Yarn Day!

My order from elann arrived in the mail today - ten lovely bright balls of elann esprit for five pairs of socks. I have three sets of 4mm dpns so when I get started on the socks I think I will knit two at a time.


Not only did I have the pleasure of yarn in the mail, but my husband brought home ten skeins of James C Brett Marble. The photos don't do it justice - it's made up of shades of brown with a hint of turquoise. I made a scarf with this once and gave it away and then had trouble getting more. So I special-ordered ten skeins from a local yarn store. It took ages to arrive, but I had a call this morning from the shop and then called Tai Chi Man to see if he could pick it up for me. Synchronicity rocks! He was, at the time of my call, sitting in traffic just waiting to turn into the very street where the yarn store is! Really! Within a few minutes of my call, he had picked it up - I'll have to go in there next time I'm over that way to get my frequent shopper card stamped. In the meantime, I have lots of knitting time planned.


And I will have a little more knitting time than usual in the next two months as Ninja Boy and I decided to take a break from Taekwon-do for November and December. I felt like a break, and Ninja Boy was quite happy to go along with it. I consider it a mild protest on my part - we still haven't received our embroidered black belts and I am expected to buy another dobok (uniform) since we changed our alliance to ITF. So the break will save us a couple of months fees and we intend to go back in January.

During this time, I also plan to try out a yoga class with a couple of friends, and finally (something I have been promising the kids for a couple of years) get to the indoor climbing gym.

And finally, I keep meaning to mention that I have Nan to thank for the xxtraordinary blogger award in my sidebar.

Dr House (and some other less important things)

I found out something amazing yesterday. When I actually pick up my sock and knit on it, it grows quite fast! I am almost as far as the heel flap on the second sock. Obviously I don't knit socks as fast as Torrance. This crazy lady made four pairs of socks in five days. Wow!

This week's DVD watching has been season 4 of Corner Gas. This is a great little comedy set in a little town in Saskatchewan, Canada. After all the episodes of House MD and various British murder mysteries, it is a refreshing change - no dead bodies, at least! (I can't believe I just googled House MD and it came up on Wikipedia!)

Talking about House, here's a little bit of Hugh for you...Ahem...attention, please. Thank you.

Anyway, what was I saying. Oh yes, this evening was another sweaty session at Taekwon-do. We didn't go at all last week. Today I was vacillating about going, feeling lazy, not wanting to go out on a cold dark night, but as usual Ninja Boy and I made the effort and really enjoyed it. Ninja Boy finally received his new instructor-type dobok (uniform) which has a black edging to the jacket. The club recently switched from ICTF to ITF affiliation (International Chang Hon Taekwon-do Federation to International Taekwon-do Federation) which means everyone's doboks have the wrong logo on them and have to be changed. However Ninja Boy's new one is the new style and it fits him perfectly - I don't have to shorten the arms or legs.

In theory, I should buy an ITF dobok, but am reluctant to do so at the moment. We still haven't received our embroidered belts and certificates, even though we passed our test at the end of April. I am reluctant to pay out more money until I have received the outstanding items, and have told the senior instructor so.

The class tonight was a "conditioning" one, which translated means "I'm gonna make you sweat and get you fit whatever it takes". Lots of jab punches, dizzying combinations of kicks, push-ups, sit-ups, stretches. I feel great - when it's over! I told the instructor that he should be my personal trainer and make me do that sort of workout every other day, because I certainly don't make that amount of effort at home!

Maybe if I sent the kids to school and hired a maid, I'd have enough time in my day for everything I'd rather be doing. Just kidding ;o)

Teaching Taekwon-do

We had some fun today. Ninja Boy and I went to one of the local elementary schools to help our instructor with a class. This was a BIG class - 60 boys and girls in Grade 6. One of the girls comes to our Taekwondo club and her black belt mum was there to help too.

So with four black belts and two teachers, we did our best to keep the mob under control!

I think most of the kids had fun. We did a warmup, some front and side kicks, some partner kicking and self defence. Towards the end, the instructor asked Ninja Boy to demonstrate some more advanced kicks, which he did, and then he set up a board break.

Three children crouched down next to each other and Ninja Boy performed a flying side kick over them and broke the board. I was so pleased that he did it - and the kids watching were impressed. (Unfortunately I didn't take the camera.)

The other mum and I did a bit of sparring with all our protective equipment on too.

I think our instructor will find a class of ten kids easy after today!

Knitting stalled...stop...life getting in way...stop

A quick telegram - er, I mean blog post - to say the baby blanket has not grown at all the last two days.

Monday is usually my housework day. I did the bathrooms but the vacuuming was put aside so I could start blitzing the kitchen. Dusted the tops of the wall units - yuk, don't do that job too often, the dust was flying everywhere! Started tidying and cleaning drawers and cupboards. Still lots to do on that.

The joy of cleaning was interrupted by a visit to the dentist - we were collecting a nightguard for Computer Geek (so he can't grind his teeth in his sleep).

And Ninja Boy and I had a Taekwondo class in the evening. So the knitting was neglected.

I did get to the vacuuming today. I also had a haircut this morning and a visit from a friend this afternoon (we traded fruit - she brought prune plums and took peaches home).

At 4.30pm, Ninja Boy and I were to be found at the Taekwondo dojang again. The instructor had asked us to help out with the kids white belt class as there were some new students and he would appreciate the extra instructors. There was a good instructor/student ratio in that class - four black belts and six white belt kids. After that class, there was another for kids with a bit more experience, so we stayed to help out at that one too. And THEN we trained in the mixed family class - all ages and belt levels. And that's not all - we stayed on for a fourth hour and participated in the boxing/kickboxing class. It was a mighty relief to get home and have a shower and something to eat!

I shall have to drag myself off this computer soon if I am to knit a few rows before bed - so no Bookworm for me tonight.

Friday update

I've just realised I haven't posted since Monday. Sorry to make you wait so long! When I started this blog, I was posting nearly every day - now, I find I'm spending less time on the computer, sometimes only using it in the evening rather than morning and evening.

I was "on the go" all day today, except for a small window of opportunity for half an hour before Taekwondo, when I picked up my knitting and did a few rows. We don't usually go to TKD on a Friday, but the September schedule has started and there are lots of new classes. Apart from our main classes, which are for red and black belts on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7.30, we now have lots of other choices to make. Do we go to an extra sparring class? A self defence class? A kickboxing class? The young man who's running the club these days is very motivated and an excellent teacher and is committed to four hours a night, five nights a week, at the dojang - in addition to his full-time day job.

I decided to freeze some of the tomatoes that we bought last weekend. I used 12 wide-mouth Mason jars, just washing them and pouring in the tomatoes that I had chopped up in the food processor. I did this last year and used them instead of canned and they tasted way better in recipes. We still have a pile of them left on the kitchen counter, but they are keeping well and we are doing our best to eat some at every meal!

I now have three trays of peaches in the cold store room. During the last week, I have been going down to the peach tree every other day and checking every single peach for a bit of "give". If it seems a little soft, I pick it. The first batch still looks good and I am hoping that they will store for long enough that I can enjoy eating some of them without actually having to live on them for a week. I don't want to freeze or can them - my freezer is full enough already.

Don't tell my kids but I have simplified my bread recipe down to the absolute basics. Tonight's pizza dough was just spelt flour, salt and yeast. I cut out the sugar, the kids haven't noticed, and the dough still rises, so that's great!


I finished the knitting part of my Brea Bag and found a boring black handbag at the thrift store for $2 which has a boring handle I can cut off and use for my Brea. If I find something better later on, I can always switch it. Really, I think I should have just continued knitting the gusset strip in the moss stitch until it was long enough to make a handle, as a knitted matching handle would be much nicer. I played with the kids' Sculpey today and made some buttons. Not sure which one I'll use, but one of them should work for my bag. (The thing with fangs and the stick-man-type character on the left belong to Ninja Boy, not me!)



And my latest project: a baby blanket. On Wednesday night, my Taekwondo instructor revealed that his girlfriend is expecting in January. Very exciting news....so what does a knitter do at the first sign of a new baby on the way? Yes, of course, I went to buy more Lion Brand Homespun the very next day in a lovely shade of blue (I don't know if the baby is a boy or girl, but the blue was the nicest colour). I have knitted about 6 inches of the blanket so far. The photo doesn't really show it well, but there are three big cables and a garter stitch border. I made up the pattern. Two strands of yarn, #15 needles (that's 10mm I think), and 2 stitches to the inch.


I think we're all caught up. Back soon!

Medals

This is how K and I spent Worldwide Knitting in Public Day (Saturday)... earning medals in Taekwondo! Didn't have time to knit.

We were up at 6.30 to be ready to leave at 7.30 for the one hour drive to Vernon. The morning was spent watching the younger/lower ranked competitors. As a black belt, I had my first experience of judging some boys performing their patterns and sparring. In patterns, there are five judges, in sparring there's a centre referee and four corner judges.

Later, K competed in his division, earning a silver medal in patterns. His group was split into heavy- and light-weights for sparring, which was good as K is on the light side. At the same time, I competed in my division - there were five women in my group. It was a relatively small tournament, so they grouped all the women red and black belts over 18 together (normally I would have been lumped with the "35 and better" women). I made a mistake the first time I performed my pattern, but did it perfectly the second time, and made bronze. I sparred two rounds, first with my friend from my own club, and later with a woman from Vernon. No medals there!

Once that was out of the way, I was free to judge the men's black belt sparring. That was great! The black belt men always compete last and a bigger deal is made out of it than anything else. It's somewhat sexist, I'm afraid. I loved the judging - I was a bit nervous about doing it at first, but I got the hang of it by the end of the day.

I was happy with my bronze medal, as I have had a painful health problem the last few weeks that I thought might stop me from competing, but I resorted to a couple of preventative painkillers and made it through okay.

R spent all day Saturday and Sunday in a First Aid course, renewing his certification. It's paid for by his employer, but unfortunately he has to do it on his own time.

And today we celebrated S's tenth birthday. Yes, double digits for my youngest son. Ten years ago today, my bedroom was set up as a birthing room. Two midwives were here to assist me. My oldest son was 6 at the time and was standing in the hall with my neighbour, who had been looking after him and my 3 year old while I was in labour, watching me give birth to his littlest brother. (I just reminded him and he said he doesn't remember it. Boo hoo! My neighbour certainly remembers it, though - she got more than she bargained for that night!) It was wonderful and definitely the best birth experience of the three (not that I had a bad experience with the other two, but this was the BEST)!

I didn't have to make cake - S said he wanted some mango coconut Good Karma rice ice cream instead, though I also bought the Mudd Pie and Mint Chocolate flavours. We had home-made sub sandwiches and strawberries dipped in melted chocolate too. A gift was easy - I took his wish list into ToysRUs and found a Lego set that he wanted - a Mars Mission set called Alien Infiltrator, which he just finished building and brought to show me.

Happy birthday, S.

Congratulations

My husband has such confidence in our abilities that when my son and I returned home Friday night we found this banner adorning the shelving in our utility room - right in front of us as we walked in the door.


The funny thing is that we didn't even notice it. My youngest had to point it out!


We haven't received our black belts yet. Apparently everyone who tested did pass, but new belts won't be handed out until next week. Our plain black belts will be replaced later by fancy ones embroidered with our names.

In class last night, we started learning the first of three patterns that we have to know for our second Dan test. It's called Gae-Baek and looks something like the one on this site. Although our school is part of the International Chang Hon Taekwondo Federation, our style is slightly different from that demonstrated on these videos.

Black belt testing - photos

Me breaking with side kick

K breaking with side kick

Me, sparring with gear on, including sexy gumshield

K pad kicking

Me, spinning flying outward crescent kick

Me, step sparring

Patterns

Click on the pictures to make them bigger. You will see I have blurred out the faces of the other people.

I made it!

I did it! I passed my black belt test this evening. And so did my 12 year old son, and he tested not as a junior but as a full black belt (normally you have to be 13 or over to do that).

The last few weeks have been quite stressful. I had watched part of someone else's test before, so sort of knew what to expect, but I was rather nervous about it all. I have been studying the manual, learning the theory (such as the history of Taekwondo and the meanings of the patterns) and working on the physical side of it in class and at home.

Today I managed to eat a little but the butterflies were getting in the way.

K and I arrived at the dojang just after 6.30pm, expecting a bit of a wait, but as it turned out the examiner had whizzed through the previous belt colours and was already testing the blue belts, so we were next. We started our test at about 7.30 and finished at about 9.45pm.

We had to perform nine patterns - I made a mistake in the very first one, but thankfully most of the rest were fine. Then we did pad kicking, then step sparring (which is stepping back and forth with set attacks and defences, not hard, but challenges the memory because there are 27 combinations to remember, plus you have to have prepared some of your own.

We had to do self defence techniques, including getting away from two guys, one holding each arm. We had to put on the protective equipment for the sparring - I even had my mouth guard in, because things can get a little crazy when those black belts start going at you. Actually, it was a lot of fun, the atmosphere was good - I did get bopped on the nose at one point, but it's OK now!

At the end was the board-breaking and theory. I was able to recite the history of Taekwondo perfectly and answer the examiner's other questions. K was a little slow off the mark with a couple of the questions - long silences while I willed him to say something.

At first, I didn't have a lot of success with the board-breaking. When I tried the 3 board side kick, the back board broke but the others didn't. The examiner checked the stack of boards and found that some were way heavier than others - they hadn't been cut in advance and dried out so they were absorbing the impact rather than snapping in half. When he chose the lighter boards, I was able to break two at a time with a knife hand and two at a time with my side kick, and one with a spinning back kick. I didn't succeed on the 360 back kick or the flying side kick. K broke most of his boards.

Because of the shortage of good boards, we didn't have to do the 4 way kick or the double board break in the air with the feet.

The test went by fast. It didn't seem as gruelling as I'd been led to believe. There are enough less active segments where you can get your breath back. So I will get a plain black belt at first, but in a few weeks I'll have a new dobok (uniform) and a black belt with my name embroidered on it.

Of course, I can't relax just because I achieved this rank. This is only First Dan of a total of nine. I am now an Assistant Instructor and not only will I be helping to teach others in class but I'll have three new patterns to learn. However, the Second Dan test won't be for at least 30 months, so there's plenty of time.

I really must go to bed now - I have a headache, and whilst I am only aware of a scraped ankle (from a board) and a bruised hand (from a board) at the moment, I may wake up in the morning with a few aches and pains. It's worth it, however, to know that I passed my test!

Oh, and my friend Anne came to watch (yay, my cheerleader, minus the pompoms) and took a bunch of photos with my camera. I haven't looked at them yet. I'll upload them in the morning. For now, it's time to try and get some sleep.