Screen Priniting and Wild Swimming?

I'm excited. I started two new courses this week to expand my crafty skills (makes me sound like a witch doesn't it?). I'm doing Creative Photoshop on Tuesday evenings and Screen Printing on Thursday evenings.  My first Photoshop class was fine, but spent mostly familiarising the class with the Mighty Mac, but as I use a Mac, this bit was a bit boring... I can't wait to get started on actually making art work. 
I thought I'd do Photoshop so that I could prepare artwork and images for screen printing. The first screen printing class last night was good, but again, I have done screen printing before so it was a bit of a refresher last night on the process.

I can't wait until next week when I can get stuck in. I had lots ofideas on what my first print will be. I think I'm going to do a bumble bee and we've to do something really simple, using only two colours. I thought a bumble bee would be pretty cute.

 

I'm going to draw my bee myself rather than use an image like this one.
I mentioned in my last entry that I was hoping to view a property for Cushion and Cake. Well I'm going to see it early next week. I don't want to say I have a good feeling about it because I think I've had a good feeling about ALL the properties I've seen so far! It is the one on Saltmarket in Glasgow. The location is fine (can be a bit wild at night, but I won't be open a night) and there are plenty of galleries and quirky places around so I think I'd fit in pretty well. More on that next week hopefully.
I wanted to talk about a new book thati recently got. I'd wanted it for a while and it is called Waterlog by John Deakin.

I learned about this book from Elspeth Thopmson's The Weekend Book. Waterlog is a log of the writer's adventure, wild swimming his way across Britain, in the sea , in lidos, in rivers, pools and moats. I love swimming and being in water so this is the book for me. I was hoping to keep it for a holiday I'm going on with my family next week but I had to make a start on it on Wednesday evening. I only read a couple of chapters but was already inspired to get swimming, so, I went to my local swimming pool yesterday and tried to recreate some of the experience Deakin describes in his book even though my swim was far from his 'wild swimming'. There is an outdoor pool not too far from Glasgow in Gourock. 

Gourock Swimming Pool

I've been trying to tempt someone to come with me for a while now to no avail. Looks like I'll have to visit this one myself, but I'd better be quick before the end of the season. I wonder if I have time to go today....