New dummy

Two interesting things happened this week. The first was that I joined Timaru's Youth Orchestra in the string section - totally out of my depth but not embarrassingly so.  Of course I'm not a youth, despite still thinking of myself as a 25-year-old, but I'm not the oldest person there either.  We're practicing for a "mid-Winter Christmas" concert at the end of June, so the pieces are Christmassy and fun (and difficult, for me).  All good - it will be a stretching and growing time.  The second thing was that I realized that a sewing mannequin would be a most useful addition to my sewing kit and ability to produce clothing that fits.  I Trade-Me'd and found this model at a good price, closing later on the same day.  Had a bit of competition right in the last two minutes but either they weren't really all that interested, or got distracted at the end, so the bid closed without too much ado.  I received it by special-order courier on Wednesday morning, and am now looking forward to the school holidays when I'll have a bit of time to use it!

Caleb had a basketball game this evening but as his usual coach, being his teacher, was going to be unavailable, Petru and I had to step in with the coaching and management of the team.  What a laugh, since neither of us knows a whole heap about basketball, despite last year's coach's attempts to educate me.  There are nine boys in the team but only five are on the court at any time, so there is much subbing off and on to be done.  One has to be careful that the boys get a good amount of play time, but one also has to keep the strong (or tall) players on the court so as not to give away a win.  It was a stressful 35 minutes for us, but actually turned out to be a fantastically well-played game with some amazing plays from some of the boys.  When the final whistle blew we were four points down, but then had three free penalty throws.  The first one went in...the second one went in...and the third one...didn't.  Excellent throws though from the captain who took us from a lose to a draw.  Yeeha!!