Rocking Your World Friday - week 3

Gosh.  That week went fast! 

So here we are again, and it's time to round up this week's happy moments...

Last weekend there were smiles all round, as it was lovely and sunny.  I love Winter sunshine.  We went out for a fab (if rather cold!) walk and found a few geocaches, and along the way we discovered a little 13th century church, completely deserted, but open so we could have a good look round.

On the same walk we also found the remains of a medieval village called Richardston - not much left of it now but lumps and bumps in a large field, but it was fascinating to walk through where the village used to be, and imagine all the hustle and bustle (and the smells :) ) of the middle ages all around us.


As for the geocaches themselves, we only found two, but they were good ones - quality over quantity is our motto.

Sunday was Roller Derby day - woooohoooo!!!  I had been looking forward to this for ages.

This was the Swindon Rail Road Rebels' first ever game....not a full official bout just yet but a friendly scrimmage vs Oxford.  It wasn't open to the general public as they want to get a couple of friendlies under their belt before worrying about an audience, but I was lucky enough to be allowed in to take some photos.

And by "some", I mean around 700! Sadly 99% of them were blurry rubbish, though.  Close quarters, fast moving action is pretty hard to capture in a dimly lit indoor sports hall with no flash....  but by the end of the scrimmage I had got my camera settings pretty much optimised, and I'm hopeful of getting a better result next time.

These were a few of my favourite shots:

if looks could kill ;)

The game itself was incredibly exciting and fun to watch, I kept getting so caught up in the action that I forgot I was there to take photos - probably just as well as I would have ended up with 7,000 shots to sift through rather than 700 if I hadn't got distracted :)

Oh - and the final score?

Go Rebels Go!!!! :D :D :D

All the girls were really friendly, and I had a great time.  Can't wait for the next bout!


Redundancy woes continue at work, but at least all went smoothly for the young lady from my team who has elected to take voluntary - she wasn't required to work her notice and she seemed chuffed with that.  All was handled sympathetically, so that's good.  Or at least, less bad than it could have been.

On Monday evening I was watching this You Tube tutorial on space painting for beginners, and I thought I'd give it a go.

I was chuffed to bits with the results, not bad for a first attempt, eh?  (not that I can really take much credit, I just followed the steps in the video, and it just worked!)

The best part, though, was Darby's reaction when I showed it to him - apparently these "look like rocky terrestrial planets, though they seem to orbiting quite close to one another but thats not unheard of - though I would just have to say there shouldn't be quite as much debris between/close to the planets as per the IAU definition of planet they should have cleared the neighbourhood of their orbits of any small bodies" ....  ahhhh, the joys of having an undergraduate astrophysicist for a son :D

I'm still making progress with my Sketchbook Project book - in fact that's where the space painting ended up:

I only have one more double page spread left to do now, and the covers.  Phew!  Hopefully by next week's RYWF post I'll be able to say it's fiiiiinally finished :)

Also this week, for the first time in yonks and yonks, I had a little spend up on crafting supplies, with the last of my ebay proceeds.  I bought some bookbinding thread, charms, stencils and a few other bits and bobs from A Sprinkle Of Imagination....

It arrived beautifully packaged, both the white tissue paper and purple ribbon have been filed away for later use, and there were sweeties inside too :)  

Sweet retail therapy, how I have missed you!

(I need to sell more stuff on ebay so I can do it again lol)

And a couple more things that made me smile this week:

I found this book, that has been on my Amazon wish list for ages, in a charity shop for a quid, result.

And, very timely as I have been reading up a lot on printmaking techniques recently (I can smell a new obsession on the horizon, I'm SO faddy when it comes to arts and crafts, I wish I could settle on one thing and get good at it instead of all the flitting!) - there is a new print exhibition at the gallery near my work :

This was one of my favourites - a lino cut print with a little touch of gold leaf:

But there were tons of examples of all sorts of different techniques.

Loved it, definitely brightened up my lunchtime.

That's it for this week - see you again next time