How May got pissed away

Hello,

1. I started May really well by finishing all 10 of the bags I had set out to make. I exchanged the 10 bags for money and with some of the money I went and bought a 40mm prime lens. I needed the lens to take photos for my tutes. Taking photos is a bitch. A total freaking bitch. So many parameters to consider and I tend to shake. Anyway, prime lens are not exactly cheap and I'm quite happy to discover my friend has another prime lens to lend me. So just now I had been trying out the new lens and I still have a lot of trying out to do.

I took these two images using my 50mm lens. What do you think of them?

2. I have been spending far too much time checking out dolls. It is my secret wish to own a range of dolls. I'll probably write a post another day to let you have a peek at my doll collection. Singapore isn't exactly a good place to buy dolls so looking online is the solution. I recently found a doll I really like. It's a Tuesday's Child by Rosen Lied. It's a BJD which means it's expensive. I have some money leftover from the sale of my 10 bags and I really want to blow it on the doll. Unfortunately my girl took one look at Tuesday's Child and screamed. She's not into dolls. I'm still hoping she will get over her fear. Well, it's a good thing I couldn't get this shop in UK to sell me a Kidz n Cats doll (Sophie) for whatever reason. Sophie is much larger than a Tuesday's Child and will surely give my girl nightmares. I haven't given up on owning a BJD. I'm sure there's one out there that won't creep my girl out.

3. Recently I spent a fair bit of time writing up tutorials for applique related stitching. These tutes are meant to support my future patterns. More are coming. I try my best to give all the information I feel is relevant to each topic. So do go through these tutes if you are interested in the specific topics covered. I should be able to publish my appliques soon.

4. My son turned 17 and we were busy looking for presents for him. One of the many presents he received was Monopoly Deal which is a spinoff card version of Monopoly. It's not the Monopoly you know but a different delightful game which I totally recommend if you can get hold of it. My son requested for this game as he had played it before. We played it last night and I am such a bad loser.

5. For a while, hubs and I had become foodies trying food at different places. Sometimes I post food photos to my Instagram account here. Last week hubs suddenly announced he wanted to stop eating meat completely. What?! He's a meat eater. He even grunts when he eats meat. He lets meat juice drip down his chin when he eats. Yep, that kind of meat eater. He seemed quite serious about it so I decided to join him. Except I still want to eat fish and prawns. You know I've been down this vegetarian road before and I never succeeded. So I felt we would fare better if we wean ourselves off slowly. Anyway, hubs felt that he needed to give up more. So less sugar is going to be our next goal. It hasn't been easy the past week or so with our new diet. It's a lot of adjustment. Hopefully we won't give up so easily and finally succeed in losing our middle age flab. Today I had vegetable curry with rice for lunch and it's not even 5pm as I type and I'm starving to death already.

6. With all that foodie eating, it's no surprise I've lost my fitness totally with not running and exercising. The occasional swim is nothing. I keep wanting to regain my fitness but it's always one thing or another and somehow it's May and I've not made any progress. I'm unable to lose any weight and it would be nice to be able to wear my tight jeans again. The lack of exercise is greatly affecting my well being. I am constantly tired. Exhausted even. And so goddam sleepy. I believe if I exercise regularly, my health will improve and I will feel so much more alert. We are going for a family run in June so by hook or by crook, I had better start running because I'm the slowest runner in my family.

7. Sadly, my pattern sales has greatly declined. No, I'm not going to moan and groan about it. I do have myself to blame. I didn't really promote them and I was unable to put out new products. And my blog - the main driver of traffic to my pattern sales wasn't quite as active as I had wanted. Many reasons for zero new patterns - waiting for hardware, software, time, energy, lots of excuses. This year I try very hard to feel like a winner and think like a winner. Instead of just feeling sad about it, I will need to market more and produce more. I have invested a lot of money and time in my patterns so I do need to keep going no matter what. Today I'm finally feeling that all the stars are aligned and now that I have 3 camera lens to work with, so no more excuses. In June, I am going to buckle down to work on more patterns. No more distractions.

8. This month has been flooded with giveaways in the blog world. So I decided not to hold a May Giveaway.  I will hold one in June and there will be two winners. So stay tuned.

Bear says Hi.