Memory Blog: Finishing up the root words

And now back to testing out the Self Enhanced Memory Matrix Method from Master Your Memory. Some progress has been made but some memory has also deteriorated too because I didn’t spend enough time recalling the old data. I’ve forgotten my bank account number which I memorized by heart. Till date, I’ve finished memorizing all the prefixes and suffixes. I’m also left with 5 more root words and then I’m done with the vocabulary section of Master Your Memory.

Yoga and Pilates Blog: I did some shopping!

I just got myself 2 new books on yoga and pilates as a reference to remember some of the stuff I learnt in class. I’m quite happy with my new investment. They are really useful and they’ve got step by step instructions on the poses. Pilates Anatomy. A Comprehensive Guide. by Dr Abby Ellsworth has got detailed explanations of the muscles at work for each of the exercises together with a section on the benefits of the poses and when you shouldn’t do them if you have a certain medical problem. The second book Hatha Yoga Illustrated By Martin Kirk, Brooke Boon and Daniel DiTuro also describes the physical and mental benefits, the counter poses and contraindications for each pose.

Practice wise...I got a little lazy for the past few days. I will get back to my routine soon. Tomorrow I’ll have pilates class again. I’m looking forward to that.

Photography blog: Should I start one?

My 5 year old camera’s lens got jammed a few weeks ago. When I went to the service centre to get it fixed, they offered to sell me a newer model in exchange for trading in my old camera. It was a good deal. I now have a nice new camera that takes better pictures. It’s a powershot S95 that comes with some manual functions for me to experiment with.  I’m thinking of starting a new section on photography in this blog. I’m not an expert but I like to experiment and try out new stuff. Perhaps I should post some random shots regularly here.  I’ll see how it goes....

Knitting Blog: Revisiting the Tissue Cover

And now, back to the progress of my office project. The project has not been progressing much as I’ve been spending more time eating rather than knitting during my lunch hour. So far I’ve done about 15 rows. Check out the progress below. I’ve been knitting 5 rows and purling 5 rows in a pattern.  I’ll try to squeeze a few more rows each day when my lunch buddies are out shopping.

Knitting Blog: Tada!

Back View

Front View

My fingerless mitt is finally completed! This is my first ever project that was done on Double Pointed Knitting Needles. I had figured out how to use double pointed needles from watching some youtube videos. Isn’t that great? :-)

Some of the stitches are a bit loose but I didn’t stop. I just went on knitting because this is just a practice piece. I now have a general idea how to control the tension with Double Pointed Knitting Needles better. As the saying goes, if you never try, you’ll never get there so I did and I got here. Hee hee!

The free knitting pattern for the fingerless mitt was actually taken from another website. As this is a copyright, I can’t reprint the instructions here but you can look up “Sarah Bradberry” on the net and check out the pattern yourself. It shouldn’t be too difficult to look her pattern up on google.

Although this is a practice piece with some holes in between (HAHAHA!), the mitt is still practical enough to use. You can still wear this at night or at the movie theatre to keep your hands warm on a cold rainy day. When it’s dark, nobody notices anyway. I just have to take the mittens off when the lights come on.

Well since I only have one mitten, I’m just going to do another one to complete the pair. I hope to improve on the “M1” stitch better. I shall also watch the tension between the needles too. Check out my updates in the next few blogs.

Yoga and Pilates blog: Virasana and Vajrasana

And now , back to my experiment to see how much yoga can help cure indigestion. I searched the net and discovered a pose known as Virasana where you kneel and sit on your heels and then try to bend backwards. At my first try, I encountered pain at my knee and ankles because I could feel my bones digging into the hard floor. I had to use a towel to cushion those areas. And guess what, I think I over-stretched myself too. My knee didn’t feel too good the next day.

I am so interested in this pose because of the benefits that it can do for indigestion. However, what I didn’t notice was that the Virasana and the Vajrasana were 2 very similar poses but they weren’t the same. Even the spelling was so similar that I thought they were the same poses! Care has to be taken when doing these advance poses because it could result in injury if it’s done wrongly.

For now, I just do the basic Virasana by sitting on a yoga block and the vajrasana with a towel on my knees and ankles. Just sitting up for about 30 counts does help relief the wind in my stomach. According to Yoga Mind and Body (DK Living), just sitting in the basic Vajrasana alone is good for promoting digestion and we should go into that pose after a meal or even during a meal. As of now, I’m not flexible and to get to 30 counts, is an achievement. I will not attempt to bend backwards until I’m perfectly comfortable with sitting in the basic poses first.

Knitting Update: Another Tissue Cover in the Making

The tissue cover that I completed about 2 weeks ago proved to be so useful that I decided to make another one. I could use the second one for another bag. 

This time round, I decided to work a different pattern. I casted on 27 stitches according to my gauge and started. I’ve decided to knit 5 rows and purl 5 rows all the way. The pattern should be more consistent compared to the first tissue cover. What you see here is the humble beginnings of my tissue cover. That’s about 8 rows completed so far. To be continued....

Knitting Update: What A Slanted Affair

Sigh... the “Office-lunch-hour project’ didn’t turn out as expected. When I decreased 2 stitches on every alternate row, I still got a slanted slope. I’m curious how they get a rounder slope but I think I’m going to give my experiment a rest for now.  The completed project looks very much like a piece of pizza. There’s nothing delicious about it. I’m just going to use this as a bookmark of some sort.  If people dare ask what this is, I’d say this is pizza bookmark. Oh what the heck, it’s still a practical idea anyway.

Knitting Update: Experimenting with decreasing stitches

This is my new ‘office-lunch-hour project’. What you see here is an experiment of how to decrease stitches. After making that blunder with my home project, I’m treating this as a practice exercise of how to increase and decrease stitches. I’m also curious how necklines are knitted on a sweater. I wanted to see if it’s possible to invent my own pattern for designing a sweater.

First I started out by casting on 30 stitches in a row. Then I decreased a stitch on every alternate row. I got a slope at the edge like below. Tomorrow I will try decreasing 2 stitches on every alternate row to see if I get a rounder slope. To be continued...

Yoga and Pilates blog: Oh dear, there is a change of schedule!

Last week I found out that the gym where I usually attend my pilates class will be closed for 2 months before relocating to the opposite building in January 2011. This means that I have to either attend some other class at another branch or freeze my membership for those 2 months. What a waste. Just when I’m enjoying and appreciating my Pilates class so much under this instructor. I may not be able to attend Pilates classes at another branch so I’ll have to either switch to Yoga or some other workout. The thought of it sucks. Sigh.

I’ll try to note some of the poses and practice on my own. I hope that this class with this instructor will be resumed in Jan 2011.

Learning and Memory: Still on Suffixes.

Now back to my quest on testing out Tony Buzan’s SEM3 from Master Your Memory I could have finished the whole page of suffixes last night but I was so tired.

What I learned this week is that revision is very important for recalling information. At the beginning of the week when I tested out if I could remember all the 85 prefixes and some of the suffixes that I memorised from the book, I could only recall about 65% of the information. I had to spend another hour revising and improving my imagination for those words that I couldn’t remember. I still do forget some of the words whenever I do a recall. Perhaps I’m not using the “SMASHIN SCOPE” method well enough.

I had sort of forgotten one important thing about memory and recall. Tony Buzan recommended that we should try review the information regularly in Use Your Memory of Chapter 11. The recommended period is 10mins, followed by 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and finally 6 months. I think I’m going to do that and see if I can recall data better.

Knitting Update: I’m Almost There!

Yep, I’m proud to say that my home project is almost there now. What you see here is the almost complete fingerless mitts. The section where the fingers are to be inserted has been completed and I’m now left with finishing the thumb section. I’m still not too happy with the blunder I made at the thumb gusset area. It does look like an eyesore but it’s not too visible here. My only consolation is that this is just a practice project and I’ll do a better one for the next round.

I estimate that I should be able to knit rest of the thumb area pretty soon. Look out for more pictures as I go along.

Yoga and Pilates : Working those fingers out

I think you will find this post extremely strange. I suddenly feel that I've not done much to work out my fingers and toes.

My mother had an operation done on her finger last year because she couldn't bend her finger. The doctor said it was due to a 'finger trigger'. And then this afternoon, her friend came by and shared with us about the same problem she's having. It sounds pretty scary.

You know, in the office we use the computer keyboard a lot and hold a computer mouse quite a bit. Plus I do lots of knitting too. I think the best way to keep the muscles on our fingers and hands healthy is to exercise it. So I promptly took out my hand grippers to work on it while waiting for my computer to boot.

A couple of workouts that I can think of for our fingers and toes include "The Mexican Wave" , bending the fingers backwards, standing on tiptop, squeezing our palms around a rubber ball and then stretching the fingers, squeezing our toes and then stretching them...I'll try to read up more on the net to find out more.

There's nothing to be paranoid about. It's just a random thought about those muscles that we hardly work out on. It's always good to know.

Knitting Update: Progress of My Home Project

The Home Knitting Project is coming along fine but slow. This afternoon I managed to do a few more rows for the fingers. I think I should be able to cast off in about 1 or 2 rows time and then move on to the thumb gusset area. Check out my photo of the progress so far.

Knitting Update: Getting back to basics

Last night I stayed up late to go through some knitting stitches from an online store. I discovered that I had made some blunders in the way I increase my stitches for my "Home knitting project". It was interesting. I learnt the basic methods for increasing and decreasing stitches the proper way and how to graft 2 pieces of knitting fabrics together with a needle the invisible way. Looking at my tissue cover project earlier, I guess this came a bit too late but never mind, I can still use these ideas for my next few projects.

If you have a Kindle and want some knitting instructions online and fast, check out the the Exercises in Knitting and

The Ladies' Work-Book Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc.

SEM3 : Not much progress

I've been slacking lately on my quest to improve my memory. So far I've stopped at memorizing all 85 prefixes from the book Master Your Memory using the Self Enhancing Memory matrix a.k.a SEM3 method. Recall is a bit rusty because I think the visual images I used so far is not impressioable enough.

Nevertheless, I will still try my best to get back to working out that memory and move on to the next section after prefixes.

The exercises in Use Your Memory seemed to work so I'm not about  to give up yet. I will try to work on the suffixes in the coming weeks.

Yoga and Pilates : More on the balancing poses

Today is a public holiday so I'm at home blogging away some updates.

In the last pilates class, the teacher made us do more balancing poses. The hardest one was squating on the floor with one leg straighened in front of you. It made my thigh muscles ached the next day. I'm beginning to value her emphasize on training our balancing so much now. It does improve our concentration too. It helps me deal with stress. I haven't been practicing yesterday and today. Perhaps I would get down to it later today.

After the class, I shared with my teacher about my indigestion problems. She confirmed that the doing poses like the bow, swimming, the swan and the fish pose can help. When we lie on our bellies and do those poses, it helps to massage the digestive organs. I've yet to practice more on those suggested poses.

My lower back muscles needs to be strengthened. I can't lift my legs high when I do the fish pose. I'm going to have to work on those poses. I really hope that these workouts will help me get rid of my stomach problems for good. Really really hope so...

SEM3 : Testing that memory on the prefixes.

The saga on testing the theories on Master Your Memory continues. It's been a week since I started testing the SEM3 method. I've finished memorizing all the prefixes in sequential order however, sometimes I have problems recalling some of the data. I note that whenever I'm tired, it's also hard to remember things. Also, whenever the visual image is not strong enough, the data that I'm trying to remember will not make much of an impression on my memory at all. Overall I would say I can recall about 80% of the 85 prefixes listed in  Master Your Memory. I have to fine tune my visual images for the data that I can't recall.

So far, I've used up the matrix cell numbers 5000 to 5085. My next task would be to continue with the surfixes. Till my next update.

Knitting Update: I've completed another project!

Presenting My Tissue Cover!

I've some wonderful news! I've completed the 'office project'. Although I felt it wasn't really a perfect and presentable job, the tissue cover is still usable. This is the first project that I've invented by using a plastic tissue cover as a sample and gauge. I sort of miscalculated the length of the rectangle but I managed to rectify it by knitting a few extra rows. My colleagues think it's not bad too. :-)

My next lunch hour project will be an experiment on decreasing stitches. I've started the first few rows but I've not taken a picture yet. You'll probably see it in my next blog update. I'll tell you more what I'm up to with that experiment in my next update. Cheers!

Knitting Update: Oops I did it again

Ok, remember how I blogged that I've got so many wool at home and that I would try not to buy any more new wool? Well oops, I've done it again. After my pilates class, I walked toward Spotlight and ventured to the wool section again. I ended up buying another two balls of wool. I sort of convinced myself that I would get down to making some comfortable socks and those wool were just perfect. If I didn't get those on that day, I may not be able to get them the next time I wanted to start my socks projects. Oh well... what's another two balls of wool huh?

Yoga and Pilates : Staying on Balance

I'm so looking forward to attending Pilates class tomorrow again. One of the exercises that I only started to appreciate lately is the balancing poses. I would normally wobble and struggle whenever I have to balance on one leg and hold a posture. I've started practicing regularly for the past few days and my sense of balancing has improved.

In Pilates, we usually balance on one leg as we roll down forward to touch our toes and then roll up again. It's even more challenging with the dumb bells.

Yoga poses are quite similar. The tree pose is one of them. I find that these balancing exercises help me to meditate better because my mind is so focused on trying to balance that I don't think about the stress and challenges that I face at work. It's harder for me to just meditate while lying on the floor because my thoughts wonder whenever I do that. So balancing workouts help me a lot in that sense too. I hope to practice a little more and get better each day. Let's see how it goes.

Knitting: Almost there!

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The fingerless mitts in progress from front view

View of future thumb gusset on stitch holder.

This afternoon I transferred some stitches onto the a stitch holder for the thumb gusset. I'm now concentrating on the section that holds the rest of the fingers. I'm so happy to be able to see some progress. Check out the pictures above.

The bad news is, my camera broke down right after I took these pictures so I won't be able to upload new pictures of my progress until I get a new camera or get this camera fixed.

SEM3 : Still on the prefixes

Coming back to memorizing on the vocabulary section. So far I've covered about 20 prefixes to date. Recall has been near perfect with one or two words that I can't seem to recall. Perhaps I wasn't visualizing well enough. For the Greek prefixes, I used the image of the Olympics, Greek Gods and Goddess. For Latin prefixes, I had the image of the Pope and all things that are related to Rome. French words were easy too. I used the image of the Eifle Tower. Progress has been slow but good. To be continued.

Knitting : Projects in progress

Currently, I have two projects that are in progress. For my home project, I'm now working on a fingerless mitten. Please congratulate me on figuring out how to knit in a round using a set of double pointed needles. :-) My stitches are a little bit loose between the needles in the first few rounds but I just carried on because I wanted to see the results fast. Anyway, since I'm practicing on cheap wool, it's okay to make mistakes now. When I get on to the better quality wool, I want the results to be perfect.

My Fingerless Mittens in Progress

My other project that is now in progress is my 'office project'. Yes, I do have a set of knitting needles to keep me occupied during the lunch hour when my lunch mates are not around or out shopping. However, progress on that project can be slow because I don't knit every lunch hour. (I do go out to shop between lunch too :-))

I'm currently working on a tissue cover. I invented that project by using an empty tissue wrapper as a guide. What I'm now doing is I"m  knitting a rectangular piece of fabric. When it's done, I'll sew up the ends so that I can insert a packet of tissue in between. This would prevent the wrapper from tearing and scattering tissue in my bag. :-)

My Tissue Cover In Progress. The empty wrapper in the right is my guide and the paper behind tracks how many rows I've done. Yeah...I need one of those.

I will probably post the completed project online when it's done. Till my next knitting blog...

Knitting: My Completed Projects So far

One of the things that I aim to achieve is to use up all the wool that I've bought from the series of sales at our local store. The thing is I just can't stop myself from buying new wool because every time I pass the store, I just have to get one or two balls of wool. Check out my wool collection so far. I'm trying not to make it grow by the numbers any more. I just love to hold and touch new wool!!! My knit projects are moving at slower pace so I really have to control myself. ;-p

My first few knit projects were done on a round knitting loom because it helped me knit pretty fast. However, the problem with using the looms is that you can only use very thick wool so I had to wind the wool a few rounds and the project ended up very thick. Check out my looms below.

My Finished Projects include the 2 pouches below (the one in blue and the other in white) and a cushion cover (the large green one)

Yes, yes, I know the cushion cover looks a bit lop sided but I was a beginner back then. So it was a worth a shot. My pouches are now being used as organizers for storing toiletries and stuff. So these are my completed projects so far... For my next few projects, I hope to learn how to make some socks, leg warmers, arm warmers and maybe even a bag. Wish me luck on getting there.

SEM3 : The beginning of a new chapter

In this blog, I’m going to put to test the recommended memory techniques suggested by Tony Buzan in his books Use Your Perfect Memory and Master Your Memory. Since there are many facts and languages that I’d like to learn, I’m going to use the SEM3 method to memorize a few thousand bits of information in an order. The only way to find out if his method really works is to try it out. I’ll be blogging my progress here.

From his book Master Your Memory, I’ve decided to start off with the “Vocabulary” section last night. I memorized the first 11 prefixes and it was a slow process. Perhaps I don’t have a strong imagination so that is why it’s taking a while. Today I managed to recall 10 out of the 11 prefixes in the correct order. The information was stored under the 5000 category of ‘sensation’ because that was the suggested category according to page 11.  At the moment, I’m still very excited about using the SEM3 method. The progress may be slow but it’s better than not starting at all. Let’s see how far this will go. I hope to memorize another 10 prefixes tonight.

To be continued in another blog section…

Yoga & Pilates: My progress so far

Last week, I decided to start off by doing the shoulder stand just before bedtime. According to some yoga sites, this is one of poses for promoting digestion. Before doing this, I had to first make sure that I wasn’t feeling any queasy feeling in my stomach and that I wasn’t having any indigestion issues. It was an hour before bedtime so my stomach felt fine. (Supper was 2 hours before that). I got down on the floor and propped my body up with my hands. I held that pose for about 30 seconds and felt the blood rushing to my head. I was afraid that I might feel giddy but I was okay. When I got back down and stood up, I decided to go to bed. Surprisingly, I slept very well that night. When I woke up in the morning, I felt that I really had some quality sleep. So far I can’t really say that the shoulder stand had improved my digestion yet because the results can only be seen the long term. However I can say that it did give me a very good night’s sleep. 

Yoga & Pilates : The first entry...

My health problems have made me decide to look at yoga and Pilates in a different light. Although I’ve been taking Pilates classes once a week, I had never been practicing on my own regularly within the week until recently.

For the past few years, I've been having the indigestion problems for certain periods of time. After taking some medication, it would then get cured but a few months later the problem will resume. I was allergic to some of the GP's medication so I tried some TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). TCM works but the time taken to get cured is very slow. However my indigestion problem still resumed a few months later again. This cycle continued for the past three years.

Recently I was referred to a gastroenterologist by the GP. He sent me through a series of tests because he said that my symptoms were ‘very unusual’. He took some blood tests, did a barium test and even an ECG. All my test results came back normal. He said my stomach appeared normal and he could not pin point what was wrong with me at all. I was glad that my stomach was ‘normal’ but I was frustrated because I really wanted to get rid of the problem and even a specialist doctor can’t even help me.

I was going through some yoga and Pilates websites and I read that these exercises not only have external benefits like toning and strengthening the muscles. They also helped our internal organs and can help with problems like digestion, lungs, heart, memory, concentration... The benefits were said to be enormous and the results could only be seen in the long term. However, I’m a little skeptical and the only way to find out if Yoga and Pilates do help is to try it regularly. So that is what this journal is all about. I’m going to blog my progress as I go along and see if the indigestion ever comes back.