Not enough hours in the day...

Well, I've been a bit quiet lately - life has been busy!

I signed up to Twitter weeks ago - and you may now follow me via my link, over there  ->

I've been too busy to tweet anything, so it's not very interesting reading at the moment!

I did manage to pause and take photos of all the things I've been doing, but there were so many photos I ended up making collages for this post.  And this is just skimming the surface, there's so much more I want to be getting on with - what a lovely feeling to be inspired!

First up, some mucking about with paper and fabric snippets to make some bits and pieces to sell at Art Trail this summer - and multitasking with the laptop, looking at the HMRC website of all things!

And I was looking at the HMRC website because I taught my first solo class last Tuesday - and immediately thought "why haven't I done this before?".  A lovely busy afternoon, the students even helped to put the tables away at the end, and there were two posh biscuits left over to take home to the Girl and Mr G - so everyone was happy!  We made cords and tassels:

Then I noticed that Gina had been making tassels too, but posh ones with beads.  So I had to have a go at some beads, something I've been meaning to do for ages.  It was huge fun getting out the soldering mat, heat gun and soldering iron (not least because it winds up Mr G, as it just confirms what he already thinks ie. that I've lost my marbles...) - and I thought I wasn't a burny-melty-kinda-gal!  My beads aren't as nice as Gina's though...I'm teaching embroidered bead making in a few weeks, but luckily I hadn't planned to do melty-hot ones, or I'd be feeling a tad discouraged!

And then finally, the thing that has been occupying me the most: Maggie Grey's new book arrived in the post and I stole all the Girl's pipecleaners.  Girl was very cross, but I was very excited so didn't care (but I have bought her some replacements now...).  Pipecleaners!  Who knew?

First I used a "novelty yarn" to make a hairy multicoloured bracelet:

And then I played around with fabric wrapping to make this bracelet:

Both these two bracelets were made on the spur of the moment, with no real thought as to what I was doing or the best order to do things - I just jumped right in with my stolen pipecleaners.  As a result, they took longer than they should have, and I knew I would do things differently if I did them again.

So I had another go!

I'm yet to finish these two little projects - destined to be another bracelet and a brooch:

I'm very excited by this!

Finally, I managed to package up a bit more foil today and will have a grand total of one more pack in the shop!  If you leave me a comment, I'll enter your name into a draw for a little pack of bronze/gold like the one in the shop - the winning name will be chosen by the Whippet in a few days' time...

And so it begins...

Another project started, and I need a new project like a hole in the head...but what the hey.  I've wanted to weave chicken wire for months now, and finally remembered to go to the DIY shop and buy some - they sell it by the metre!  Who knew?  This piece is destined to become yet another wretched chimney...hopefully we'll exhibit our wretched chimneys in February and I can stop trying to find ways of making them...I still spend idle moments trying to fathom a method for my chimney brush bristles (see this post).

And another attempt started to try and shrink my mid-section.  Having been a "pear" all my life, I was alarmed to discover a bit of a tendency towards "apple" late last year.  And my baby is 10 years old this year, so that's no longer an excuse...

I'm still getting in a bit of T Tapp a few times a week, but lost the plot after reaching my target of "40 workouts by my 40th birthday" and haven't been consistent.  My upper knee measurement has remained steady (!) even if from there up things have expanded slightly since the summer...

My latest strategy is from the book "Beyond Chocolate", not that I'm a chocoholic, I'm really not.  But I know I overeat.  Not binges, not packets of biscuits, not too much cake or pudding or anything (these are nearly always just weekend things, not everyday)...but a subtle easily justified overeating - cleaning my plate of wholesome, homecooked, locally sourced, probably organic and at the very least free-range food -  every time.  Even if I'm full.

So I'm trying to work on the basis of eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm not.  And it's SO much harder than I thought, not least because in this house, if you don't eat it someone else will, so there's no saving for later...as my husband discovered when he went to find the tube of Smarties left over from gingerbread house construction. 

And making this sort of thing for school packed lunches doesn't help:

Apricot flapjacks, as requested by The Girl. 

I'm finding that "greed" and "hunger" feel the same at the moment.  For the sake of my trousers I hope I work out the difference soon.

Oh yes, I've also removed the scales from the bathroom.  But I haven't thrown them out yet...