slowly a pattern that worked for me emerged. As time went on, I began to set goals that were lofty enough to give me something to work towards, while not being so lofty they didn't "really" seem attainable. First I ran a six mile race (I had already ran a 5-K in the past), and completing that, I was able to believe in the possiblity of being able to finish a ten mile race. When I completed that, I was brave enough to commit to running a half-marathon this coming March. I'm thinking about the possibility of a marathon, but twenty-six miles is a really looonnnng run. Today, I "decide not to decide" about the marathon. Check back in early April after I have the completion of a half-marathon on my list of accomplishments.