My Busy Craft Life

Hi everyone! Who would have thought that I actually had 7 runs to blog about? It sure has been a busy few weeks... With all those runs, the total amount of kilometers I've run in events has increased exponentially, and I was closing in on 100K. With my next running event not scheduled until mid July, I really wanted to hit this amazing milestone before the end of June. So I turned to the net, and lo' and behold, I found some awesome virtual races. Some of them were too expensive for my liking or didn't have a nice medal, until I found the perfect organisation called Virtual Nerd Runs . They have decent prices and are a very friendly bunch. And best of all, they have nerdy medals!! When I saw their Jedi Challenge, I knew I just had to do that one. I signed up, and not even two weeks later, my medal was in the mail. The Jedi Challenge was basically anything 5K and up, so I needed to run 8.5K to hit my total of 100K :) Once the medal arrived, I had to complete the run...

Good morning ! As mentioned yesterday, I did two 10K in 2 days last week. For some of you this might not be a lot but I was a tad worried on how and if I was going to survive this. My original idea was to take it easy on the Saturday and really give it my all on the Sunday. I am so glad it turned out the other way around!   Here the weather also held off, it was just windier than the Saturday race.   I'd never been to Brixton and was so worried about being late that I didn't sleep very well and turned up waaaay early. They were still setting up! At least I made it though without getting lost anywhere :) Music was allowed this time, something I took full advantage of, and off went at around 9.30am, three laps of the park, up and down the hills. It's a nice park though and had it been my only run of the weekend, I would have enjoyed it a little more than I did this time as my toes slowly started screaming at me...  I came in at 1:03:00, I was so pl...

Hi again! These runs are a great way to discover new parks in London :) Time for the Osterley Park 10K! The Osterley Park 10K was held last Saturday. I was really nervous as I had very smartly signed up for two 10K runs that weekend and I really wasn't sure if I could manage two. The day itself started alright, rain was on the programme, but hopefully that would hold off for a while, and the race was only about 30 mins travel away so if I could survive today with energy for tomorrow, this would be a wonderful race. Only hickup, no head phones allowed. The City Mile didn't allow headphones but that was only a mile. The last time I ran 10K without headphones was at the half marathon and I wasn't doing too well with that (although that could have something to do with the terribly weather and severe knee pain at the time). There were quite a few runners (I forgot how many exactly) and they slowly started pouring in for registration and the likes. As the crowds ga...

....and we're back! To continue to busy running month of June, I ran the Amba City Mile on 13 June. It's a fairly new race and only in it's second year. It's free to enter and only a mile. Last year this was my first run after my injury so it was the perfect distance. This year it was one of many runs in June and even though it was short, I was a little concerned about the time I would put down. This definitely had something to do with the weather as it was cold and rainy. And it's June! At least this year I wasn't in the last group :) That totally cheered me up already. There is nothing wrong with being in the last group of course, being in an earlier one just means I must be getting a bit faster and I'll take that anytime. My wave was at 10.40 so I headed off to the starting point just outside St. Pauls.  I didn't take any pictures along the way, it's only a mile and it's a business district so there is not much time or much to see ...

Good morning! I told you I had some fun runs lined up as well? It was time for the Colour Run earlier this month, the first run of June which turned out to have a LOT of runs.  The weather was perfect again (shock!) and it was actually great fun!  I was so glad I had changed my tshirt for this event, it was much more comfortable that way and still covered enough not to have too much colour everywhere. Lining up near the start line, it was really busy!   Nearly time to start the run! I was all set in white, ready to be coloured up. Just passed the pink station, I ran through the middle so I got out relatively unscathed ;)  Oh it was busy alright! The finish line can be seen in the back there... The tutu doesn't hold the colour so I'm normally fairly clean when I come out. And this year there were no crazy friends going nuts with the powder LOL The usual colour bursts were happening at the after party, I hung o...

Hello again :) After I had completed the Hyde Park 5K, I was confident in running the Bupa 10K the next week. It was to be run during the bank holiday and I'd signed up for it a while back, you have to plan most of these as they sell out so fast! Just image, a few years back I would have never run, let alone on a bank holiday when you can actually sleep in! The Bupa 10K is one of few runs where you can run along the Mall, and I always wanted to do that :) Since I didn't get into the London Marathon (and probably a good thing that I didn't!), this was my chance. So with the recent injury free 5K under my belt, I was ready to go. Charity shirt on (I finally remembered to wear it now that it has been improved!), let's do this! We arrived well on time, the weather was beyond perfect. So far so good! This was taken on the way to the corrals, that's Buckingham Palace in the back! I was in the middle section of the third corral, so plenty of time to get t...

Good morning everyone! I haven't posted about any running events in a while, but that doesn't mean that I haven't done any! In fact, I've done quite a few :) I wanted to have like a 'running week' with all my running posts back to back, which was actually supposed to start this weekend so I'm a little bit behind. No matter, we'll just start today :) I ran this 5K in Hyde Park on 17 May. A friend of mine was visiting London and she had booked a flight home at 7am on Sunday morning, which meant having either getting up super early, or going to bed really late. I chose the latter so was in bed at around 2am I think. With a run looming at 9am the next day, that is quite late let me tell you. I went anyway, and just look at the lovely weather we had :) It was the first run in the sun of the year! It was REALLY sunny! I kept my jacket as it was still a bit windy, but just not having any rain was so nice! The run went through Hyde Park ...

Hi everyone! It's not technically upcycling as these are not in fact old or broken so I think it's more 'beautification'. I've been doing a LOT of runs recently (more on that later), and you know how some of them give you a shirt well in advance to wear for the event? I usually leave it too late to make changed, but this time I really wanted to make an effort with one of the shirts. Another one I wanted to amend was my standard MS Society tshirt, that I try to wear when I don't have an event shirt to wear. I really had to change it as the only reason I didn't wear it at the half marathon was because it was just too heavy and annoying for such a distance. Let's start off with the MS Society tshirt. I forgot to take a 'before' photo, but if you've read my blog for a while, you may have seen the shirt worn at several events. It's just never really comfy so I just really wanted to change it. I used the same idea as the last post I wrote, a...

Hello again! This post has been a while in the making... Just before Easter I treated myself to an overlocker. My first ever! Months of researching and doubting, do I need one, would I use it, etc etc... Then it arrived, and it took another few months for me to actually start using it. But once I'd started, the end was nowhere in sight ;) I had projects lined up that would have taken ages with the normal machine and would have come out nowhere as nice, so yay for my shiny new overlocker :) I loved the look of this one so I tried it at one of the shows and my decision was made. The previous model was purple, such a shame they changed that ;) When I bought a stack of tshirts for my family's Christmas presents, there was a rack of damaged shirts also. Of course I had to have a peek :) I found this one that I had my eye on for a while now, but as it was a proper tshirt I never bought it. The man from the stall knows me (I buy presents from him all the time) so he o...