Still here . . . still skating!!

Apologies for the interlude. I had a lesson a couple of weeks ago (3 days before the wedding) which we kept very simple. As I said to my coach, "Stacey will never forgive me if I break something and end up a Maid of Honour in plaster!". Then the rest of the week was spent doing things like getting up at Stupid O'Clock to go to New Covent Garden Flower Market, printing off order of services, making wedding cakes (which I have posted a picture of below, as I am very proud of it!), doing the flowers that we had got up at Stupid O'Clock to buy, decorating the church, a billion other jobs and generally trying to make myself look as nice as possible!

But after all that stress and strain, the day turned out fabulously. And I was truly spoiled as a Maid of Honour, with a Wii as a present! I have since invested in Wii Fit which is great fun - my coach is hoping to come round to review it at some point for a future version of iSkate!

The week after I had no lesson as my coach was away, and rather appallingly I have not been able to get on the ice for two weeks, with a mixture of pure exhaustion, seeing to the brides family who were over from South Africa, work dinners and my weekend transport to my usual Lee Valley sessions being on honeymoon :) I tried to skate last night, but some pillock on the bus at Finsbury Park refused to get off when his ticket was invalid, and held us all up.

After expressing my concern about needing to find my feet again, tonights lesson was really actually really good - lots of little exercises taking me back to basics.

The Finer Details of Forward Stroking: Need I say more?
Twists (making names up!): Getting a bit of speed up and tramlining my feet, and then rotating my upper body round as far as possible and then in the other direction whilst still gliding forward.
Crouchy Things: Tramlining again, then crouching right down taking the arms down with me, and then stretching up and slightly back, taking my arms up over my head. Need to stop sticking my bum out quite so much on the down bit.
Backward Russian Stroking: Not bad. I've stopped bringing my feet back together before going into the next BXO and after a gentle reminder, I started following my arms with my whole head, rather than peeking out of the corners of my eyes.
Mini Forward Inside Edges: As it says really - concentrating on keeping the hips tucked forward after bringing the leg through and we added arms as well.
Backward Crossovers: Not bad - need more knee bend and a bit more push. I think I was holding back a little on these tonight, as backwards felt a little more hairy than normal - I guess cos of the break.
Forward Crossovers: I appear to have lost at least one bad habit over the last fortnight (D said it can happen with a break) - my feet are all pointing in the right direction! We added pretty arms, and even on my weaker side, I can feel myself leaning into them much more now.
Pivots: Well, backward ones to be precise. CW not too awful - I really can't do them CCW at all though! About three quarters of one is about the best I could do. Mainly cos I don't keep my weight over the pivoty leg. Something to work on.
Level 2 Open Mohawk exercise: Actually, not too awful! We worked on my push into the mohawk (doing a straight forward push with extension, rather than my rather odd half rotated, leg looking like a dog weeing on a lamppost position) and also the speed of transfer, ie. me not two-footing it during the transfer.
Alternating spreadeagles: As it says really - inside swing, then swing leg back into spreadeagle, then transfer weight onto leading foot and bring trailing foot beside it, repeat on other side. One side not too awful - I have never done a spreadeagle to the left though, and that was pretty horrific. Kind of started getting the hang of it though - the most difficult bit was transferring weight to the leading foot without 3-turning it in as I normally do to come out of it.
Drag exercise: Forward drag on left leg (rubbish side) then straight into forward drag on right leg (better side). Wasn't coming out of them too elegantly, but better now.

There are no adult group lessons now for the summer, so stayed on the ice on and off till about eight, and towards the end it was lovely and quiet, so got some runthroughs of a Canasta Tango, Dutch Waltz and Novice Foxtrot in. Worked a little more on mohawks, and even got a couple of spirals in.

It was truly lovely to be back on the ice - I am glad things are getting back to normal!

And here is the wedding cake, made by my fair hands. It is a 3 tier White Chocolate and Dulce de Leche cheesecake (each cheesecake double depth) - if anyone wants the recipe I am happy to post it! I may be tempted to post pictures of the jewellery and tiara that I made too at some point :)