I know! Unfortunately, since our university didn't "get" that fencing equipment was so expensive, we had such a tiny budget that we learned how to fix everything (luckily, most of us were engineers, and we could sucker the electrical engineers into building us testers, etc).
Fortunately, I'm a foil (and randomly an epee) and I rarely broke blades... but I got very good at rewiring, fixing the tips to pass shims, and convincing one of the guys to fix the body cords (as a trade-off to sewing their jackets and knickers back together, fixing masks...). I need to replace my equipment, but I've been weighing it out-- 20hrs of freestyle or a new lame'?

(it's funny, because one of my best friends was telling me the other day about his new sabre-- he got a fantastic new blade for Christmas-- perfect balance, flexible, with an $80 blade... used it in practice, and in the first bout, it bent 90 degrees Luckily, he was able to bend it back, but he say from now on that he's saving it for competition only!)

Back onto topic, does anyone in the UK know of any good websites to get skating skirts and the like from?

I have decided once I can do crossovers and it gets a bit warmer to transfer across. I live in skirts in the summer so I can't see the difference.

Hi ice dancer

Yeah, here are two sites I've found to be quite good:

http://www.ice-dancer.co.uk/

the other one is bunty sportswear, though there seems to be a problem with their website at the moment.

S xxx

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Another worth trying is www.topskate.co.uk.

It is run by the parents of a girl who used to skate at our rink and although it's been some time since I've bought anything from there, my friend does and says they're pretty good at getting stuff in. Handy too because they're not too far so you can drop in and collect if need be.

Nicki

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www.myspace.com/insatiableskater

hi Hannah,

this site might help:

http://www.pickyguide.com/sports_and...els_guide.html