Itsumo Mawaru

This big beast is my new nemesis. It’s a kettlebell, also known as a REALLY heavy solid ball of iron. It hails from Russia, which really explains a lot. With this kettlebell you do all sorts of squatting and lunging exercises, either holding the bell, or passing it from hand to hand.

My friends, you have not experienced a workout until you do a kettlebell workout. Kettlebell makes every other exercise look like a casual walk in a park, on the moon, on a lazy Sunday.

I completed my first one hour class yesterday during lunchtime. The workout kicked my ass, but not really in a mean way. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t easy at all, and there were times I had to scale back and take a breather while others continued. But I have never felt more challenged and determined to complete a routine! And at the end of it, I felt really great inside.

I also felt really AWFUL on the outside. My legs were two little jell-o sticks. If I wasn’t cringing in pain, I would have laughed at my silly attempts to walk back to my desk. I actually woke up this morning at 2am for no other reason than my muscles hurt so much. The pain hasn’t been as bad as I was warned, but it’s still no vacation.

But hey, no pain no gain! My mum’s been doing kettlebell classes for a few months now and is seeing great results, so that’s giving me a lot of motivation to continue. And how’s this for fate: my class instructor is the same person who instructs my mom. I guess me doing kettlebells was meant to be!

Life has been busy during this past week, I’ve had no time to post an entry here! So here’s a quick one.

My crafting focus has shifted to sewing, ever since I acquired my very-wanted iron. I’ve been working on my Stack-n-Whack quilt pillows that I started, oh probably 5 years ago. I was also inspired by this post on Craftster of a 1-up mushroom pillow, so I started making one myself. I’ll come back and post pictures of both these later tonight or tomorrow.

Folks, let me tell you, sewing everything by hand sure does take the novelty out of crafting!! I’m working on the first set of block sewing, there’s 8 piles of 16 pairs of 1.5 inch squares to sew together. I finished cutting up the squares last Friday, I’m sewing pile #4 right now. I’d love to slave away this weekend on it, but I have to work on a client’s website instead… here’s hoping that goes quickly so I can get back to sewing!

Above are the steps I followed to make my own ironing board. Yes, after a false hope of a really cheap iron this morning, I bit the bullet and found a nice new one for $12 at Loblaws! I created my own ironing board, and now I get to start quilting again! Yay!