Saturday evening

With developments in technical competence and the application of the technique in training, grading, or competition, the self confidence of the student improves. He sees his improvements as successful efforts on his part. Success breeds success, and success breeds self-confidence. The two go very much hand-in-hand. A successful and confident student looks forward to training and enjoys the learning environment. A happy student learns faster than an unhappy one because he enjoys what he is doing, and because the skills are consciously and subconsciously associated with pleasure, they are retained for longer. In that the reverse is also true- that failure breeds lack of confidence and dissatisfaction with training- the learning environment has to allow for the student to succeed in what he is doing, no matter what his level of ability or competence. Tony Gummerson, "Teaching Martial Arts"


This paragraph subtitled "Why sparring Kung Fu with these particular people who annihilate her 100% of the time is not working out well for Kitsune"




Rit experiments: I'm happy with the dark chocolate Howard jacket. The pants are still a little unevenly colored. Not quite enough to be called "tye-dye" but I'd like them to be a bit more even. I stuck them back in the brown dye bucket.

The Atama summerweight that I threw in the wash with the other gi- I'm not happy with the color I got. It is a dull purplish. I'm going to try to redye it a different dark color.





Later..... OK, the dark chocolate pants look good now. I'm happy with this gi.

I put the Atama in with two packages of "dark green" and now it's a very dark "Black Forest" green. I am happy with the jacket. I kept the ripstop pants in the dye bucket another several hours. They just weren't taking the dye very well and were lighter than the jacket. Finally they turned to a dark slate color. They are not matching very well. :(

Last-ditch effort... before I discard this batch of dye..... I have an old pair of gi pants that I'd shelved because they shrunk a bit. They are a little too short in the cuffs and a little too tight in the derierre. But they are wearable, so I'm going to see if I can make them the same green as the jacket. Otherwise I'm going to be in a jam if the green-and-slate doesn't pass muster as "matching" and Rodrigo asks me to not wear that gi on the mat.

Pics of the gi's later (camera battery is recharging now)....

Not used to being home all day. Housemates and I are getting on each others' last nerves. I did, however, get a couple of pics of the OTTER (yes, OTTER) that I caught trying to come into the house through the cat door yesterday. She has produced a litter of babies under the bathroom floor. I hope to be seeing the little ones come out to play eventually, and get some pics of them as well. The nest is about two feet away from my bed, on the other side of the wall. The babies are very squeaky. Mom sounds like she's moving furniture and teaching Irish step dancing lessons at 2am.