That Friday Feeling...Ninjas!

 Argh, there hasn't been a Friday Feeling post for a few weeks - I am so sorry! Not sure quite why I have failed so miserably in my mission to bring my favourite Etsy finds of the week to you, please forgive me! Anyway, some of you will have noticed that this week I am slightly obsessed with ninjas... so this week is of course dedicated to the ninjas. Of the cute variety...

Squeee! Love these polymer clay ninjas by Lilley

The Surprise Ninja makes an appearance on this cute badge by TheHappyWhale

And this ninja is lurking on a card ready to strike with his shuriken by CompassionCardCo

YAY! I love these little guys! So I guess I should find some interesting facts about ninjas for you...

• Ninjas have been around since about the 14th Century. The art of Ninjutsu means the art of stealth and ninjas were traditionally spies, saboteurs and assassins.
• Ninjas aren't called ninjas at all - they were called Shinobi meaning 'to steal away'. Apparently the name ninja only came about after the Second World War when Westerners couldn't pronounce shinobi so started calling them ninjas.
• Ninjas and Samurai are totally different - the Samurai were mostly of the nobility, while Ninjas came from mountain villages. Samurai fought in the open while Ninjas were more covert in their operations.
• The traditional ninja uniform was not black. It's kind of conspicuous when you are a hired assassin to go around mountain villages wearing black so they would have worn whatever anyone else was wearing to blend in. They may have worn dark colours in the dark to help with concealment but that's about as far as it gets. 
• While searching for interesting facts about ninjas I came across all sorts of websites stating wonderful things about ninjas, from 'Ninjas don't sweat' to 'Ninjas can predict the next tune on their iPod shuffle'. Obviously most of them are not true... or are they? 
• OK so Kung-Fu and Ninja are not related but hey... when else will I have an opportunity to have Kung Fu Fighting as the song of the week here? Sorry for being totally incorrect (and in the wrong country) here, but I couldn't resist: