Can I have my week back please?

Ok, who stole Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? And how is it now Friday? How did that happen?

I think I've just been trying to recover from last weekend and have only just woken up!

On Tuesday I got my "MMA GOALS" list, which includes coaching a guy to his black belt by January 09! Ha! A teensy bit optimistic methinks, but we shall see. Also, it's basically just what I'm doing now but written down!

On Wednesday evening I took pictures off ALL the products I have on my craft stall, notecards, posters, noticeboards, everything! Now it is all on DaWanda. The shop is almost full.

Last night I took the ladies' grading, which was an experience! Fortunately all the students who I solely teach passed. We had one unfortunate, but she will have the opportunity to re-take. Because of the grading I was home late last night, and I did tell the DH that I would be home at that time, but he rang me anyway, to see where I was! I got home to him "baking". Now the DH's idea of baking is mixing up some flour and maybe some butter and then adding stuff. He'd kneaded up this wierd buttery dough but it had no sugar in, so we had to add icing sugar. Then we put raisins in the dough and jam on top and baked it until browned. It made a kind of heavy scone-type effort. I think he had overworked the dough because it had the same texture of manky shortcrust pastry! Still, it was a nice thought!

I also got my 'tocks to the gym this morning, since I had promised my friend I would work on her free weights with her. Unfortunately she'd had a late night working in the pub so was too tired for a workout. I still had a pretty heavy, but pretty basic workout; benches, squats, good mornings and lat pulldowns.

Pre-gym time (which is pre-eyes-open) I made it to ASDA to buy some secret things for secret 30th birthdays at the weekend. I hope they will be ok, otherwise I will have to run home early and alter some other secret things!

Crafty Ninja On Tour!

The weekend craft fair was a mild success! At least I took more than I paid for the table! My button earrings seem to have been increadibly popular! So I will be making a few more of them for the Brixton show and I am also branching out into some other earrings. The teacup candles went down a storm, they sold out within an hour, then another lady came back to buy them, so I had to take an order!



That's my mother there, looking dazed and confused! Heh!

I've managed to clean the silk screen off today, so I will be burning another image onto it soon, there are a couple of secret things I need to make before the weekend.

I am aiming to get back into the gym today - albeit depending on estate agents etc.

Jumping On The Bagwagon

This is all over the net - but here you go! I've not seen it on a bag, or red on white rather than white on red.



Spanking!

Available here.

Kinda Halfway

Last night I decided that I wanted a bit of a mini-grading in mma, let's call it a "half-Dan". I've been floundering around a little bit, not really knowing what to do, thinking that it might be easier to stay at home some evenings, thinking that there's no real point to improving my sparring since we aren't doing any tournaments, I'm not going for grading any time soon, so I have no real "goals" (hate that word really). So we had a chat last night and Lee is going to come up with a mini-grading for me, that will help towards 2nd Dan. He is insistant that I can't quite do 2nd Dan yet, and that we need to leave a year or two inbetween, but I did tell him that actually it's been 6 months since I took my black belt test so time is fleeting.

Last night I made my first sale on DaWanda, which was great since I only loaded all my stuff on there yesterday! And the best thing about it - they only charge 5% of the sale fee, when you sell. The listings are unlimited in length, so if you don't sell, you don't pay... Love it! Also, you can get them to send you a text message when you make a sale - how VERY exciting!

Psssst - I just checked on the silk screen and it hasn't stuck to the newspaper! I get to expose it at half 11! I can't wait.

And Another

Which I really like!

The photo emulsion is back on the screen, so hopefully it is drying without newspaper sticking to it today! Then tomorrow is exposure and a print run. Fingers crossed!

Finally

Got these sorted!







Unfortunately I am learning the heard way that newspaper + photo emulsion don't mix. Gah!

Last night I had 3 students at my class. I noticed how conditioned I am to a 45 minute class - at quarter to 7 I had run out of things to do, so had to improvise with some more partner techniques and a little bit more sparring!

Keep Calm and Carry On!

The vendor pulled out of our house sale today.

Boo hiss.

I walked the walk on Saturday - bra and all!




The rest of the weekend was spent in relative tranquility - passed out in bed, reading books on typography and dozing and eating apple pie!

On Friday I printed out some more posters for the craft fair. I have a couple of things to do for the fair at the weekend and I am done ding dong! I am preparing a screen for a set of bags I will be making for the craft fair and etsy. They might go on etsy first...

Screen Printing First Try

I'm pretty impressed!

Tea Light

For the fair of craft. (Not for sale on etsy, I don't think it would survive the post!)

Argh!

We are having a pain dealing with our vendor and estate agents. I've just been on the phone to the agent and he is writing to the vendor. I am so sad that we have picked a bum vendor and that it isn't going as smoothly as we could have hoped. We knew there would be messes and stresses, but 4 weeks without any action is really starting to annoy me. I am almost thinking like we won't be ending up there. DH is going to go round to the vendor's house and try and talk to him. I think if I went, I would end up beating his head against a window.

My blank canvas totes came today, and the tea towels. They are super lucious! Unfortunately no screen printing set yet. :-( Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps.

Oh crikey, I forgot that I was going to cut out some leaves for my moonwalk bra this lunchtime. It still hasn't really sunk in that I will be walking a marathon overnight on Saturday.

I want more chocolate. Send me some!!!!!!!

PS The silk screen turned up later in the afternoon! Whoopee!

Silk Screen!

I've just bought a one! Whoop!

And some blank tea towels, and blank shopping bags. In the end I figured it would be miles cheaper to silk screen my own tea towels rather than buy 100 of the same print.

Let the games COMMENCE

My first kickboxing class started in Abbots Langley - I had 7 people, most of which had done martial arts before, so I have a class of experts! Eek! I managed to intimidate one lady, I had the black belts demonstrate sparring, and they weren't going hard, but she ran like a little girl, saying, "I don't think this class is for me...". Heh.

On Saturday I chilled round at my friend's house. We did some dancing with her baby, fed the ducks, watched DVDs and made brownies. All good.

Things purchased on Saturday:
Petrol
2 packets of ginger nuts
1 gingerbread man

On Sunday we caught the coach to Portsmouth to meet my friend who is in the Navy. She is leaving soon, so we thought we'd better make the most of our guide! We walked round Warrior, and there was a steam and craft fair on in the harbour. The steam fair was pretty small, but there were a fair few traction engines there. The crafts were virtually non-existant. We had a lovely lunch, and a lovely dinner - for dinner pudding I had spotted dick, which amused the American couple on the next table, who were eating fish and chips and the guy was wanting to drink "Speckled Chicken" beer, but unfortunatley they didn't have any. They didn't even have Speckled Hen.

Things purchased on Sunday:
2 500ml bottles Pepsi Max
2 packets of chewing gum
hot dog and fries and onion rings, lime and soda
ticket to the steam fair
lime and soda and a piece of lemon cake
poached pear and feta salad, spotted dick with creme anglaise and a lime and soda

Things purchased on Monday:
Petrol

(this buying thing is turning out to be more food diary than buying diary ;-) )

Concussion

ouchie.

Purchased today:
12:30pm 1 battered sausage, half a portion of chips, no added sugar vimto £2.90
No web purchases today, but I did get a delivery of 2 sample tea towels. Score!

STASH!

My friend at work has just brought me a HUGE stash of her Grandma's fabrics. There is suiting fabric, denim, gorgeous fuscia silk, houndstooth wool, nice silky heavy black material that will be LBD material when I find a good pattern! There's some cute florals and also some silver sparkly velvet that I already have a bit of - I made it into some pyjama bottoms and I must say they are fantastic! There is also a TON of spools of thread and zips, long long zips that I can make floppy disc wallets with and yards upon yards of stretchy lace trim. I have promised to make my friend a flowery, lacey ra-ra skirt!

In other news today, I have invented a cool tournament system that we might implement at training over the next few weeks, to help keep people interested over the summer holidays. Basically, it's 2, 1 minute rounds of sparring and the winner goes forwards to the quarter-finals, then semis then there will be an ultimate winner out of the class. If we implement it over the whole of the club, then the winners from each class will go forward to fight each other. I think we need it, we get bored to easily. Or maybe I should just say, "I".

I'm inspired by Obsessive Consumption and so for the next week, you're going to see exactly what I've bought every day! I know, interesting or what? Anyway, today's list goes like this:

8:20am - 11 Litres of unleaded petrol @ 107.9p a litre
12:30pm - Sesame Ryvita, Chocolate Crispies, Solero Ice Lolly
No internet shopping so far today!
6pm groceries

Oooh and the stuff I ordered the other day for my little crafty things arrived today. I will be playing at the weekend!

Yesterday I did make it to the gym. I benched, squatted and good morninged, also laterally pulled down and had a nice s-t-r-e-t-c-h. I swear I was a cat in previous lives, I love stretching.

I also overdid the hamstring exercises, because I had trouble walking round Sainsbury's then had even more trouble walking up the hill to Hampstead Heath to watch the Typhoons fly over. My legs seem to be ok today, but they are nicely achey.

Hum. What to say today.

Well the outporing of my graphic efforts at work came today - 2 pallet loads of A4 reviews. Nice to start the day off with some physical exercise, unloading the truck!

I have been distributing those MMA leaflets again at lunchtime, I seem to have come away with fewer bruises and trapped fingers today.

I am partially working on doing something with 3.5" floppies, perhaps for the craft fair, perhaps not.

I am officially hating sparring in martial arts. Hate it. Don't want to do it. Want to go home. Of course if just needs something to get me interested again and I'll be all set. There seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for tournaments at the moment, perhaps that's why I'm not bothered about sparring.

I am making an effort to go to the gym tonight. I am determined. Apparently my "unfitness" is all in my head. If that's the case I should be able to rock on through some heavy squats and lifts and be fine tomorrow.

I have planned some quality printer-time tonight. There's a few things I want to make for the next craft fair and need to print some stuff out. I also need to carve out time to photograph myself making stuffies. At least it's the right weather for it at the moment. I might bring in the camera and tripod tomorrow and have a bash over lunchtime now that I've finished delivering all those leaflets.

Oh I had the wierdest, angriest dream last night. I was late for my friend's wedding and I was screaming myself hoarse at my parents who were supposed to be getting us there! This does not bode well for the future, we are having to get the train to Darlington on the morning of the wedding, which is fine and will probably work out well, but I think I would rather be going the night before, however there is no-one to cover my ladies class. So Friday morning train it must be.

More Shop and Cornwall

Here's another couple of poster prints in the shop.





We spent the weekend in Cornwall which was pretty boring this time. Although I did find the most amazing gingerbread-man ice-cream. Gingerbread-men and ice-cream. Together. With clotted cream on the top! The train down was horrendous, I thought I'd got a seat only to be turfed out about 10 seconds after setting off. The whole train was unreserved because of the bank holiday, so why this guy thought he had any more right to the seat I was sitting in than I had, lord only knows! So I spent a lovely 3 and a half hours standing. We got into Penzance at eleven and back to the in-laws at midnight just in time to see bonkers Boris win the election.

Saturday turned into nap-central. On Sunday we walked into St Ives, and on Monday we walked into St Ives again, although this time I found a charity shop with some cute cups that I will be using for some crafting!

The lethargy is almost lifting and I feel almost awake - I have been taking vitamin Bs in the hope that I might return to almost-normal levels of awake-ness. Unfortunately I am rotting my teeth with Pepsi as well, since caffiene seems to have no effect on my sleep patterns because I am so tired!

I am hoping to get a grand workout tonight because my sparring skills seem to have taken a nose-dive. My new classes start at Abbot's Langley (Watford) on Monday and I want to up my confidence a little bit before then. I am also hoping to get to the gym at least one morning this week since the cake belly is taking over!

More In The Shop

I haven't been doing much over the past couple of days because of some Migraine of Terror stomping on me, but the sun shone this morning so I managed to get a nice photo of this print I've been working on. Of course, it's in the shop. I've got a few more to frame and photograph, so that will be fun!

Tonight - boy beating. I am feeling a little more energetic. Be afraid boys, be very afraid!