Ocean colour scene

The ocean ripple scarf/wrap continues to undulate itself through my every spare minute! I have to say that I’m finding it quite addictive and relaxing at the same time! It’s easy enough to trance out and watch a film whilst doing it, but just complex enough for me to have to pay attention to the stitch count. Failure to do this results in the waves becoming longer on one side that the other; my ocean ripples start to become stormy waves! I’ve done quite a bit now and I’m hoping that it’ll be long enough when it’s time to post it.

  

I’m working on a fish shaped copper wire pin for it too, but fishy #1 didn’t turn out quite as I liked! I’ll have another attempt at it, I painted a little sea life candle burner for my swap partner too and I have a bulb in progress. 

  

My BPT Hoodie is also progressing believe it or not! Just the hood to finish now. Sadly the flower garden blanket is hibernating till I’ve finished the two projects that are in full swing at the moment!

Term has started once more, I’ve done my first week back with my overseas students and not only have my art lessons, but I’ve also got some timetabled EFL (English as a Foreign Language) lessons too. So nice to be using the skills that I spent all last year gaining! My Mondays are my most tiring day; I start teaching at 8.30am and finish at 6pm! My other job starts teaching this week, the students have had their induction and we’ve assessed their basic literacy and numeracy skills and put them into appropriate groups, there are seven groups in total doing the Foundation Diploma (that’s six more than last year!), so I have my hands very very full this year! (In fact I’m having to turn work done now!)

There was no belly dancing class this week as my teacher was in Istanbul for the week (so jealous!) so M and I went to see Final Destination (4?) in 3D. Orange (mobile phones) do a 2-4-1 offer on a Wednesday night, so I got a code (I’m on that network) and off we went. M hasn’t seen a 3D film since the original Jaws in 3D (yep, he’s that old!) when you had to wear green and red glasses. He really wanted to see one of the new generation 3D’s, but to be honest, I don’t think the film made the best use of the 3D technology, although there were a few duckable moments!

The girls and I went out on Friday night to celebrate Suz’s birthday. Nine of us descended on the local Pizza Express and we were as rowdy as ever! I had a Pandana - goat's cheese, spinach and red onion with caramelised onion confit and a drizzle of garlic oil. Very scrummy! Then for dessert I had a Chocolate Glory - vanilla gelato with bite-sized pieces of chocolate fudge cake and drizzled with chocolate sauce and a dark chocolate straw. Chocolate heaven! Will have to work out extra hard this week to compensate for all the extra calories! We were as well behaved as we were able…

Okay, I admit that things got a little naughty at times!

But we all behaved like grown ups…

For the birthday girl I painted a pair of butterfly goblets, but I sadly forgot to take a picture to show you all, so you’ll have to imagine them! For the party bags I made a gerbera hair clip by taking the flowers from a silk flower spray and hot gluing them to a hair slide. I added glitter to for extra pizzazz!

They looked super cute and we all went home wearing them …they even matched the restaurants table flowers!

The weekend was so lovely here that on Saturday (after doing a couple of early morning lesson plans), Sis and I painted Mum’s garden fence for her; we managed to get 2/3’s of it done, then we had to give up because it was 5.30pm and we were shattered! The fence is about six ft high and hides behind shrubbery, rose bushes and plants for alot of its length. What we did looked nice though, so it’ll all be worth the effort and time. We’ll paint the shed and the rest of the fence next weekend. When I got home I couldn’t even be bothered to eat, I just ran a bath and soaked in it for an hour with a book and a cup of my favourite rose tea. I wasn’t really tired till I got home, then it kinda hit me all at once. I spent the rest of the night curled up on the sofa with M, watching Ice Road Truckers (yes, I was that tired) and crocheting! Sunday morning was spent in bed watching telly, drinking tea (on tap from M), and rippling away whilst M watched the F1 Grand Prix. The rest of the day was spent in my garden, putting it to bed ready for the winter. I pruned back what I could, trimmed the grass, weeded and moved all my pots to the patio to protect them from oncoming winter weather, and also to let the grass grow when we eventually do get some rain. It’s been quite dry here lately; I even had to water some plants!

Anyway, have a great week!