Jan 16

Sewing Corner

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A job started last year, and hopefully to be finished soon, is to build in a sewing corner around the “new” old sewing machine.  A machine I acquired from a friend at a very reasonable cost (and the borrow of a van for transporting)  Not sure if I ever posted a photo of it, but its a hefty bit of kit which came on its own table, with a separate motor and pedal, with power transferring to the machine by a belt - all very industrial but with the right cotton (and that was very much trial and effor) it has no problem ploughing through numerous layers of kite fabric.  As it doesn’t sew anything but straight stitch though so my other machine is by no means redundant, and this means I need a bigger table.

So a new worktop is being made to fit onto the existing table frame, longer and with an extra leg to support it - taking up most of the alcove in the living room.  My dad made me a wonderfullittle cabinet out of rosewood as my Christmas present, and so the table will also provide room to stand that on too.  Soon it will all be finished, at least I hope so as the sewing machine is currently in Stephen’s workshop and no kite work going on…….

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Jan 16

New Year Resolutions (not)

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This happens occasionally, I get all enthusiastic about certain projects or aspects of my life and sort of get renewed interest that lasts for a while and then mostly dies out gradually…..its on several fronts this year.

Firstly the sewing - the big kite WILL be finished this year.  Yeah right, I’ve said that before - no really, it will!!!  The timing with work, and social life all falls right this year to go to Fuerteventura Kite Festival.  It would be great to take the Double Star - mind you trying to get the 5 foot long poles safely over to the Canaries by air may be awkward and costly - whatever happens though, I am determined this kite will have a test flight before we leave - and then I can move on to other projects on the kite front, a nice light-wind kite would be handy…..

Fitness and diet - I’ve put on far too much weight over Christmas and New Year, and the last year has seen me become a bix lax on the exercise front too - so I am currently heavy and unfit!  Running has started again, maybe I’ll enter the Kings Lynn 10k, or maybe just the Race for Life, but whatever I do, I need to train regularly.  After the button fell off of my mp3 player on my second run of the year, and rendered it unusable, I decide to invest in an ipod nano.  This, together with a nike+ receiver plugged into it, and a receiver in/on my running shoe, give me the opportunity to measure and log my training online - hopefully an incentive!  First it needs calibrating so I need to run an already measured distance and get it set right…..but not today - its too windy!!!!

I also tried, for the first time, a Zumba class yesterday.  Not really knowing what to expect, I found it very energetic (slightly more so than I had anticipated..), and quite fun.  A definite mixture of dance and aerobics - the repetitiveness of aerobics with some latin dance moves really.  Being on a saturday morning it means I will miss a few when I am out and about at weekends, but it seems that the moves are simple enough not to be losing anything if you miss a week, unlike the dance lessons I enjoyed.

Diet then, and another part of shifting some weight is to start cooking proper meals and not relying on convenience food and someties take-aways.  I never was that terrible with the take-aways unless I am away from home, but I do need to make more effort on the cooking front, and make fewer cakes too!  Also proper lunches at work instead of supermarket sandwiches.  I know that eating right doesn’t actually have to  involve loads of salads…but salad is actually very easy to pack and take to work, so thats the direction I headed in last week - lets see if I can keep this up and, together with the exercise, improve my shape.

So - although I hate the idea of new years resolutions, I guess that is pretty much what I have here, a few things that should improve my life if I actually do them…..we’ll see how it goes then!

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Oct 11

Sussex

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We went down to Sussex to visit my nephews on their birthday and took the opportunity to do some sightseeing at the same time.  It was nice to have the time to re-visit some places I haven’t been to in a while, and also a chance to take the new Sode kite out and see how it flew.

We saw Bodium castle, which I haven’t visited since I was a kid, went to Hastings and walked along the pebble beach amongst the fishing boats - unfortunately the venicular railway wasn’t running which I was most disappointed at, but the weather was great and the day was brilliant.  Staying at a travelodge in Eastbourne overnight, with an evening meal at the Beachy Head pub - definitely recommended for both food and view from the dining room, and getting up the next day to head off to Shoreham, via Beachy Head once more for a spot of kite flying.  The weather at Beachy Head was most odd - sunny one moment and then a mist rising up over the cliffs from the sea until we couldn’t even see the road any more, very spooky! 

After that a trip to the spectacular Middle Farm, a cider barn definitely worth a visit - over 100 ciders and perries available to sample and shelves upon shelves of other ciders too - I think they said it is the biggest in the country.  We tried not to buy too much…..

From there on to my brothers for a great day to celebrate a sixth birthday party with loads of kids (well ok maybe less than a dozen), getting roped in with the party games and keeping the kids entertained while the mothers got chance to chat (how did that happen?) and  inevitably ending the day with a water fight with the two boys, where I was distinctly outnumbered, particularly when my brother joined in - thats just so not fair…….

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Oct 11

Sode Workshop with GOKF

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GOKF - Great Ouse Kite Flyers, my local kite group.

For the past few years arrangements have been made by the club to run workshops to make a kite in a day or over a weekend.  Basically we all trek out to a school in Peterborough, sewing machine in hand, and spend the day sitting at kiddie height tables, on kiddie height chairs (personally I don’t have a problem with that !)  to sew our masterpieces which invariably end up getting finished at home.

This year, the projects were ambitious - to make both a Sode (a traditional japanese design using real silk) and a tulip spinner over one weekend, and amazingly this time we managed to finish both in class time.  The workshop was run by a guy from Tasmania, who also kept us entertained during the meal after the Saturday session.

The best thing about these workshops is that its a chance for all of us to get together and work together, helping each other if we can/are needed and w always have a great time chatting as we work - a real social event.  It seems at one point that we were slightly too distracting for poor Bruno, who resorted to ear defenders so that he could concentrate!

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Jul 23

100

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This is the 100th post since I started the blog!  Amazing.

I know its been very quiet for the last few weeks on here but if, by my silence, you have drawn the conclusion that there has been nothing much going on, you would be very much mistaken - its been chaos!

Project 52 is continuing still, not long to go now until it is complete.

I have attended a kite workshop (making a Sode kite and a Tulip spinner), visited the little men down in Shoreham (and their parents!) been to Ely Folk Festival (had a go at Morris dancing!!), and am just recovering from a weekend Christmas party (don’t say it) before heading up north(ish) to take part in Cleethorpes carnival and a spot of archery this weekend.

I have photos of all but the Christmas party (it went so quickly….) and will post them on here just as soon as I can get my camera connected to the computer - I think we have usb hub problems at the moment. 

As far as the Christmas party goes, the weekend sort of passed in a bit of a daze, very little sleep, a touch too much alcohol (although I was surprisingly sober on the Saturday night) and a whole load of stuff to do during the weekend mean that memories are not what they could be, and photos are non-existent - at least from my own point of view.  I am sure I will update the Kings Lynn Plus blog (www.kingslynnplus.org.uk) shortly with an account of the weekend , and I know a few of our members have photos I can use on that site if you want to see them.  What I do know is that after taking part in the National Rounders (on the losing side unfortunately), I was still suffering several days later - who says exercise is good for you?  I was also pleasantly surprised, and this is a very random thought, that my home-made beefburgers held together nicely on the BBQ instead of doing a disappearing act in pieces through the grill as home-made burgers usually seem to.  Told you it was a random thought!  I also improvised a rather nice recipe for a sweet pastry for mince pies, and made (yet another) Chocolate Guiness cake, which did its usual disappearing act before I ate much of it!

The summer party was the 5th weekend out of a total of 9 where I have been/will be either out or staying away from home all weekend - I do like keeping busy, but I can’t help thinking that next weekend we are actually at home for the whole weekend (which is looking to be August bank holiday - a whole three days at home!) it will come as something of a relief.

Photos to follow asap….off to PC World now to go buy a new USB hub I think!

(and yes I do know I still haven’t posted the recipes I promised!)

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Jun 20

Project 52 - Week 43

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I’m being buried alive in kite bits!

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Jun 20

Project 52 - Week 41

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The second proper flight by the Swan kite, plus Kevin trying to keep his Genki aloft

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Jun 13

Project DS resumes

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Its been a long while since I’ve done any worjk on the big kite, so I’m pleased to be getting stuck into the sewing again as a break from studying.  We’re now almost up to the point of joining on the last 40 pieces of fabric, which I totally amazed by, as it seems to have been so quick to get to this point from having the centre sections done and the “B” panels attached.  Thoughts are now turning to spars, bridling etc., and we are now researching the best way to do it, and the best places to buy the parts we need.  10mm tube is difficult to come by in the lengths we need in the UK so we may end up sourcing it from another country, possibly the USA.  We know for certain that the centre hub is only available either as a special one-off manufacture (thanks for the offer Dad!) in this country, or ready made by mail order from America.  The Double Star kite seems to have a very big following over there and there is a supplier who saw the demand and made the part to sell especially to all the DS builders.  Even with postage costs this may be the cheaper option, and easier for all concerned (I can almost hear the sigh of relief now!).

It looks like we finally perfected the method of joining with the aid of double side tape.  After discovering that the sewing machine(s) really didn’t like it, we found that if we stuck the pieces together before sewing the straight seem, we could then remove the tape before sewing zig zag stitch over the raw edges.  Doing this with three pieces of fabric together was quite easy, when we progressed to four layers things got a little more difficult - but we’re getting there!  This is good news just ahead of our kite club’s festival, as we can now report progress should anyone enquire.

 

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Jun 07

Motivation & Enthusiasm

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I joined the local swimming pool a few months ago to try and help shift some of the weight that I seem to have accumulated over the last year or so.  I’ve also sarted eating much healthier with the same intention.  So far I’ve managed to lose about half a stone.  When I joined the swimming pool I found it difficult to get the enthusiasm to go as often as I should, always seeming to find something more important to do with my lunch hours at work. 

Just recently I seemed to have gained the motivation that I was previously lacking, not quite sure where from, but maybe it has something to do with setting myself targets and making my swims more interesting by making up a “routine” for my time in the pool.   This week I actually completed three sessions, 30 lengths each time, including a variety of different strokes.

On top of the swimming, now I have come to the end of the physio on my foot  after the car accident, I have been wanting to improve my walking distances.  I am hoping that I will gradually increase the distances until I am back up to the 5/6 mile walks I was happy with previously.  We went to Strawberry Fayre in Cambridge yesterday and I certainly walked a fair distance there - only having troubles when we were nearly back to the train station in the evening. 

For the first time since the accident I went running today - ok, so it was probably the shortest run ever, but its a start and with my newly found motivation maybe I can build up the running distances too, possibly even get enough enthusiasm to go running before work in the mornings once or twice a week - although that may be asking a lot for someone who really hates mornings!

Also resumed after a long(ish) break are both archery and kite flying.  The last kite meeting I went to was the New Years Day fly-in, when there was almost no wind but plenty of time to socialise round the BBQ, so I popped over the Ferry Meadows for one of the meetings….where there was very little wind, but more socialising going on!  A hot day, and although not much would fly I got the chance to catch up with some friends and the swan kite did manage a short outing.  Archery on Tuesday was the first practice session since we began shooting outside in May - was a bit daunting to start with, but we soon got into the swing of things and I was pleased to see that the alteration to my bow that I had done at Custom Built Archery seems to have improved my range slightly too.

Something new for this weekend, if you include Friday evening in your definition of  “weekend” (and I certainly do!) is a couple of hours of dancing lessons - something I’ve been wanting to do since WASH last year.  I attended an hour of ballroom dancing, and learnt some quickstep, and an hour of latin ballroom where I learnt some jive and some rumba.  I had so much fun, and amazed myself by picking up the steps quite quickly, that I may well go again this coming Friday too.  I don’t think I have the time spare to commit to going every week, but its certainly very appealing to be doing something new and energetic.

The last, but certainly not least, activity this weekend has been resuming work on Project Doublestar (DS), the ongoing kite project.  We knew it was going to be a long term project, but I didn’t count on having so much else going on that I wouldn’t touch it for weeks, possibly months, on end.  With the sewing I’ve managed today, we are now up to the point of joining on the third set of panels.  It is already so large that if we try and lay it out to photograph it takes up most of the floor space in the middle of the living room, and still two more sets of panels to attach yet!  Only 15 more pieces to hem too.

Success all round then, this weekend - and I’m hoping this period of motivation and enthusiasm continues for some time to come, particularly as it also extends to updating the blog too!  Maybe I’m finally starting to lighten up a bit again after worrying so much about college - who knows!

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Mar 31

Dieppe Kite Festival - Video

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In theory I ought to be able to insert a link to you-tube into this post which plays the video I shot a the Dieppe Kite Festival in September last year.  I spent all day Sunday watching, choosing, editing the many bits of video we shot and the two cameras we took with us - cutting it down to 10 mins was a real challenge and there is so much I had to miss out, or cut later, to shorten the clip enough to be able to upload it to you-tube.

As with a lot of things that I do, I like to make sure the end product is the best I can achieve, and I even managed to add music where needed (most of the sound on video shot at a kite festival is wind noise!), and cut the clips to fit the music - the result was something that I was pretty ok with, so I uploaded it.

One small thing I forgot about…….copyright on music!  Thanks to trying to use an extract from Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” (seemed appropriate!), you-tube muted all audio entirely - what good is a 10 minute video with no music/sound?

So…back to the drawing board, and until I mange to sort the problem I have deleted the video from you-tube as I don’t want it to be viewed unfinished.  Watch this space…..

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