Sunday 29 March 2015

Archery competition today

Today was my first inter-club competition and surprisingly, especially for me, I was REALLY excited.  I got my new bow on Wednesday night but had only shot it a few times to practice with, so I had the dilemma of whether to use the club bow where I knew what my sight needed to be set to more or less or my new bow that I had absolutely no idea of where to set the sight.  After a long chat with my coach yesterday, he worked out some rough sight marks for me to start with so I could use my new bow!

Sadly, this morning dawned grey and miserable and VERY wet as predicted by the weather people. Typical! It's the one day they actually get it right!  We set up all the range and inside and had to wait about an hour or so for the starting time.  By then it was raining harder!

It then rained and rained and rained!  Then it stopped raining...yay!!!!!!

The competition should have been a Western which is 48 arrows at 60yds, 48 at 50yds.  I was to shoot the 'short' version of it which was the same number of arrows but at 50yds/40yds.  I couldn't get my sight down low enough to actually use it properly so spent the first half of the competition aiming for the top left hand corner of the boss (straw thing that the target is put on).

After a break for lunch, which was very tasty, we ventured out again to shoot the second half of the competition.  The rain had started again, although lightly and the wind had started to get up too. IT WAS COLD!  I was only shooting in a T shirt and a sweatshirty type thing as my coat is too bulky to wear and shoot, however I put in some good scores once I had got my sight sorted out.  The good news was...it stopped raining, the bad news was that it was now chucking it down with a howling gale (for non UK readers, chucking it down means that it was raining VERY, VERY heavily!  For my last arrow, the rain was nearly horizontal with the wind.  The field captain called us together and asked if we wanted to call it a National instead of a Western, which was less arrows and basically meant that we had finished!  Now, call me a numpty, but I would really have liked to have finished even in those conditions, just to see how close to last week's score I could get with the dramatic change in the weather.  I was a big chicken and didn't have the nerve to put my hand up and say so though!!!

Anyway, I have just got off the phone to my coach and he is really proud of me, as I am of myself, especially as some people either didn't come at all or gave up at one point or another apparently! 

Saturday 28 March 2015

Stitch from Stash

Budget carried forward from February  £46.51
March Budget  £25.00
Spent  £0.00
Earnt  £0.00

One of the benefits of having a birthday in March is that everything that I did get was birthday presents, so a good month in all!

Sunday 22 March 2015

Archery update

I have been having a lot of fun at archery lately. Dave (the coach) is amazing and has managed to finally get me shooting in a straight line!  He spent an hour (hour and a half?) a few weeks ago coaching no-one but me and something finally clicked.  For about 3 weeks after, every time I took a shot I could hear his voice telling me what to each time!

I went bow shopping on Friday but sadly the riser (handle of the bow) that I wanted was out of stock. They had it in orange, but I didn't want orange - I wanted blue!  So hopefully it will be in for Weds or Thurs.  Keep you fingers crossed for me!!

Next weekend, there is a competition against another club...only a friendly and Dave kept telling me I should shoot in it.  I kept laughing and telling him NO!  He persuaded me to come and shoot today at 50m and 40m to have a bit of a go and see how I got on with it.  So I did and I did ok!  I scored 525 in total.  I am now going to compete in the inter club competition next week - I must be mad!

I am really enjoying archery, although it annoys the hell out of 'someone' at home, never mind!

Thursday 5 March 2015

WIPocalypse - March

This month has seen brilliant progress on my WIPocalypse projects!  I have finished Honeysuckle Courtyard and am now working on A Place Like Home.  I also put a few stitches into Gardens of London too.



This month's question is:

If money - and time - were not limiters, what projects would be on your stitching bucket list?

I love it when a question is so easy to answer!  I would probably just get pretty much every one of the Chatelaine's and all the silks etc to stitch them with too. There are so many that I love and when I was planning on getting my first one, it was hugely difficult to decide which one to go for.

Sunday 1 March 2015

February review / March Goals

Well!  I only had 2 goals in February...and I met both of them!  (Ok...I'll just wait whilst you pick yourself up off the floor!)


  1. Make good progress on Honeysuckle Courtyard.  It's finished!!!!
  2. Stitch an ornie from JCS. I stitched a Hallowe'en ornie from the October 2014 issue.
So...onto the March goals.  Once again, I am going to be conservative, mainly because I will be buying my new archery equipment and suspect I will be putting in some extra practice.

  1. I want to stitch another ornie to keep up with the 12 ornies for the Cross Stitch Collection SAL. Who knows what season it will be though.
  2. Work on Chatelaine's 'Gardens of London' and hopefully finish the centre panel.
Hopefully these should be achievable!