Randomness

If you read the title of this post quickly it could almost read "randommess", which is actually a rather good description of my head at the moment! I still don't feel as though I'm in a decent routine at the moment, which I suppose isn't really that surprising as it's only a few weeks into the new school year, this is B's first week at school full-time (he's enjoying it but getting very tired as he gets used to the longer days), and my college classes only started last night! I'm feeling rather restless and finding it difficult to settle down to any one thing, which is unusual for me at this time of year. Usually in September I feel organised at the start of the school year and generally very productive. I guess I'll have to keep reminding myself that we've got a lot of changes going on at the moment with B starting school, T's role at his school changing this year, new college classes for me, and , oh yes! a new baby on the way! I keep having to remind myself that there is a good reason why I can suddenly feel very tired - as if I could ever really forget with my ever-growing tummy and lots and lots of kicks. I think this one's going to be kick-boxer!

So, as I can't even get my mind to settle onto one, or even just a few, topics for this post, here, in no particular order, are a few of the bits and pieces I've been doing this week!

Apologies for the lack of a tutorial this Tuesday - I spent the day preparing for my new college classes. I've got two classes on Tuesday evenings, each with 14 people ready and willing to get addicted to jewellery making, if indeed they aren't already! The first class of the evening is an advanced class with people who have made jewellery before. Some have been to classes at the college before, either with me or another tutor, some have been on intensive courses, some are mainly self-taught so far. The second class is advertised as a beginner's class, but there's actually a mix of mainly beginners who are either brand new or who have been to classes for a term or two and a few more advanced students who can't make it to the early class. Neither class follows a syllabus, so last night we had a chat about what everyone wants to get out of the course, what techniques etc they'd like to learn. I now have a long list of techniques for each class to sort into a programme! One of the things high up on my list, however, is cleaning out the college tools and ordering some new ones. Many need replacing as they've been around and heavily used for so long, and everything is generally so disorganised - and you know how I hate things being disorganised!!!

The other thing I've been working on that took up the tutorial writing time is the new pages that you can see at the top of the blog. I've been trying to tidy up the layout of the blog as the list of tutorials and links on the left hand side was getting rather long! The pages also allow me to list more information for my students as I refer them to my blog quite a lot - of course, they are there for those of you that I don't teach as well!

Most of today's work time has been spent preparing for Artisan. I am looking forward to this weekend so much! I know I'm going to be working, but I feel as if I'm going away on a bit of a girly fun weekend as I'll be meeting up with Michelle and Becky (editor and deputy editor of Beads and Beyond) and also meeting Kerry Bogert who's travelling over from the States, and there are going to be so many beads!! I can't wait! The image above is the page that they put in this month's issue of the magazine to advertise who was going to be demonstrating at the Beads and Beyond stand. I definitely need to get a new picture done - Kerry's is great, mine (down in the right hand corner!) is five years old, taken when I was pregnant with B!! Mind you, the description that they wrote of me is exactly right - I am completely addicted to designing and making jewellery!

I've been knitting lots too this week. I can't show you anything at the moment though as they're all Christmas presents! I'm trying to knit as much as I can from my stash of yarn and doing fairly well at the moment. I've knitted three presents so far, which isn't bad going!

There are lots of other bits of randomness floating round in my head at the moment, but I'm getting too tired for them to make much sense at the moment, so I'll leave you for now. I'll be back again with some photos of new pieces of jewellery tomorrow!