Tag: #tutorials

Every day’s a school day

It seems like it at the moment anyway.  Between doing my online mindfulness course, which has really challenged some thoughts and feelings, and learning methods for virtual #bellringing in Ringing Room sessions, of which I had 4 this week.

The first #bellringing session was a district practice which I didn’t need to learn anything new for but the session that I run on Thursdays we’re consolidating methods that we’ve been learning for February.  Some of those methods are repeated at a Friday morning session but sometimes something different.  Then every other Friday there’s another session that changes methods every time.  This week I needed to learn Newcastle and Alnwick Surprise Minor.  And in 2 weeks’ time, we’re aiming for London and Wells Surprise Minor, and I set new methods for our Thursday session at the beginning of the month.

Some of these methods I’ve never even looked at, always thinking they are beyond my capability but with the advent of Ringing Room, have been able to ring things that I wouldn’t normally get to ring in any of the towers that I would normally frequent.

Learning to ring takes time, even just the basics of handling a bell on your own, then you need to join in with others and make a meaningful sound.  Then you can move on to the more complicated stuff, but that tends to depend on others a bit more, as you can only ring to the standard of the most novice ringer in the band.  However, learning skills that require longer term commitment can be rewarding and stimulating for the brain.

A quick internet search shows that there are a multitude of sites that promote learning something new, from new skills, to new languages, to cooking and baking, knitting and creating videos.  I’ve always found learning something new to be rewarding.  It doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in it but it gives me better understanding, better skills, better adjustment and a wider range of things to do.

Having just completed the 6 week mindfulness course, I’m now looking around the site to find the next thing to dive into. 

Baking tutorials, are they good for business?

Watching videos and IGLive tutorials from my favourite bakers really inspires me to want to bake more. The trouble is threefold. I tend to miss a lot of the tutorials as they tend to either be during the day or early evening when I haven’t quite got home from work. Secondly, I don’t have time to do so much baking. Thirdly, if I did all that baking I’d either be the size of a house or diabetic, or both 😅

Those who do free tutorials and IGLives are so generous with their time and expertise. Surely by telling everyone else how to do it runs the risk of putting themselves out of work because we’d all be able to do it for ourselves.

Does it make good business sense? Actually, it probably does. By making themselves more accessible, it means that more people would follow them, be interested in their other products and offers, and be willing to paid for membership and exclusive access to more tutorials.

The company my daughter works for seem to have quite a cult following, with people willing to travel miles to get their hands on their goods. So far, I’ve only managed to sample a sourdough loaf, but I hear their doughnuts are to die for. I’ve watched bits of a few IGLives, when I’ve managed to get to it in time. There’s nothing pretencious about any of the recipes, its all good, honest baking. I’m kinda hoping that R will get me a copy of their book for Christmas 😁

I do need to put a bit more effort into some home baking puddings and cake. C is in charge of bread baking as he’s the one that eats most of it, so I’d best not interfere there.

Shout out to my favourites: Bread Ahead, Cakeflix and The Cupcake Oven.