My new friend - Ilfosol

I wanted to write a bit about my super day yesterday where Louise came over and we did our own black and white film developing. Dave has been nagging at me for ages to get onto it because B&W film is so expensive to get processed and scanned, plus we have a scanner so it kind of made financial sense. Also at the moment I find that I try hard to not shoot too much B&W due to the cost and having to send it off somewhere to get it done. Dave used to develop and print at college and Louise was well up for it as well so last week we all shot a shit-roll (a roll with no important photos on so it didnt matter if we messed it up) and today the three of us learnt what to do. We got this starter kit from thedarkroom.co.uk as it was a reasonable price and said it had all we needed in it. Although we have now learnt we don't need stop bath and are going to reuse the fixer so we can just buy the developer from now on. 
I was still a bit apprehensive as one of the things I enjoy about analogue photography is the going to collect your photos, not remembering what was on them and so on. Having said that, I was pleasantly surprised by today's experience. It was a lot easier and less stressful to do than I thought. Even the standing in the dark trying to spool your film isn't too scary. We also had a right laugh and didn't argue about the best course of action or anything like that so it was all good. I am now getting ambitious and wanting to do C41 colour developing and all sorts!!!

dave getting excited as his first roll was a success

negs hanging to dry in our utility-come-darkroom

Does anyone else here do home developing? Any tips for a newbie you can share?