Bowls

          I’ve joined an indoor bowls club.  I’ve liked the look of bowls as far back as I can remember watching the game played on the “Bowling green” at my local park as a child.  I’ve toyed with the idea of playing for a while now and since moving I’ve been looking sort some sort of social outlet.

          I stopped to watch the outdoor bowls a couple of times here and there, and took a few steps nearer to the decision to play, then Hubby came home with some information about an indoor bowls club which is just around the corner from us.  That took away the last few excuses I had for not going, first it was indoors, so I wouldn’t have to worry about playing in bad weather, and secondly its just around the corner, so I won’t have far to go to get there.  With a little push from Hubby I went along to an open day and had a go with some of the bowls there, then I somehow signed up for a five weeks beginners course.

          What had I let myself in for ? Me, who doesn’t even compete with myself, going along to a sports organisation.

          I battled with myself and made sure I turned up to this new place, to meet new people, doing something new … and it turned out I wasn’t as bad as I imagined myself to be after all.

          Apparently, the many years I’ve spent working in long aisles overnight at my supermarket have paid off, imagine if you’re at one end of the aisle and your colleague is at the other and you have to pass something, possibly something slightly breakable to her, would you walk the length of the aisle, or would you simply push it along the floor to her.  Yes, I would have pushed it too, however, to push it far enough you would have to draw your arm backwards and swing the arm forwards to give the extra umph, and again, having the extra umph (technical term here) if the product was to leave the floor and then land again, you would probably cause it to be damaged in some way.  Hence, I have developed what has been described as a nice smooth delivery with my bowling arm.

          In my five week course, which somehow turned into seven weeks, I learned quite a lot of new things, I knew the bowls weren’t round, but I didn’t know they had a different ‘un-roundness’ on either side, enabling you to curve the bowl to the left for a forehand shot, and to the right for a backhand shot.  I learned that there are various sizes and types of bowls, each little difference combines with each person’s own stance and positioning to make probably millions of individual shots. 

          I met some new people, I think I might even be bold enough to call them new friends, and at the end of the course I joined the club.  I go to a novice evening on a Friday, and I’ve been meeting up with my new friends once a week as well if we can for a practice play.

          Our coach says we’re ready to make a team and join a league… Hmmn…

          Watch this space… But don’t hold your breath. 

          More from before: living into “Semi-retirement” and beyond… 

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To match

The blog seems to have got as confused as my brain today, here’s a memory which didn’t get around to happening. 

“Well, finally that’s it. The last few stitches have gone into the bottom of the hem on the second orange curtain”.

Let me explain, I did actually make the cushion mentioned here, and I wrote the post shortly after the cushion was finished, but I wrote it in such a way that it would expect me to have hemmed the second orange curtain before I published it.  Needless to say, I didn’t get around to finishing the curtains, we’ve actually moved house and since all of our windows were different sizes, I left my curtains for the new owner… Complete with the pins which were holding up the hem on the one side.

” The  window in this room (this would be the room in the old house) is quite large but is north facing so although in summertime we get the rising sun streaming through the window for the first hour or so, for the rest of the year the lighting is quite bland so the yellow and orange decor sits comfortably. “

We left the cheerfully bright decor too although I’m guessing that’s probably gone by now.

” I did toy with the idea of making my own curtains, but considering how long it’s taken me to just turn up the hems on these, it’s probably just as well that I didn’t so the burgundy ones which covered the window before were demoted to the bedroom to a shorter window where I could cut off most of the holes made by “Alice” and I bought a set of ready-made orange ones instead.

I’m not good at “finishing”, I have no end of different projects on the go at the same time, I actually cut and pinned the curtains to the right length back in May for the wedding. (This would be the May of three years ago now)  I put the stitches needed into the bottom of one of the curtains and the other has just been looking after my pins since.

I cut about eight inches of length from the bottom of each curtain, meaning I had leftovers to play with.  I used to make lots of the girls’ clothes when they were little and I would use up the odds and ends to make something small “to match” so it was only natural for me to not want to throw away these little bits of curtain.

The material itself is very loosely woven so I only had to look at it to cause it to fray and leave threads behind.  The pieces themselves weren’t wide enough to make a matching cushion and if I sewed two bits together then they would look like exactly that, two bits sewn together to cover a cushion.

I slept on the problem, admittedly for more than a few sleeps, but eventually I came up with a solution.  Both Mum and Little Sister have recently been doing patchwork,  not the hand sewn type of patchwork I did years ago with thousands of tiny stitches, but patchwork sewn together by machine.  One of the designs is made up of strips of different colours, short strips at first, sewn into a square shape, then longer strips sewn onto the outside of the square until it becomes the size you want it – in my case, cushion size.

So, cutting the strips of material which weren’t wide enough to make cushions into even narrower strips,  I then set about them with the sewing machine to sew them back together into a new cushion to match the curtains.

The orange curtain cushion came with us to our new home, as did everything else in this picture, I’m still working my way around the house doing lots of “fixing” before I can actually get to the decorating stage, but I’m getting there,  I’m bouncing no end of ideas around in my head, and of course, I’ll be taking pictures as I go along and posting little bits of memories as I go. 

In the picture

          I was pottering about on Facebook today in a quiet corner of Costa, seeking shelter from busy people.  While hiding I stumbled across some wonderful pictures of vintage hats.  Little Sister and Eldest Daughter, who had accompanied me shopping via my mobile phone, agreed they were very much me and also agreed with my thoughts about never having too many hats in your life. Well, your life maybe, but my life?   Never too many.

           My thoughts wandered, as they often do, to the space above the coat hooks on the wall behind the front door.  I had plans to put up some hat hooks there, I seemed to remember making a list… Oh yes… “The List“… I haven’t even looked at it in ages.

          There are many things on the list I haven’t done yet, a few I now have no intention of doing at all, some I’ve started and not yet finished, but there are a couple of things I’ve actually achieved without the list and one of those was to choose a new picture for the wall.

          When the room was decorated, the walls were yellow, the curtains orange, and the settees were black.  I made two coloured throws to go on the back of each settee…

          Did you know that the only difference between a blanket and a throw is its size?   We Googled that little gem one afternoon, Eldest Daughter and I … A blanket is big enough to spread over a bed, and a throw is the right size to throw over a chair or settee.

          …I made two coloured throws to go over the back of each settee, “Sunshine and Spice“, and defined the coloured squares with black lines.  I bought three large black picture frames online. The plan was that the narrow black outlines would define the pictures, and the pictures could be anything I wanted them to be.  I could dig into the photo files or take a picture with a particular wall in mind,  print them to size and hang them.  The plan being that as soon as I was fed up of a picture I could just replace it for the price of the printing.

          Well, as plans go, the little mice and men played their parts this time.  It’s no secret that we are wanting to move to Weymouth, but our window of opportunity has closed for a few months.  I finally printed a new picture for the wall, if we can’t go to Weymouth just yet, then Weymouth can jolly well come to us.

          You know, I do believe I had this wall in mind for this picture when I stood “Behind the railings” and took it.

          More from before : Many things to do… Or not to do…  from “The List“.