"Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate." ~ Unknown

this is AWESOME:

Now I would like some toast...

Side note... I went to the gym AGAIN today! And to prove it to you nay-sayers (wow that word looks weird written down) I have PROOF (gym card)!

I am now a member of Friskis & Svettis (which means something along the line of healthy/fit sweaty).  I worked out on the machines today, mostly doing the core muscles.  I was one of maybe 4 girls in the whole machine area.  It was full of MEN (no, not guys, big men!) who were building very large muscles.  I don't know it felt like I was at the wrong gym... the gym where people go to kick ass and life barbells the size of elephants! I am over there doing like 15 kilos on the machines and feeling a little dorky and tiny.  I suppose I will get more comfortable and it seems like most of the woman do the classes more then the actually gym part.  I plan on doing both... hopefully... some of the classes look really lame... and I am a judger... I don't want to be in with people looking stupid... I can't make fun of them then! haha I guess I shouldn't make fun of people exercising... I should encourage them... and they are probably better at exercising then I am!  Hopefully this will help with the riding!

Today and yesterday at school I was making big things.  Stig-Allan has pretty much given us free reign to do whatever we want as long as we use the color rods.  Yesterday I got the big glory hole and Stig-Allan even changed the front hole to the biggest size so I felt sort of obligated to make a big piece.  I made one so big I could barely hold it (good thing I am going to the gym!)  I also made a horrible piece that hit the floor because the punty didn't hold. 

 Here is the piece that made it to the end.  It looks better here then in real life I think... maybe I am not supposed to tell you that... 

 This is the piece that fell on the floor.  But it has such great colors! Maybe I can grind a place for it to stand or something and make it cool still.

 I had forgotton I made this little guy as well.  He is like the other sugar/salt bowls but with no foot.  I like the green.  It reminded me of Rolling Rock beers when I saw it finished.

I also managed to somehow not get color over the whole piece so the lip is clear as is part of the top of the bowl.  I think it looks kind of cool and apparently once you learn to correct the mistake it is hard to do it on purpose! I think it will look cool with some salt or sugar in it.

Here are some shot of some of the pieces I made last week:

 The above two I made entirely by myself! I mean everything! I made the piece, made my own punty, attached it by myself and finished it! I wanted to try to learn for the days when I don't have a partner, like when someone shows up super late.

 This one is a color piece that got horribly out of control and so the color got wrinkled and full of bubbles but it turned out! I also did this one all alone!  I couldn't believe I managed to save it after it got so messed up!

 This one I had help with, Rosanne gave me the handle and punty.  I am very pleased with it and really like the color.  It is kind of chameleon because it turns dark green at certain angles.

Here you can kind of see it, very hard to capture in a picture.

This one is a horrible yellow/orange but the exciting thing is the BUBBLES! I love them! You blow into this mold that just presses in all over uniformly then gather again and little air bubbles get trapped!

 BUBBLES!!!! (remind anyone else of Finding Nemo?)

 This was one of my first attempts with the color rods.  It is a great color, and nice shape but I somehow managed to get this stupid white dots in it... Tove and I have no idea what it is or how it got there so the whole piece went to be recycled.

 I love the blue and purple swirl!

OK, I may have lied.  This one may have been my first attempt with the color.  I am not sure.  It is that same Rolling Rock green but more evenly spread over the piece.  It is a pretty small bottle, maybe not much taller then my hand.

It was a fun week of playing with colors and techniques for decoration.  We also learned about making stripes and crackles and stuff like that.  It was pretty cool.  I tried one today with color and then hopefully crackle right on the color, but then I made a huge piece out of it and may have stretched the cracks too much.  We will see.  I will take pictures I promise!

OH! I almost forgot! For all of you color fans (who isn't really?) we got a new shipment in of colors for the bead making and I got to help unwrap them :)

 That, there is 63 different colors!