A Mixed Week and a Romantic Gesture W/E 17/02/24

This week began in the usual way with a dog walk. I wasn't working again this weekend, which was great. When I got back from the dog walk, I had a lovely lunch and then took myself off to the sewing room again. I wanted to carry on working on the new piece of fabric I was making from scraps. 

I spent a lovely afternoon working on it. It took a while to finish and use all the pieces I'd sewn together, but I was happy enough with the finish. I decided to try to attach iron on interfacing to this piece, to strengthen it and make it slightly less floppy, but when I did try this it was a disaster and created all sorts of creases in the fabric, so I ended up ripping it off. It was a learning curve.

OH made us a lovely soup for supper, which was very tasty and we spent the evening watching a very crazy film about a record producer from the 1960's, which neither of us particularly enjoyed, but we got so invested in it we couldn't stop watching it. I did a bit of work on my tiny cross project whilst watching TV. The crosses are looking so much better, now that I'm sewing them together with coordinating thread.

On Monday, I took myself off to do the weekly shop, out of town this week. I needed quite a lot of things this week, so it was a more expensive shop. I used my £8 off voucher at Tesco, where I managed to bag quite a few yellow stickered items, so that helped and got a couple of free items from Lidl, using Lidl plus.

I bought some new dahlia tubers for the allotment at Lidl. They were only £1.49 each, so I bought these 3:

These cactus type dahlias are my favourites, as they have large flower heads. I also bought two packs of cress seeds for 29p each. I'm going to grow this on the kitchen windowsill and add it to my salads. 

Some colourful beetroot seeds came home with me from Poundland for £1. They look lovely in the jar, when you pickle the different colours together.

I was out for most of the day, and then when I got back I did some banking and got up to date on financials before making supper.

OH surprised me today, when he told me that he'd booked me a personal training session at a local weightlifting club, as a Valentine's gift. He knows that I'd love to learn how to lift weights/strength train properly, but he knew I would never book myself to do it, so he did it for me. I arranged to go along on Thursday of this week and was quite excited/nervous to see how it goes. A strangely romantic gesture.

Tuesday, I was booked into my usual class. It was a good workout. I was due to work in the evening. I didn't actually get a lot done before work, as I was preoccupied with a task that I'd got very behind on. Work was busy, but passed quickly. I was a bit late getting home as a consequence, but I wasn't due to work again until Friday, which made it okay.

I took the dog for a long walk first thing on Wednesday and then headed to Soca Aerobics. I wasn't really feeling it on this particular morning, as I'd got a bit wet on the rainy dog walk, but I made myself go and I enjoyed it when I got there. 

In the afternoon, I needed to go and collect my new prescription sunglasses from the opticians. It ended up being a bit of a disaster, as they'd put clear lenses in them and not tinted. I got the impression that they thought it was my fault for not expressing what I wanted. I'm pretty sure I made it clear, but they didn't seem willing to budge. I said I'd be willing to pay half the cost of getting the lenses replaced for tinted i.e. £15 and later got a call to say they'd agreed to this as an act of good will(!), but I came way feeling very disappointed with their inability to get it right in the first place. 

I dropped into B&Q afterwards, to get some more paint for some drawers that I bought on eBay at the weekend and that I'm hoping will be delivered later in the week.

After the disappointment over the sunglasses, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the sewing room, making up the third and final project bag. I was pretty happy with how this one turned out. I used some left over hexies to add a bit of interest to the plain pieces of fabric. I appliqued these on later. Here's a couple of pictures:

(Apologies for the dark pictures, the lighting wasn't very good)

It is now housing the hexi star project which is getting bigger.

On Thursday morning, my wooden drawers arrived. They are pretty much the same as the ones I painted last week. I started to paint them the same colour, as I want them to stand on top of one another. I did a bit of painting each day until they were finished.

In the afternoon, I went for my personal training session at the weightlifting club.  I'd never done anything like it before. It was interesting, but there was a lot to take in with regard to technique and the exercises I did, even with very light weights felt quite strenuous. I came away with legs like jelly and have been stiff ever since. I'm thinking of continuing with it by attending classes, but I probably need another personal training session before I do. I'll keep you posted with what I decide to do.

Friday, I was working in the evening, so I stayed home and caught up on some small jobs, did more painting of the drawers, laundry etc., before getting ready and heading into work. Work was steady, but busy as always.

On Saturday morning, I went to the free gym session again. I had a good session and needed it to loosen up the tightness in my muscles after the weightlifting training. I felt better for it. I then finished the painting of the drawers, lined them with paper and transferred the contents of the metal drawers into them. The new arrangement looks a lot less cluttered and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll post separately about it when I've made a few more changes to the room.

Later, I got showered and ready for work. I was scheduled to work 4 consequetive nights and then I should get 5 nights off, unless the rota changes, which it sometimes does.

This week has not been quite as productive a week as last week, but I have tried to make some progress each day, on the various things that I'm trying to achieve, be it my fitness journey, sewing or re-organising the sewing room.

I hope you've had a good week.