opportunityknits

fast and easy sewing

2012-03-03T15:12:00.000+08:00

While I was sorting things out next Saturday's flea market, I found 2 old t-shirts. A quick cut, sew the seams, corner gusset and a channel for inserting lace.

Now they serve as bags for my daughter's ballet shoes and pointe shoes.

Lunch: garlic bread, cream of chicken soup and chicken caesar's salad

Dinner: masala thosai

Supper: buttered sweet bun and coffee with milk at Toast Box.

I like the all white decor at Toast Box. This outlet was unusually empty so I took a few photos.

The tables and chairs are charmingly white too and the flooring is old school black and white mosaic tiles. The small bottles on the tables are not salt and pepper shakers but dark soya sauce and pepper bottles. Condiments for eating half boiled eggs.

Have a good weekend!

Sorbetto Dress

2012-02-25T16:24:00.001+08:00

In the end, I couldn't make adjustments by adding elastic because the embossed fabric is rather stiff and doesn't take kindly to elastic or gathers. I had to iron the inverted pleat down to death because it keeps sticking out instead of laying flat. The dress looked kind of plain so I added a small bow where the pleat ends. If you strain your eyes, you can see the bow :)

Not bad for a dress without a zipper. There is sufficient ease so that I can put it on and pull it off.

Note to self:
I have made adjustments to my Sorbetto pattern. Trimmed off a bit at the side seam at underarm. Trimmed the width and length of the skirt. If I sew another Sorbetto again, I should raise the front neckline by about an inch.

good night

2012-02-19T22:53:00.000+08:00

Sunday night, it is the end of my weekend. It has been a fruitful weekend, made time for rest, time for God, time for family and time for myself. We bought a Japanese souffle cheesecake from Carrefour. It was yummy and cheaper than other bakeries.

I made a frothy cup of milo for my son. He was studying for his Continuous Assessments (tests) coming up next week. So I make him a snack during tea time.

He frothed the milk using the Ikea Produkt milk frother. It's a nifty little gadget for frothing milk. The thick froth disappears very quickly though and what is left is bubbly milk, but it's still kind of fun for a hand-held, battery (2 AA szied batteries are needed) operated frother that costs only S$4.90.

Craftwise, I sewed my Sorbetto dress. I kept trying it on after sewing each seam. Do you do that too when you sew and knit? I made some adjustments. First I took in a bit at the side seams at the underarms before the dart. I also slimmed down the bottom of the skirt by about an inch at each side. I think it still needs some finishing touches because it looks a little loose and shapeless to me.

Tonight, after dinner I had gone for a brisk walk along the linear park near my house. The park has been renovated and the path is much broader now, more conducive for walking or jogging. I used to walk regularly at night with my kids. I can't remember why we stopped. It is nice to walk at night. It is cooler than in the daytime and it is quieter too. So I had a nice time alone with my thoughts. That's when the idea for how to make my Sorbetto dress fit better came to me. I want to add some elastic to the dress to cinch in the width and thereby slim down the dress. The only drawback is that the embossed fabric is rather stiff and might cause the gathers to stick out. Fingers crossed, hoping it will do the trick. By the way, I took such a long walk, almost an hour, that my husband started to worry about me and my kids called me on my handphone. I was almost home by then and after I hung up, I took this photo of the streetlight. By the way, you would be so proud of me. On my walk, I passed an ice cream shop and I did NOT go in. Is that willpower or what? That and the fact that I did not bring any money with me :)

I'm looking forward to the new week, starting daily devotions with my kids for Lent using the book, "Hope Strengthens Me" published by the Singapore Bible Society for Lent 2012. First time we're observing Lent. Hope you have something exciting to look forward to this week too.

my weekend has started

2012-02-17T18:30:00.000+08:00

My son has outgrown a pair of sneakers that he wore only a few times. I tried them on and guess what? They fit me! So tell me how this happens - I'm wearing hand-me-down shoes from my 11 year old son. I decided to change the laces a la these lacey ones. I used about 2 metres of lace trim from Daiso. I rolled the ends in some "cloth tape" (I'm not sure what they are but they look like a sturdier form of masking tape) that I found lying around the house.

I love my girly sneakers now and declare them good enough to wear with a skirt.

We ate out for dinner. We had Taokoyaki - savoury Japanese fried dumplings with octopus inside, garnished with mayonnaise and bonito flakes. My son and I don't really fancy the octopus, but the dumpling is nice.

Yakisoba -fried Japanese noodles.

And another yakisoba topped with lots of mayo and sweet sauce and more bonito flakes.

I have photos of two signs in my neighbourhood that I have been meaning to show you for a long time. The first one is a DIY sign made by a homeowner on a plastic plate. I like how it is illustrated for clarity, just in case the reader does not understand English.

The next one is an "official" signboard put up by the National Environment Agency at the nearby playground.

It is Friday night here and my weekend has started. I'm looking forward to spending some time with my sewing machine. Hope you'll have fun on your weekend too.

happy valentine's day

2012-02-14T23:18:00.001+08:00

My daughter made these for Valentine's Day. Cute, no?

Sorry for the bad photo below, it was already late at night when I took them out of the fridge and the plastic gift bag was beginning to fog up. I wanted to show you the stick with a row of choc hearts.

Ingredients: Cadbury's milk chocolate, Glico Pocky and chocolate moulds from Daiso. My daughter said that making them was easy enough. But the difficult part was how to make sure they didn't melt before she gave them away! Our weather is so warm, chocolate melts very quickly at room temperature. I suggested that she freeze them overnight and thankfully they did last long enough.

I have been so caught up with bringing lunch to work that I got myself this set of melamine crockery from Daiso. Food tastes better on pretty plates.

My lunch lately has been sandwiches and more sandwiches. Mini tuna croissant-wiches, cashew nut cookies (leftover from Chinese New Year), mandarin orange and apple tea.

Chicken and olive sandwiches, salad and brown rice green tea. I need to stock up on salad fixings as I have run out of macaroni and salad dressing. Last week, I didn't bring any packed lunches because I didn't have time. Just as well I didn't because friends called up and I had the pleasure of meeting them for lunch.

cut and sew day

2012-02-11T20:51:00.000+08:00

The top of my daughter's dress had stretched and the neckline and shoulders had become too big. I cut the top off and sewed the skirt part back onto a more fitted t-shirt. Dress fixed but it looks a little too plain now.

This next sewing project is for me. A dress in this black fabric, fibre unknown, probably a polyester something, that I bought many years ago. I lengthened my Sorbetto tank top pattern to make the skirt. I hope that it will drape nicely and not stick out weirdly at the sides. Keeping my fingers crossed. I had wanted to add short sleeves too but I did not have enough fabric. This fabric is very difficult to cut neatly because it is embossed allover with a busy pattern. Yes, I cut my fabric on the floor :)

We had a light lunch at home. Soup (chicken and old cucumber melon, thickened with ground soya beans) and macaroni salad. What about you, what did you do today?

eye candy

2012-02-09T19:53:00.000+08:00

From the 2011 Spring / Summer Japanese World Knitting magazine. On the left is a 3-colour garter with slip stitch cardi. The ruffles is a tape yarn. Do you think it would look Chanel-ish in a black-grey-white combo? On the right is a simple checkerboard raglan vest. I'm drawn to it because of the soft beige colour and the flower pin. Seduced by a flower pin again.

Next, from Cotton Friend Winter edition 2011-2012 Vol 41. On the left is an unstructured, unlined jacket. I wonder what fabric would be suitable for this. Something soft and not too thin? The magazine probably has recommendations for fabric. Unfortunately I can't read Japanese. On the right is a tunic shift with cowl neck and a few pin-tucks mid-sleeve. It looks so fashionably chic on the model below but I have a sneaky feeling that it would look hopelessly shapeless on me.

Sew February - cat tank top

2012-02-06T19:24:00.000+08:00

I didn't sew anything in January. Maybe I can catch up by sewing 2 items this month. This cat tank top is for my daughter. I'm so glad that the tank top is wearable because my daughter likes the cat fabric very much. We bought the cotton fabric from one of the shops in Arab Street last April. Why do I take so long to get round to sewing up my fabrics? Anyway, I almost botched up the tank top by making it too small.

I traced the pattern from one of her favourite knit jersey tank tops. It's a disease, I can't seem to stop making patterns from favourite clothes. Which tends to be very much a matter of trial and error. Mostly error. In this instance, I had failed to take note of the fact that knit jersey stretches and cotton does not. So the top was too tight across the armpits. I had to unpick the seams and crack my head for a solution. The problem was that I had already cut the front and back pieces out of the 1 metre of fabric. Fortunately I could salvage it. I re-positioned the paper pattern lower down on the fabric pieces that had already been cut and re-cut the top part of the tank from the armhole upwards. Thank goodness I had cut it extra long to begin with. As it is an A-line shape, the lower part of the pattern had more width. I further extended the width by reducing the seam allowance from 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch. Disaster averted!

Worn tucked into a skirt.

Worn tucked out, it has a slight swing shape.

Note to self:

This tank top would look cute with a peter pan collar.
Remember to extend the armhole edge on the both the front and back pattern pieces by 3/4 inch for that much needed extra ease.
Also, remember that I did not include seam allowance in the pattern.

this week's clean a corner

2012-02-04T08:21:00.000+08:00

Sorting out my clothes cupboard took one hour. By sorting I do not mean organising and hanging by colour scheme or anything like that. What I did was to decide whether to keep to throw out my clothes. Most of the time was spent trying on clothes and convincing myself it was time to let them go. In the end, I threw out some dead clothes (that had lost their shape or had fallen apart from too many years of wear and tear) and set aside these clothes for selling at the next flea market. I am still thinking whether I should refashion any of these items.

I am pleased that I had cleaned out all the dust bunnies (how on earth does dust get inside a cupboard that is closed all day?) but I have a feeling that I wasn't ruthless enough in culling my clothes. By the way, you can see some of my hand-knits at the bottom. The pink and red on the right are 2 knitted shawls and there are some hand-knit cotton sweaters in the piles on the left.

currently knitting

2012-02-01T19:30:00.000+08:00

My current knitting project is this vest. I think I was drawn to it because of the flower pin, and the fact that I had 2 balls of Sirdar cotton 4 ply that isn't enough for much more than a sleeveless tank top. I didn't want to knit a tank top, so the alternative was to knit a vest.

I'm done knitting the back, which is plain stockinette. I have started on the right front, which is more interesting to knit, as it has a lace panel. It looks like I might run out of yarn but I should have enough to complete at least the main body pieces. Then I will have to look for some contrast yarn to complete the crochet border.

Lunch recently was macaroni, pan-fried chicken fillet, crunchy grapes, butterhead lettuce with Japanese sesame dressing. Note to self : S$2.80 for 2 butterhead lettuces, enough to make 4 salad lunches. I had the salad again the next day and added boiled chestnuts.

last week

2012-01-29T18:54:00.000+08:00

This is a tree under which I take shelter every weekday while waiting for my bus. It is a sea fig (Ficus Superba), one of 183 Heritage Trees protected under the Heritage Tree Scheme. It is an old tree, dating back to pre-war days. I could take this photo because for once, the bus stop was deserted.

This week for Clean a Corner, I tackled the bathroom sink that I share with my daughter. She tackled the sofa and table in her bedroom. Good job, girl! The mechanics were coming to service our air-conditioners and we felt obliged to tidy up before they arrived.

My sister bought this festive platter of sushi from Sakae Sushi for dinner at my parents' house on the first day of Chinese New Year. Instead of visiting each other at Chinese New Year, my siblings and I meet up for dinner at my parents' house.

On the second day of Chinese New Year, we went for a movie and tried fries with Gusto Garlic sauce from Best Fries Forever for the first time. It's certainly not going to be my last :)

On Friday night after dinner, we stopped by at Udders for Snickers Mars honeycomb vanilla and Chocolatey Kit Kat.

Yesterday, on the way to buy tar-pow (takeaway) chicken rice, I stopped to take a photo of this re-furbished row of old shophouses that has been converted into a boutique hotel. I wish I had taken a better photo so that you can see the carvings. I can't remember exactly, but they were either lions or dragons. These shophouses are in Joo Chiat, which is a national heritage conservation area (Secondary Settlements) and to protect their architectural style, the buildings are required to be restored according to conservation guidelines and cannot be demolished or altered without permission.

I like the floor tiles in the five foot way in front of the conserved building. In the bottom corner you can see my shoes. They were on sale and I couldn't resist the bows. If I can't wear cute clothes anymore at my age, at least I can wear cute shoes!

style links

2012-01-26T21:35:00.000+08:00

I have 3 style links for you today. The first is this article, Secrets of French Girls by Ellen Wallace, about classic and timeless French style. Some of the tips I took note of are

to understand my own body shape and know my own figure (which has changed in recent years),
to dress to please myself (yeah!),
to find my own style (which needs to evolve as I get older). I am approaching mid-century this year and these tips seem very sensible and practical to me as I try to ease into dressing for the more mature me.
Another tip from the article that I gladly noted was that basic colours like black, white, navy, burgundy and beige are the foundation of an outfit. I already wear a lot of black and grey for work because it is a no-brainer in my early morning rush to get dressed and I always feel more pulled together in black. I will continue to build my wardrobe around these basic colours.

The second link is 40plus style. Sylvia writes about "style ideas, how to dress and beauty information for women over 40". Fashion magazines and style websites cater mostly to the young, and there isn't much that I can find for women my age, so I was glad to stumble on her website, which is such a treasure trove of information. The feature I like best are her outfit posts, and I am especially pleased that she lives right here on my sunny little island, therefore many of her outfits are suitable for my tropical weather. My fave among all her outfit posts is this black and white outfit that she wore. It's so simple and yet stylish enough for work for me and best of all, I was inspired to put together a similar outfit from things I already have in my wardrobe.

The last link is to a beautiful food blog called my french kitchen, written by an artist. Her recipe cards are illustrated with her beautiful artwork. You may wonder what a French cooking blog has to do with style? Her latest post has the most humorous take on bathing suit style for the middle aged woman. You have to scroll all the way down to read it. It's priceless! I can identify with everything that's written there!! By the way, her mango salad sounds like a yummy idea for my lunch box, after all, it is a well known fact that French women eat well and yet stay slim!

Hope you will enjoy the links!

lunch box update

2012-01-25T20:00:00.000+08:00

By week 2 of bringing lunch to work, the novelty of eating the same pre-packaged salad leaves had worn off. Plus, the pre-packaged salad leaves seem over-priced to me. It was time to explore other lunch box ideas.

Thinking outside the box, I decided to start with foods I like and build my lunch around that. I thought of Kimchi and made rice, macaroni and kimchi salad. Perfect.

At the supermarket I was looking for a cheaper alternative to pre-packaged salad leaves. I found a small cabbage for 80cents. Why didn't I think of that? Japanese meals are often accompanied by shredded cabbage, which I like. So I had shredded cabbage and tomatoes (under the ham and sausage) with kimchi and crunchy seedless grapes. Packing kimchi in the little airtight boxes was a sensible option because it has a very strong smell! The only problem with cabbage is that it is, how do I put this delicately, err ... gassy?

Xin Nian Kuai Le

2012-01-22T19:00:00.000+08:00

Wishing you a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year!

cheap and quick fix

2012-01-16T19:30:00.000+08:00

My daughter has a pair of shorts that is a bit too short and she asked me help refashion it like this pair of shorts.

I unpicked the hem, and let it down by 2 cm. That was all I could do since the hem allowance was very small. Then I sewed on some ecru cotton lace trim by hand. The lace trim is from Daiso, 1.5m for S$2. Now the shorts is 3 cm longer.

There was just enough lace trim left for me to hand sew them to the back pockets as well. This re-fashion took 2 nights. One night to unpick the hem and another night to sew the trim. I love cheap and quick fixes for clothes.

sew 2012

2012-01-14T10:17:00.000+08:00

Lucky me! I won a giveaway at Lyn's blog for her Love quilt pattern - her own design. Thanks, Lyn for such a generous giveaway! If you click on the link you can see her finished Love quilt. I'm going to give this quilt a try. I like how it can be done, one block at a time, at leisure, no rush (that really appeals to me). It's designed to be done over 10 months. Plus it has embroidered squares. I haven't embroidered in ages and was looking for a way to get started, so this is the perfect project for me to do a bit of embroidery. And best of all are the Love quotes in the embroidery squares. I'm going to read the instructions carefully and then think about colours and fabric. It's going to be a fun learning experience. By the way, can you see that pretty card in the photo below? It comes with the recipe for that yummy looking cupcake. Isn't that a brilliant idea for a card?

I also received Grand Revivals Design's Practical Bag pattern, compliments of Tanya for sharing the Amazon link to her book "Sew What You Love" on my Facebook. Thanks Tanya, for the pattern!

Looks like I am all set for my 2012 "sew something every month"!

Clean a corner a week 1

2012-01-09T19:00:00.000+08:00

I decided to tackle my table first. This is my table in our family room where we spend most of our time at home. I am the Queen of clutter. What you can't see is that there is more stuff behind my notebook screen. Can you see that box overflowing with skeins of leftover yarn on the right?

It is a small space but it took more than 10 minutes because once I got started, I roped my son in to clear his table too. He had to clear out last year's school books. Which meant that he had to sort out what to throw and what to keep. Then we had to find a space on the bookshelves to keep last year's books that he wants to keep. Which meant that I had to clear out a shelf of old stuff - worksheets from kindergarten days. Reminisced over lots of old things like cards and notes from teachers. Kept a lot of stuff for sentimental reasons. The whole thing took 2 hours and resulted in 2 garbage bags full of stuff to throw out. But it was worth it. It feels good to start the year with space at our tables.

My table, above and my son's table, below. Do you think it counts as 2 corners so I am done with the corner for week 2 as well? :) :) Plus, we've already kept the Christmas tree, ornaments and lights. One year we had the tree up way past Chinese New Year, so it looks like 2012 is off to an unusually good start.

miss those lazy December days

2012-01-07T13:04:00.000+08:00

This week the kids went back to school, which means waking up at 6 plus am and having to make sure they have clean, ironed uniforms the night before. I miss the lazy December days where we slept late, and did nothing much at home. Lazy days = no cooking. Making pizzas with wraps doesn't count as cooking. Don't be fooled by my pics, I did not make pizza dough from scratch. I bought Gardenia wraps, mozarella cheese, tomato paste, bacon and capsicum. The kids assembled them into this:

put it into the oven and it turned into this:

Confession: our family of four ate up all the 5 wraps, the can of tomato paste, the entire 250g (shudder) package of cheese, the packet of bacon (at least it was back bacon and not streaky bacon) and the capsicum (the only no-fat part of this meal!!) Oh and also 5 eggs! We broke and spread an egg on top of each pizza before putting it into the oven. My kids were rather doubtful when I suggested adding the egg because it sounded like a strange thing for a pizza, but after they tried it, they liked it. Having an egg on top of my pizza brought me right back to my university days when my husband (then boyfriend) and I ate a lot of Pizza Supremes at Milano's. It's the only pizza I know that had eggs on top. Sadly, Milano's has closed down a long time ago. It was a Singapore owned pizza chain but it couldn't compete with the bigger pizza chains.

In 2012

2012-01-04T19:30:00.000+08:00

In 2012, I will

Drink more water

I tend to forget to drink water during the day and tend to drink only at meal times. So I need to remind myself to drink more water in between. I brought a water kettle to my office so that I can make hot green tea.

Have more healthy lunches at work

The lunches available at my office canteen are not very healthy choices. I want to bring salads and sandwiches to work, as much as I can. To do so successfully, I have to plan and prepare the night before AND remember to take it out of the fridge and bring it to work the next morning! This is my first lunchbox for 2012: romaine lettuce, tomatoes, laughing cow cheese and creamy Japanese sesame dressing in the little plastic box. I also had an apple, not pictured.

Clean a drawer a week

It could be a drawer or a corner. This brilliant idea is borrowed from Beth at felt like knitting. When I clean, it's usually vacuuming and mopping. By the time I'm done, I am exhausted and not motivated to do much else. But taking 10 minutes on another day to tackle a small task like a drawer is very do-able. At the end of the year, my house should be more organised, no? haha, my inner self is in doubt because in my mind I'm already thinking that this is the hardest thing to do on my list :)

Continue to knit up my yarn stash

I have been knitting from the stash for 2-3 years now and will continue to do so this year. I started a project on 2 jan with stash yarn. Will tell you about it later when it gets more interesting. Right now, it's just a blue rectangle of stockinette.

Sew an item a month

This is part of my goal to start sewing up my fabric stash.

crochet block a month CAL

I joined the crochet block a month CAL on Ravelry. It seems do-able, even in the busiest times, to crochet one block a month. I'm still thinking of a theme, colours, yarn or something so that I can seam up the blocks into something useful at the end.

By the way, do you have pinterest? You can find me here. I really like how it can be used to organise pictures, tutorials, websites etc. I do however, have a question. Do you know what is the proper etiquette for pinning an item from a website or blog? Should I ask the website owner or blogger for permission first, or is it acceptable to just pin it?

First FO for 2012

2012-01-02T12:16:00.000+08:00

It feels good to start 2012 with an FO! This is the lace trim bolero from Vogue Knitting spring summer 2005. I was too lazy to knit the lace edging and then sew it on. So I knitted the lace edging along the edge of the bolero following these instructions. It's a neat way of attaching the edging by knitting into a stitch on the bolero and slipping the stitch over.

Even so, I had to re-knit several times because I couldn't decide how close to space the edging. In the end, I settled for skipping every other row / stitch. I don't like this bolero. It is too bulky. The fabric is thicker than what I would have liked. I steam ironed it to death in an attempt to flatten it as much as possible.

Pattern: VK spring summer 2005 lace trim bolero

Yarn: Palermo cotton from Stahl sche Wolle

Needle: 3.75 mm

I've had this yarn for more than 10 years. Each time I tried to knit or crochet with it, it never looked right. I think it's because the yarn knits up too thick. But I am still glad to have completed it. It was a satisfying stash buster.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T14:27:00.000+08:00

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,

I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord

Luke 2: 10-11

To all my blogfriends, may God bless you this Christmas!

Thank you for reading my blog, taking the time to write comments (I read every single one of them!) and sharing your blogs with me and inspiring me all year round.

wet weekend

2011-12-20T18:51:00.000+08:00

On Saturday, I went to watch Apple of my Eye (a Taiwanese movie) with my daughter. The movie made me think back to my days in school before I went to university. At age 17 to 18, there were so many things I did not know back then. In retrospect, not knowing was better, it made life simpler, more idyllic and less complicated :)

On Sunday, we went to hear my son play with his school brass band in the School Band Fiesta at the Botanic Gardens. He is the little guy playing the baritone, sitting right in the front. This is the third year he has played at the Botanic Gardens in December. It's going to be his last time performing with his school band there because come next December, he would have graduated from primary school. I hope he will continue to play in the band in secondary school. It was a rainy afternoon, but this small crowd (mostly family and friends) braved the rain to hear the kids.

I started knitting the lace edging for my bolero.

Food pics to round off this post. Hainanese chicken rice at Boon Tong Kee. Chicken, gizzard and liver, and chee cheong fun.

My daughter's fave 3-egg dish: steamed egg with preserved century egg and preserved salted egg. In the background is another of my kids' fave: crispy beancurd with mayo sauce.

Hope you had a good weekend too.

December nights

2011-12-17T19:30:00.000+08:00

I have been more relaxed and enjoying my free time at night. My husband has been in a cooking mood lately, planning what to cook for dinner, preparing the ingredients, doing everything. He doesn't follow recipes. Just throws in a dash of this and that, but it always tastes good.

His latest concoction: Crab Bee Hoon (rice vermicelli). There were 2 crabs in there, braised in lots of ginger and garlic, chicken stock and seasoned with sesame oil, soya sauce, pepper and mirin. It was so delicious, I hope we'll have it again soon!

I have finished knitting the pieces of my bolero. Seamed it up while enjoying kueh bangkit and chrysanthemum ginseng tea. I am now reading up on how to knit the lace along the edge instead of knitting a long strip and sewing it on.

In between knitting, I been browsing holiday magazines. I did not buy any holiday magazines this year. However I do have a stash of old ones. In the spirit of recycling, I'm browsing cookie recipes and crafts from Christmases past.

I have also found time to sit in the dark for a quiet moment and turn on the snowflakes string lights and star lights from Ikea strung around our wooden screen. From my wing chair in the corner I can also enjoy my Christmas tree lights. Hope you're having some relaxing December nights too.

christmas high tea

2011-12-13T19:31:00.000+08:00

My girlfriends and I had tea at TCC. We had the christmas high tea set.

Can you see the tiny not-gingerbread man? No? Well, we put them together for a close up. Notice how one is smiley and the other is glum? He is not gingerbread but strawberry cake. This is the first time I took pictures of the food when out with my girlfriends because I wanted to show my daughter the cute little not-gingerbread-but-cake men. She usually joins us, as she has known these aunties* all her life, they visited her in hospital the day she was born! But she couldn't join us this time as she was having exams. My friend took pictures too for her daughters :) The wonders of technology. We all had handphones with cameras! One of my friends who has 3 sons and no daughters commented, "that's the difference between sons and daughters. If I took these photos of the food, none of my boys would be interested".

* they are not aunties by blood, not related at all, but here, older women are called "aunties" and older men are called "uncles"

gift wrapping

2011-12-11T14:35:00.000+08:00

I'm meeting my girlfriends for tea this week, and we will have our gift exchange, so I sat down to do some gift wrapping. I don't usually give handmade gifts but this year, I started knitting washclothes in February. Knitted washcloths, Body Shop bath gel and Face Shop masks.

Took only one photo of the washcloths with my phone camera before I wrapped them up. My Canon Ixus died after being my blog's official camera for 6 years. My husband wanted to buy me a camera to replace it but I'm not in a hurry. After all, there are 3 other cameras in this house aside from 3 phone cameras. I just need to learn how to use them :)

Crocheted gift tags.

Hot pink star (left) from the royal sisters grandma twinkle tutorial

Yellow, blue-grey and white stars (middle) from woolnhook

Tree (right) from the royal sisters grandma tree tutorial

This is a gift for my friend's niece, a teenage girl. Forgot to take a pic of the cute Hello Kitty bath set inside. How about you, have you wrapped up your gifts yet?

bolero next

2011-12-08T19:00:00.000+08:00

After completing my vest, and in the mood for more swingy knits, I was going to knit a delicate swingy lace tunic. But when I tried the lace, it gave me a huge headache because it was knit in lace on both sides. The lace was too advanced for me, so I had to quit. Then I swatched for a lace wrap cardi, but I couldn't understand how the star shaped lace stitch is supposed to be knit. So another attempt went down the drain. Defeated, I dug through my old issues of Vogue Knitting and spied the Lace Trim Bolero from Spring/Summer 2005 that I wanted to knit a long time ago. So I cast on for that. Wasn't too sure if it would work, but it was worth a try.

Meanwhile, here is progress pic. Nothing very photogenic. The yarn is ancient stash yarn. Bought around the time my son was born. He's now 11. The yarn is Palermo cotton from Stahl sche Wolle. It needs an eagle eye to knit with because it is something like 12 fine strands of thread plied into a tube of yarn. Very splitty = slow going. I have finished the back. That lace strip is the lower edge of the sleeve. The lace is also knit on both sides but it is 7 stitches and a 4-row repeat so I can manage.

I am behind in blogging my food pictures. Last month, or was it the month before, when my daughter was still on her long semester break, we went to Yomenya Goemon at 313 Somerset for Japanese style spaghetti. I like Japanese style spaghetti because the sauce is lighter than creamy or tomatoey sauces. It is closer to agli olio. I had scallop and Japanese chives spaghetti.

My daughter had mentaiko, pork and Japanese pickles (pickles karashi takana) spaghetti. We shared a dessert - a tiny chocolate cake with cookie and ice cream. No more one-on-one girl-time with her till next year. She's got quizzes, projects and mid-terms coming up.

little corner

2011-12-05T19:00:00.000+08:00

Have you put up your Christmas tree? We've put our little tree in this corner near the front door. The french doors by the way are not our front door, they lead to the stairway. I like to see the lights through the french doors when I come down the stairs.

cold

2011-12-02T22:50:00.000+08:00

Earlier this week, I was down with a bad cold, blocked stuffy nose, groggy and heavy head. But I had to go to work because I had deadlines that could not wait. My handknits helped me battle the cold in my air-cond office.

Scratchy Noro Silk Garden (bottom)
Stretchy Rowan Calmer Capri (top)
Soft Sirdar Breeze (right)

This bobbled cardi was originally knitted for my daughter many years ago. I'm not sure why, but it "grew" over time and fits me now, in a slouchy, oversized way, which is perfect when all I want is comfort and warmth.

There are bobbles on the sleeves and the back too. The Sirdar Breeze yarn is 60% acrylic 40% cotton and it's one of my favourite cotton yarns.

It was raining all day today. In fact it's been raining almost everyday for many weeks now and it would have been so nice to have a steaming bowl of spicy ramen like this for lunch at work today. This is Ajisen Ramen's spicy ramen which I had for dinner last month when my son was away at band camp.

The closest thing I found in the canteen was noodle (kway teow) soup and hot milk tea. Comfort food. I still can't quite taste anything yet and I really wanted steaming hot soup to clear my sinuses.

Today's photos are courtesy of my handphone camera, which I realised is not too bad. And, by the way, I'm feeling much better already and it's great to be able to breathe normally again! Have a good weekend!

Swing vest

2011-11-27T15:12:00.000+08:00

Seaming this little vest took 2 nights. Knitting the picot neckline and hiding the yarn ends took another night. Sewing the buttons and button loops and steam blocking it took one more night. So the finishing alone took 4 nights. This is fast for me, because I couldn't wait to get it done.

Pattern: Vest is from this Japanese magazine: ISBN 4939459629646

Yarn: RYC Cashcotton 4-ply 4 balls

Needles: 4 mm

I like how this yarn knits up into a fuzzy soft and extremely light fabric. Sadly it's discontinued.

There are many little details in this vest, like the ribbed cap sleeves. I like how they fit.

The lace yoke and picot neckline. I knitted a picot folded hem neckline because I didn't like the rolled stockinette neckline in the pattern. Instead of sewing down the inside hem, I knitted it onto the purl bumps on the inside. At first the picots kept getting skewed and I kept ripping trying to get it right. Then I realised the picots were skewed because the knit stitch and the purl bumps were not properly aligned because I couldn't see clearly and was skipping some purl bumps without realising it.. In the end I threaded a contrasting thread through the row of purl bumps so that I could see them better.

The button loops made by using blanket stitches over 2 loops of yarn. The buttons were a lucky find. Gunmetal grey buttons that have the same colour inside the scroll pattern as the yarn.

The back lace yoke. The photo in the magazine did not show the back so I didn't know that there was this pretty feature at first.

Edited to add another photo of the back yoke.

The swingy shape and 2 lace patterns on the "skirt" of the vest. By the way, the lace at the hem is the same as the lace at the yoke, although it looks different. I used to think that I prefer to wear plain stockinette sweaters rather than those with fussy intricate lace designs. Now, I'm not so sure. I think sometimes it's a matter of how and where the lace is placed and I guess my taste also changes over time. I really, really like everything about this vest :)

on the home stretch

2011-11-22T23:00:00.000+08:00

This vest is on the home stretch, everything is seamed. I'm now in the middle of knitting the neckline and then there's the button loops left and hiding the yarn ends. I don't know when I can get round to buying the buttons. But I couldn't wait to show you this progress pic. I think I'm going to love this vest more than anything I've knitted!

building a wardrobe, knitting & sewing

2011-11-16T20:45:00.000+08:00

I was reminded of a couple of pointers on building a wardrobe from Chic Simple's Womens-Wardrobe and What Should I Wear.

Survey and Assess

Think about life needs. Currently that's work and home, so my clothing needs are for these 2 areas of my life - workdays and weekends
Wear what I feel good in. I like to wear simple clothes to work. I'm mostly jeans and tshirts on weekends but I'm open to more fun dressing on weekends

Dejunk and Recycle

Clear out items that are thread bare,out-dated or no longer fit.

Renew and Reinvest

Shop my closet. Re-mix clothes to give me new outfits
Renew. Refashion old items and make them new again
Reinvest. I bought new black pants and pencil skirts for work at a recent sale. I like to wear separates for work and these new additions go with everything and will last for many seasons.

To start off shopping my closet and re-mixing my clothes, I came up with this "new" weekend outfit. I should re-mix more often because it is fun to create new outifts from my old clothes.

A racer back tank top that I shortened because the back hem was too long
My crochet vest

By the way, knitting and sewing fits nicely into this whole scheme of building a wardrobe. Take this vest (below) that I am knitting now, for example. When it is done, it will fill a gap in my wardrobe. I need a vest to go over a plain tshirt on weekends. I should hurry and knit up the 2 front pieces as soon as possible.

easy "claypot" chicken rice in rice cooker

2011-11-07T19:40:00.000+08:00

The last 2 weekends have been somewhat exhausting. The last weekend in October was the fleamarket, which went well. Although I spent most of the time seated under the shade of an umbrella, it was a very hot day and I sweated buckets. At the end of the day I felt like I had run miles on the treadmill.

This weekend, we went to MacRitchie Reservoir to check out the treetops trail. It was a 5 km trek through a gravel nature trail to the tree tops suspension bridge and another 5 km trek around the reservoir to get back. The way back was more enjoyable and picturesque because part of it was a comfortable boardwalk beside the water. Nonetheless, it was a challenging 4 hour trek, as some parts of the trail were uphill and the ground was mostly muddy and slippery due to the rainy weather. I would not recommend this trail for young children and the elderly. Needless to say, I feel all sorts of aches and pain now. But I am glad we did it. It was much needed exercise for me :)

Since I have no knitting or sewing, I will show you our first attempt at cooking "claypot" chicken rice in the rice cooker. This is how it looked like in the rice cooker when it was done. By the way, this dish is traditionally cooked in a claypot, hence the name, claypot chicken rice.

There are lots of recipes for this if you google. I put 2 cups of washed short grain rice in the rice cooker and added the required amount of water. Next, I fried some slices of ginger and some cloves of peeled garlic, then added chopped chicken, a mixture of sesame oil, light and dark soya sauce into the pan and gave everything a quick stir fry, to give it a "fried fragrance", but not long enough to cook the chicken. The chicken mixture was added to the rice cooker and then the rice cooker was turned on. When the water in the rice cooker was beginning to boil off, I added sliced lap cheong (dried pork sausage), yuen cheong (dried liver sausage), sliced siew yoke (roast pork) and siow pai chye into the rice cooker. After the rice had cooked, and the rice cooker had turned to " keep warm" mode, I waited for about another 20 minutes for the vegetable to cook and soften.

I have heard about cooking claypot chicken rice in the rice cooker but I have not tried it before as I doubted that it would be tasty and feared that the chicken might not be sufficiently cooked. Well, my worries were unfounded. It turned out deliciously fragrant and the chicken was well-cooked. And, it isn't as oily as it looks. In fact, it is quite a healthy way of cooking because I didn't use any oil for cooking. Only sesame seed oil was used as seasoning. I'm definitely cooking this again as it is a simple one pot meal and my kids loved it. Next time we will skip the siew yoke and add shitake mushrooms and salted fish.

capri, finally

2011-10-29T18:22:00.000+08:00

My name is erin and I am a procrastinator. I think you already know that :) I took forever to do the finishing for Capri (I finished the knitting on May 15) even though it was just sewing the seams and knitting a garter collar. I really don't know why I put off seaming. Each time I do it, it isn't that painful, yet I tend to put it off. I'd really rather just knit and knit.

I lengthened the sleeves, but I can't remember how I did it. I can't find my notes to refer to it either. I suspect that all I did was start as per the instructions, then knit up for x cm before continuing with the sleeve increases. I would have liked to lengthen them a bit more, but I wasn't sure if I had enough yarn. Well it turns out I did have enough yarn in the end. For a crazy moment, I actually thought of snipping off the garter stitch cuff and adding stockinette and then grafting the cuff back. But other than procrastinating, I am also lazy, so I just left it as it is. The other modification I made was to knit the garter buttonband as I knitted the front pieces instead of having it sewn on later. I thought that I had forgotten to knit buttonholes but when I looked at the pattern again, it doesn't have buttonholes. The pattern uses press studs. I left out the press studs as I never button up my cardigans anyway.

Pattern: Capri Rowan Magazine 43 size S

Yarn: Rowan Calmer in a shade called Blush 7+ balls

Needles: 4mm, 5 mm

For the sake of full disclosure, I didn't wet block Capri. I steam-pressed it very lightly with my iron on the ironing board. Capri is going to be useful for throwing over my tshirts and jeans on trips to the shopping centre.

Here are pics from a girls' day out with my daughter a long time ago, that I never got round to posting. We shared California maki and I had a cafe latte that was served on its own little tray. Don't you think that sugar cubes are cuter than sugar in paper packets? My mum used to have sugar cubes at home in a little bowl with teeny sugar tongs. Here's a link to making your own heart shaped sugar cubes. I really like the way drinks are served at this place. Look at the strawberry yoghurt drink that my daughter had.

another leftover yarn project

2011-10-21T18:43:00.000+08:00

A while ago, while surfing knitting blogs, I saw this oh-so-pretty long stripey scarf using leftover sock yarn. Sadly though, I lost track of the blog url. Anyway, I wanted one of my own. It was knit in garter stitch. Given my current craze for garter stitch, I had to knit it, you know. I rounded up my leftover sock yarn and cast on I don't know how many stitches. It was so fun, deciding which yarn to use next as each row is knit with a new strand of yarn.

Then I decided that it could function as a belt. A belt is so much more useful for me in my sunny weather so I cast off. I left enough yarn at the beginning and end of each row and knotted them together so it looks like a single tassel. I am now thinking of how to wear it. It is very, very long :)

The colours are so bright, I think the belt would look good with jeans or something black or white.

My daughter was having her long school break (which sadly ends this weekend) and we've been trying out new eating places. We had the lunch set at Tarts Paradise. The main course was hamburger and ebi fry curry rice. The staff serving us was very thoughtful, she brought us small plates for sharing our food.

The lunch set came with our choice of tarts. We chose the mango and strawberry tart, my daughter said it's the priciest tart there, so it has to be the best! Isn't it a pretty slice? It was a yummy combination of fresh cream, fruit and a bit of cake. The tart alone is worth going back for. By the way, do you notice that most of my food pictures are from meals I have with my daughter or my family? I feel too awkward to photograph my food when I am out with friends or if I am eating alone :)

things from leftovers

2011-10-16T18:05:00.001+08:00

I have been making flower pins from scraps of leftover fabric, yarn and old buttons. They are for a flea market stall at the end of the month. It's the first time my daughter and I are having a flea market stall. It's organised by the nearby community centre and we thought it would be fun to give it a go. We're selling clothes, bags and accessories and have one table (size unknown). Working out how to price our items and how to display things.

I made some fabric flowers, but I like the crochet ones better, so I made more of the crochet ones.

I have found a new fave dessert. It's from Pique Nique at Takashimaya. They have comfy wing chairs at tables for two.

Salty caramel pancakes with whipped cream. Not very photogenic but they're the best pancakes I've ever had!

By the way, my daughter says that their banana caramel milkshake is awesome. I didn't dare to even take a sip of it, it looked like it would kill me on the spot with a bazillion calories :)

slow and lacey

2011-09-22T21:16:00.000+08:00

I have been knitting this lace cardi-vest for a few weeks now. It is slow-going because I have to concentrate. I am not good at lace knitting and this one's all the more challenging because I have to decrease stitches at both ends every few rows and that makes it harder for me to see where I should be at the beginning of each lace row.

But it's an enjoyable knit. The yarn I'm using is rowan cashcotton 4 ply. It's a greenish-grey colour. Hopefully the 4 balls of this yarn that I have is enough to complete the cardi-vest. If not, I might have to leave out the cap sleeves.

To end off, I have to include my obligatory food pic, taken with my camera phone. Ice cream, marshmallows, whipped cream and kit kat on waffles.

By the way, I've just discovered that google reader has a function under feed settings that translates feeds from other languages into my language. How nifty is that?

kerchief scarf

2011-09-18T20:44:00.000+08:00

I have a knitting FO. A kerchief scarf, with a crochet edging following these instructions from Moonstitches. I couldn't take a photograph of the scarf worn around my neck because my trusty photographer (my daughter) went to watch the Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra of St Petersburg perform Don Quixote, and I don't think my son would want to model it for me, so I resorted to hanging it at the back of the front door.

The body of the scarf is sockyarn from a friend. Strangely, sockyarn garter stitch doesn't seem to have any of the springiness of garter stitch in wool. The knitting for this went real fast as it was the perfect thing to knit at night while watching korean dramas. The edging is crocheted with a lace yarn, also from the same friend. It's too warm here to wear this scarf out, but it is nice to have it on my lap especially when the air-conditioning gets too cold.

It couldn't get a decent photo of the edging close-up due to poor indoor lighting. The photo below is the best I could manage.

Since my last blog post, I had made a short trip to Phnom Penh, a city steeped in history. Pictured below is the beautiful palace.

Needless to say, we had good food on our trip. Local fruits like rambutans - the red hairy fruit and pomelo - that looks sort of like grapefruit but tastes sweet instead of sour. Khmer food reminds me of Vietnamese food, like the spring rolls and noodles pictured here, but it tatses a tad sweeter. My favourite Khmer dish was fish amok. It tastes a little like our fish otak. I dipped the sauce in bread and it was so yummy. Unfortunately, I was so busy eating that I forgot to take a photo of it for you.

coasters, flowers, garter and tea

2011-08-30T20:27:00.000+08:00

Coasters crocheted from the linen yarn I got from Daiso. There was enough to make only one coaster from each ball of yarn.

Flowers and leaves made out of the leftover Daiso yarn. I wouldn't use this yarn for clothing items, it is too stiff. The pink flower is knit from Butterfly cotton yarn.

Garter stitch scarf knit with sock yarn and 3.75 mm needles. This went so fast that I am almost done.

Tea served on my Ikea 3-tier cake stand. My daughter and I like egg salad sandwiches. My husband and son prefer smoked salmon.

I can't remember if I have shown you my tea forks from Daiso before. Daiso is a treasure trove of $2 goodies.

I'm currently crushing on creamy white crocheted and knitted collars. What's your latest crush or obsession?

Stairway

2011-08-20T12:59:00.000+08:00

Stairway was such a fun knit, that I was a little sad to finish it. I like the steps, the stripey yarn and the garter stitches. I didn't like garter stitches when I first started knitting. But lately, I'm beginning to like garter stitches a lot, especially in scarves and shawls. It is reversible and has a certain springi-ness which stockinette doesn't have. By the way, I didn't block Stairway because I think blocking it would make the scarf more drapey and less springy, if you know what I mean. Plus, I'm lazy.

Pattern: Stairway Thanks Carlinomon for sharing this pattern!
Yarn: Rowan Tapestry 2 balls

Needle:4.5mm

Note to self: I used this method to cast on stitches for each new step: cast on 4 stitches instead of 5. Then in the next row, I knit the 4 new stitches, then looped the long bit of yarn back onto the left needle to knit the 5th stitch. Result - no gaping hole

I made this pancake for breakfast from this recipe. I was so pleased because I got to use my skillet with the detachable handle for the first time. What I mean is that I detached the handle for the first time and put the skillet into the oven to bake the pancake.

It turned out a little wet probably because I used 3 small eggs instead of 2 large eggs as required in the recipe. Note to self: 3 small eggs ≠ 2 large eggs. I didn't have nutmeg so I substituted with cinnamon, which worked fine. I ate it with strawberry jam. I liked this pancake but my family didn't like it as much. I think that's because they prefer savoury breakfasts over sweet breakfasts.

5 Random things

2011-08-14T15:03:00.000+08:00

It's difficult to come up with blog titles these days, especially when I am writing posts made up of a hodge podge of unrelated things. So random things it is. I made a pillow cover from leftover yarn for the sofa in my daughter's room. The front is crocheted and the back is knitted in blue.

I couldn't resist a little craft shopping at Daiso this week. Linen yarn and polka dot cotton fabric (70 X 100 cm). $2 each. Don't you think the yarn colours are so Japanese?

I took up the shoulder seams in my daughter's t-shirt by about 4 inches for a better fit.

What do you snack on at home? I like steamed sweet potato. My kids prefer fruity yoghurt pops.

The best lunch I had this week was (clockwise from top left) seasoned wakame, cha shu negei don, and age dashi tofu at Aoba Hokkaido Ramen. I shared this though, because I'm trying to lose some weight so that I can fit back into my clothes :)

Majullah Singapura*

2011-08-09T21:27:00.002+08:00

Singapore is 46 years old today. National Day is a public holiday, and here's a photo diary of my day. Our flag flying in the morning.

Brunch at Mongkok Dim Sum in Geylang. Clockwise from top left: char siew pau, beancurd skin rolls, cheong fun stuffed with char siew, siew mai.

Having a leisurely dim sum meal is a nice change from our usual hurried weekday breakfast. Clockwise from top left: fried carrot cake (which isn't carrot but radish. Not sure why it's called carrot cake), chicken mushroom rice and glutinous rice (inside the package wrapped in lotus leaf). We also had porridge with century egg, which we ate before we could take photos :)

Next stop was the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum. These soldiers are but a few of the thousands of soldiers that make up the amazing Terracotta Army in Xian.

The exhibition is on until 16 Oct 2011, so you have plenty of time to try and catch it.

For tea, mini scones from one of my favourite bakeries, Four Leaves at Liang Court.

Prepared dinner ... I washed (and photographed) spinach leaves while my husband made chicken stock with chicken thighs, wintermelon, soya beans, carrots and tomatoes. Don't you like my division of labour? Dinner was steamboat again. We've been having steamboat very often because it's so easy, healthy and delicious. And did I ever mention that I don't need to cook when we have steamboat? I LOVE steamboat!

The highlight of National Day is the National Day Parade. This year it was held at the Marina Bay Floating Platform. We watched the live streaming of NDP2011 on computer as we do not have tv. Watching the parade always makes me feel proud to be Singaporean. Majullah Singapura!
*Majullah Singapura means Onward Singapore in Malay and is also the title of our national anthem.

Sewing for myself

2011-07-29T22:54:00.000+08:00

Remember this red dress? I wore it out the first time to have dessert with my family at night,and I felt comfortable in it. The second time I wore it to work, I felt awkward the entire day. I realised it's because I don't normally wear dresses in this type of floral print to work. So I should wear the dress on days when I'm not going to work. But the problem is, when I am not at work, I hardly wear dresses. So ... I cut off the dress just under the bust and sewed back the bottom part of the skirt.

It feels much more "me" now and I'm sure I will get more wear out of this as a top. I wore it out the whole day, and that's why it looks so crumpled.

Lesson learnt. I should sew things that I would feel comfortable wearing. A good reference point would be to look at clothes that I already like to wear. When I am not at work, you will find me in jeans, which means that I can sew tops to wear with jeans. For work I gravitate towards simple neutrals. If I want to sew skirts and dresses then they should be in neutral colours like black, grey, taupe, beige and in work appropriate designs. There goes my dream of sewing pretty floral spring dresses. Who am I kidding anyway? Of the 10 or so dresses I have in my cupboard, none are floral, and only one is made from a paisley patterned fabric. After that bit of self analysis, I decided to abandon the idea of sewing this dress. Luckily I have not cut the fabric yet.

By the way, if you like re-fashioning, here's the link to an interesting DIY, for turning 2 large men's tshirts into a stylish dress with the coolest pockets.

A Good Week

2011-07-24T20:13:00.000+08:00

How was your week? I hope it was good. This week, I did find the time to tackle that pile of clothes that needed fixing. Among other things, I altered this tank dress for my daughter. The armholes were too big, the neckline was too wide and the skirt was too long.

I took in the shoulder seams and side seams of the top and shortened the skirt by 7cm. To salvage the too wide neckline, I sewed an inverted pleat like the one I did for my Sorbetto tank. There's something strange about this tank dress. Only the front neckline was too wide. After I folded 6 cm of fabric in the pleat, the front neckline is now the same width as the back. Apologies for the photo below, I'm not sure why it turned out so grainy. Isn't her mustard-coloured belt so cute with the heart-shaped buckle and holes?

This week, we installed a new cooker hood and hobb. My old hood and hobb retired after 21 years. My new hobb has 3 gas rings instead of 2, which would help me to multi-task when cooking.

The cooker hood and hobb is in what we call our "wet kitchen", which is at the back of the house, outside the house actually. We have a "dry kitchen" inside the house. The dry kitchen is where we have our refrigerator, oven and kitchen cupboards. I am very fortunate to have enough space at home for a separate wet kitchen for cooking. You see, Asian cooking involves a great deal of frying, which gives off a lot of oil vapour and smell and if you cook in the kitchen, in time all the kitchen cupboards, fridge, oven, everything will become oily and sticky. My wet kitchen is outdoors, so the oil and smell does not permeate the rest of the house. The piece of aluminium foil that we have stuck onto the wall behind the hobb is also to minimise having to soap the wall each time after cooking.

Another good thing this week was having steamboat for dinner mid-week, which I like because it is healthy and easy (meaning that I do not have to cook). Essentially what we do is to prepare a pot of stock, add whatever we want, wait for everything to cook, then eat. Seriously, it couldn't be easier. We don't even add any seasoning, except for a few drops of sesame oil to the soup. We eat steamboat with chilli sauce, ginger garlic or soya sauce dip. We added fishballs, chickenballs, assorted pieces of yong taufu (different types of tofu stuffed with fish paste), minced chicken and vegetables dumplings, siow pai chye (a green leafy vegetable) and some Korean instant udon. I didn't have to prepare anything. Everything was bought ready-made from the nearby wet market.

And today I indulged in a fresh doughnut from Carrefour for tea. I dusted my doughnut with extra icing sugar :) It tasted great with a cup of Milo. This is the life! Hope you and I will have another good week ahead!

I'm back!

2011-07-16T11:54:00.000+08:00

You know how it is like, after taking a long holiday, you have to catch up on all the work that you've missed. So I didn't have time to knit, sew or blog until now. Apologies too for accidentally disabling the comment function on my previous post. I was in a hurry to blog before getting back to work and must have clicked on something. I've enabled comments again :)

I've started the right front of my Maggie cardigan. But I have to rip and re-knit the completed left front, pictured above. The problem lies with the edge of the button band. Can you see it? Somehow, I had read the words, 'Working a picot on every alt WS row' as 'every WS row'. I was knitting double the picot edges called for in the pattern! Even though the button band looked crazy wavy, I somehow thought that it would be ironed out with blocking. Oh well, I'm going to enjoy the pleasure of knitting the left front all over again, afer I'm done with the right front.

Besides knitting, I hope to spend time with this pile of clothing that requires simple fixing, like shortening skirt hems and altering necklines and armholes to fit.

Other than kntting and sewing, I have food pics for you. My daughter and I had lunch at Ma Maison in Bugis Junction. She had Japanese curry chicken rice and I had sirloin steak. The steak was good (medium) even though they didn't ask me how I wanted it done and I forgot to tell them!

To end off our lunch I had a coffee and my daughter had chocolate ice cream.

The decor was unusual. On the wall behind our table, were pots and pans and a kitchen sink!

For the ladies who asked about the patterns from my earlier post, here are the details:

green cardi ISBN 978-4-529-04760-9 one of the Let's Knit Series

grey vest ISBN 4939459629646 It's a series - no2964?

Amazing trip

2011-06-26T16:33:00.004+08:00

I just got back from an amazing trip to the US! But you didn't know I was gone, because I scheduled 2 blogposts to be published while I was away :) We flew to Los Angeles via Tokyo. In Los Angeles, we stayed at Knott's Berry Farm. We had pancakes, omelettes, sausages and biscuits with gravy for breakfast at the Knott's chicken restaurant.

We also had Mrs Knotts' chicken takeout for dinner one night, but we didn't try their famous boysenberry pie.

We went to Disneyland, Sea World and Universal Studios Hollywood. We liked Universal Studios best. Our favourite rides were the Studio Tour and the Simpson Ride. We also took a trip to Arizona to see the magnificient Grand Canyon. We had clear skies which was good because the clouds cast shadows on the canyon, as you can see from the pic below.

We stayed 2 nights at Las Vegas. It was burning HOT there! Above 40C. In fact, even California was hotter than I thought. We came home very brown and tanned even though we used sunblock.

We took a trip to San Francisco. We stayed at the Sheraton in Pleasanton as it was much cheaper. It was much cooler in SF. We stopped at Lombard Street and the Palace of Fine Arts. We took the ferry ride out on the bay to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. We had clam chowder in sourdough bread at Fisherman's Wharf for lunch and went for dinner at the Grant Place restaurant in Chinatown.

On the way to San Francisco, we stopped by Yosemite Park. We saw some deer grazing and a woman running barefoot knee deep in grass. It is such a beautiful place. We saw many RVs on the road. It must be so fun to go on a road trip in your own RV.

On the way back from San Francisco, we spent the morning driving down the 17 mile drive along Pebble Beach . It was nice and cold and the beach is gorgeous. We stopped at Bird Rock to see the birds and sea lions. We could hear the sea lions barking. Then we had the best blueberry muffins and hot chocolate with cream at the Market at The Lodge at Pebble Beach. The next time I see blueberries at the supermarket, I'm going to get some and bake my own blueberry muffins.

This is my fave picture from the trip. The foggy mist in the distance at the Lodge at Pebble Beach has a mysterious look.

I am still recovering from jet lag and have work to catch up on in the next few days, so give me some time and I will reply to your comments as soon as I can.

P.S. Note for Lap Dog Knits: My apologies, I couldn't get back to you. Blogger is not letting me comment on your blog again :(

Back to cardis

2011-06-23T20:35:00.000+08:00

I am still going to knit more cardis, with the ocassional pullover/sweater/jumper thrown in :) So I'm thinking about the next cardigan to knit. I like to dream about possible projects, even though I usually don't end up knitting them all.

I like the rounded drop shoulders and all that moss stitch in this simple green cardi. I have some green linen katia papiro yarn that should be the right gauge for this.

This Cardi-vest has different lace patterns on the shoulder, bodice and hem. I like the cap sleeves, the bit of lace at the neckline and the 4 buttons closure. There's some grey Japanese cotton yarn in the stash that might be suitable gauge for this.

This last one is a crochet vest. I love the styling: the huge flowers in her hair, the white blouse and brown polka dot pants!! and the sweet vintage wallpaper in the background. Maybe I'll crochet this in greenish RYC cashcotton 4 ply.

Right now, I'm leaning mostly towards the green cardi because it looks like something I wear a lot.

Never say never

2011-06-17T19:27:00.000+08:00

I have been knitting away on my Maggie cardigan. The back and the left front are done. Hmm, I just realised that the last 2 cardis I have knitted; Dawn, Capri and now Maggie, are all in this similar shade of bright pink.

I have been telling myself that I wasn't ging to knit anymore pullover sweaters. For various reasons. One of which is that as I get older, sweaters don't look so flattering on me anymore. I was going to stick to knitting cardigans. Then I see this vintage Spring in jumper. While you are at Liz's blog, do take a look at her beautiful Caledonia jumper.

I like everything about this Spring In jumper. First of all, it's knit in my favourite 4 ply yarn. I'll substitute cotton for wool. Then there's all the charming design details: the wide rib bodice, the ribbing at the shoulders & sleeves and that chic little shawl collar. It's not called a "smart" sweater for nothing. I have printed out the pattern and read through it. I never read through an entire pattern before knitting. But since this is a vintage pattern, I thought I should read it first. The instructions are surprisingly short, clear and easy to understood. There's short row shaping at the shawl collar and some seaming is needed to attach the ribbed shoulder to the bodice. Other than that, it's quite a straightfoward knit. It comes only in one size though. Fortunately for me, it's my size! But if you want to knit it in another size, it doesn't seem that difficult to make adjustments if you are a seasoned knitter.

Sunglasses holder

2011-06-11T16:51:00.001+08:00

My daughter and I have sunglasses from Forever 21 that needed some sort of bag or holder. My daughter chose this leftover brown polka dot fabric to go with her polka dot sunnies. I lined the holder with the same fabric to give it more body. It looked kind of plain so I added a strip of off-white lace from Daiso.

Mine is made from leftover rabbit/mouse fabric. We're all ready for sunny weather now.

By the way, I cannot post comments on some Blogger blogs. Those comment boxes that have an option for Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, AIM and Open ID. My blogger comment option just doesn't work and it keeps directing me to the Blogger log in page even though I'm already logged in. I can't even comment anonymously. Blogger, I hope you fix this soon.

Sorbetto

2011-06-05T13:05:00.000+08:00

Sorbetto jumped the queue. The dress I was going to sew, will have to wait.

I saw Casey's Sorbetto and decided to make mine with an inverted pleat too. You see, I am 2 sizes smaller on top than below, and I was having a hard time deciding which size to cut. When I saw Casey's version, I realised that it would solve my problem perfectly. I could choose my bust size and the open part of the pleat would give me more than enough ease at the hips. Don't you love it when solutions present themsleves like this? I chose size 4 and added 1.5 inches to the length as I like my tank tops longer.

This bright pink cotton lawn in my stash was just enough for this top. I like it when a pattern uses up my fabric nicely and doesn't leave me with leftovers that are too small for anything yet are too large to throw away.

I learned two new things about sewing from this pattern. It was stated in the instructions that the side seams was the "usual 5/8 inch". I wondered why 5/8 inch was usual. I found out when I started sewing. There was a line on my sewing machine that was exactly 5/8 inch from the needle. My goodness! I didn't notice it before. It made sewing so easy! Second thing I learned was to staystitch curved seams before sewing. This is especially useful for very fine fabrics.

Can you tell that I like my Sorbetto tank top very much?

Abyssal

2011-06-01T21:18:00.001+08:00

Abyssal is my third knit/crochet FO for the year. I like its curved shape.

I should have blocked it ages ago. I was going to use my ironing board but my ironing room plasterbaord ceiling fell because of water seepage from the upstairs bathroom and there was repair work going on in the bathroom upstairs and the ceiling repairs. And since the construction people were here, my husband decided that we might as well paint the ground floor, which has a 3 storey high skylight that required scaffolding. You can imagine the house was in a dusty mess and it was not a good time to block anything. Now that all the work has been done and the house has returned to normal, I managed to block Abyssal on the ironing board.

I knitted Abyssal out of the last 2 balls of green Katia Austral in my stash. I made a mistake somewhere along the way while doing the short rows because I had more stitches left on one side than the other when I ended the short rows, but I coudn't find where I had made the mistake and it didn't look that lop-sided to me, so I just cast off and declared it done.

My Abyssal is more scarf than shawl size. Although I like how it looks like draped over the shoulders, it can also be worn wrapped around the neck, with the ends tucked out of sight, or hanging free.

After knitting Abyssal, I've realised how curved shawls are made. You knit a lacey edge pattern up to the number of repeats to get your desired length. Then you knit short rows in stockinette or garter to get that nice curve. I'm thinking of knitting another curved shawl with a lace edge pattern from one of my lace pattern books. That is, if I don't get distracted by all the other lovely designs out there that I want to knit!

what I'm doing this weekend

2011-05-28T22:27:00.000+08:00

I have not been able to sew for the last 2 weeks as there was repair and painting work going on in my house and there was no place for me to sew. I am so glad that everything's back to normal now and I can use my dining table once again to cut my fabric.

This is going to be a dress for me and the pattern is from an old issue of Cotton Friend (summer 2010 Vol 35). I am making the dress a little shorter, aiming for it to fall just below my knees.

I am also finally blocking my Abyssal scarf. I don't have a suitable place to block it, so I had to fold it in half lengthwise and block it on my ironing board. I am wet blocking only the curved edge.

By the way, I come across 2 designs that I like very much. The Chelsea Skirt is a knit pattern. I like the contrast lace peeking out from under the skirt. The Sorbetto tank top is a sewing pattern from Colette. I think Sorbetto, sewn in a silky fabric, would look appropriate for work.

I also wanted to show you these Hokkaido steamed cupcakes from Mushiya Steamers at Ion Food Hall. We tried the ichigo milk (the one with the frosting at the bottom) and the ichigo (the one with strawberry jam on the extreme left of the pic). They are not your usual buttery cupcakes. Their texture is more like Chinese steamed rice cake (fatt koh or huat kueh). The cupcakes on the right even look like fatt koh, with the cracked spongey top. They tasted quite bland, barely sweet, just like fatt koh, but what I liked was the unexpected dollop of cream cheese inside the cupcake.

Hope you are having a great weekend too!

new knits

2011-05-24T19:53:00.000+08:00

I started 2 new knits. The first is a scarf. It's Jana's pattern, so aptly called 'Stairway'. I am using Rowan tapestry yarn that has been frogged so many times because the patterns that I tried just didn't work for the yarn. I'm glad that I have finally found a pattern that works for this stripey yarn.

I like the step edges and the fact that it looks like it is knitted on the bias (which it is not). It's quite addictive knitting too.

I also started a cardigan, Maggie, a Kim Hargreaves pattern. I am knitting it in Schaffhauser Naturale wool cotton, stash yarn from long ago. If I'm not mistaken, I bought the yarn from a local flower shop :) The peplum is not knit in the usual way from bottom up. Instead it is knit in garter stitch from side to side. The body of the cardi is then knit by picking up stitches from the straight long edge. If you look at the right side of the pic, you can see that there is some shaping done by using short rows. Note: I did the short rows following these instructions. There is some ruffling on the bottom edge of the peplum achieved by knitting a picot edge. I am not particularly fond of the picot edge ruffle but I think it will look better than the usual garter edge, so I'm going with it.

I spent the weekend updating my old projects on ravelry. It took me many hours but I'm glad that I have finally done it. If you want to add me on ravelry, I'm "opportunityknits".

I still knit

2011-05-15T12:40:00.003+08:00

I have 2 piles of knitting to show you. Evidence that I still knit :) First pile is the finished pieces of my peach sweater. It was finished more than a week ago and I think it will probably continue to sit in this pile for awhile. I take ages to seam up my sweater pieces. Not sure why, but I tend to procrastinate on seaming.

Updated to add: Here's an old pic that I took last year of the back of the peach sweater.

Next pile is the finished pieces of my Capri cardi. Time to choose the next cardigan to knit!

sewing for bunny

2011-05-08T14:36:00.001+08:00

I found someone else to sew for. I made new clothes for my daughter's bunny, from fabric remnants. This pinafore is fabric leftover from her knot shorts.

And this top and skirt. The top is fabric leftover from a skirt that I sewed years ago. The skirt is made out of fabric leftover from a pair of last year's shorts.

Lunch was steak, pasta with grilled dory fillet, clubhouse sandwiches, peach cake with custard.

Cafe latte and capuccino.

Treats :)

Wishing you a Happy Mother's Day!

knot shorts!

2011-05-02T09:42:00.003+08:00

I sewed something yesterday, but it wasn't anything for myself. I made shorts again for my daughter. It's a pair of knot shorts. I saw it on Thursday and just had to make it! It's a free pattern from Elsie Marley, part of Grosgrain's free pattern month.

I followed Elsie Marley's instructions. Err ... confession ... I didn't follow them closely enough and made a mistake. I sewed the 2 front pieces together instead of sewing the front to the back. Luckily I could unpick and sew again.

I like the knot detail. I used navy polka dot cotton for the shorts and leftover black linen for the lining.

If you are thinking of sewing this, it might be a good idea to use the suggested 4 inch inseam. I think my usual 5 inch inseam is too long. In addition, the choice of fabric is quite important. The fabric should be soft because the knot part needs to be lined, and there is a double layer of fabric at the bottom part of these shorts. The only additional thing I did was to slip-stitch the lining to the shorts.

By the way, I realised that I had paper at home that is perfect for drawing my sewing patterns. It's a huge roll of drawing paper from my son's Ikea chalkboard and easel :) You can also see that I do not have professional tools. I use a regular school ruler, pencil and craft scissors from the stationery store, and the air-cond remote serves as paper weight :)

My daughter made bento box dinner again. Crispy fried chicken cutlet, rice with plum flakes, potato and carrot salad and chicken soup.

Can you see the little teddy bear cookies and cadbury's choc eggs?

Hope you had a good weekend. I'm still on holiday because it's a public holiday (Labour Day) today.

easter tea and dress patterns

2011-04-27T21:17:00.001+08:00

My daughter and I managed to squeeze in one more day out before her new school semester started again this week. We went back to TCC for tea.

We had the tea set. There were 2 types of scones, golden raisins and choclate chips. Because it was easter, chocolate eggs were also included in the set. They looked too good to eat, but of course we ate them. The coffee was good. After all, they are The Coffee Connoisseur :)

After that we walked around and bought cardigans at New Look. Mine's oatmeal-coloured and hers is sort of deep salmon? I wouldn't have wandered into that shop if I hadn't been with my daughter. It's nice to have my very own cute girlfriend to go shopping with. Someone to look at girl stuff together, and ooh and aah over cute stationery, nail polish and hairbows. You know, having kids gives me a chance to re-live my younger days :)

I was busy last week, so I hardly got any kntting done. Now I'm hoping to catch up with my knitting and do some sewing as well. Here are some sewing patterns that I have recently added to my collection. I should stop collecting sewing patterns until I've sewed up a storm.

This pic above shows 3 dresses sewn from the same pattern and styled in different ways. I like how it can be dressed up or down with a change of shoes and accessories.

I like these dresses above, they look appropriate for work. Plus, they are slip on dresses, no zippers involved. I am also drawn to that huge bow tunic, although I'm not bold enough to wear such a big bow.

The 2 dresses in the top row of the pic above are also work appropriate and seem easy to sew. I do however, have a slight reservation about the gathers on the dress on the left. The 2 dresses below look very comfortable and wearable. In the right fabric, I think they might look work appropriate too.

bento

2011-04-13T22:03:00.001+08:00

My daughter made bento for dinner tonight. This is her bento. The colourful teeny tiny boxes are from Daiso.

1 strawberries, mesclun salad with grapes

2 yakitori chicken balls, mashed egg and carrot mayo-mustard salad

3 rice with plum flakes

4 chicken with garlic-ginger dip, more salad with strawberries

This is her brother's bento. She ran out of colourful boxes so she used a white plastic food box. It is less photogenic than its colourful counterparts.

To keep the food separate, she used aluminiun liners and thick cupcake liners from Daiso. We like the kitchen, baking and crockery section at Daiso.

I made the garlic-ginger dip for the chicken, by modifying this recipe with ingredients that I had, and blending them with my Bamix. I am noting down my ingredients here for future reference.
2 pieces of old ginger, chopped (each about 3 inches long)
1/2 garlic bulb
50 ml sesame oil
2 Tbsp canola oil
2 Tbsp mirin
1 tsp salt
This was enough to make a generous serving, for 8 people. So we have a bowl of this dip leftover in the fridge for dinner some other time. It tasted as good as the ginger dip for the Samsui chicken at Soup Restaurant. Yum!

Every Day Dress No 14

2011-04-11T21:48:00.001+08:00

I finally completed the last item on this list of things I wanted to do.

Pattern: Dress no.14 from the Every Day book. This is the 3rd pattern I've sewed from this book. This is how I wore it when I went for late night dessert at Liang Seah Street.

As you can see from the photo below, I left out the zipper so it's a pull on dress. The part of the dress I like best is the hand-sewing I did on the inside. I hand-sewed the bias tape at the armhole on the inside of the dress, hand-tacked down the facing and hemmed the skirt by hand as well.

projects roundup

2011-04-05T19:22:00.012+08:00

Thought it's time for a round-up of my wips. Started sewing my dress. This will take some time as I am having a busy week. So I am sewing this one little seam at a time, in between doing everything else.

Abyssal is done. Undecided whether to block it. Maybe just block the edging? I don't want to lose the springy-ness of the garter stitches :)

Back of Capri is done. Knitting the left front now. This is also going slowly. Capri is the project I knit in between blog reading.

Library books. Luxury bedtime browsing. There's a cute cardi pattern in Louisa Harding's, Knitting Little Luxuries.

I have another wip in my office. I have one sleeve left of that sweater to knit. That one is also taking forever :) There's another new scarf that I just started but I will probably unravel it because it is a self striping yarn and it is pooling weirdly at both ends of the scarf. I am short of a project to knit on my daily train ride home. That was Abyssal because it was small and hence, portable and really mindless knitting too. Hmm ... looks like it's time to start another project, right?

girls afternoon out that ended in fabric

2011-04-02T14:19:00.000+08:00

My daughter and I spent an afternoon exploring Arab Street and Haji Lane. Pictured below is Arab Street. Haji Lane is much more quaint as the road is incredibly narrow but I forgot to take a photo.

We started with a bite at Fika, a Swedish restaurant.

Love the all-white decor (note the scallopy shelf edges) above, and the light fixtures and blackboard, below.

Not sure why, but we had dessert first, in the form of a slice of cheesecake, which we shared.

Followed by mushroom and tomato cream soup.

Finished off with grilled chicken.

Haji Lane is full of small shops, mostly clothes and cute, crafty knick knacks. Things were on the pricey side though, but we managed to find this pastel belt at a good price.

Arab Street, as usual, was a treasure trove of pretty fabrics, trims and beads. We were very restrained and brought home only 2 fabrics from Rania Silk House. The blue floral print is from the 30's Collection by Atsuko Matsuyama and looks sort of Cath Kidston-ish. It is likely to become a pair of shorts. The cat fabric is from Sevenberry, also made in Japan, and is earmarked for some kind of cropped top. Both are for my daughter.

knit a long

2011-03-29T19:00:00.003+08:00

I have something new on my needles. I'm knitting the Abyssal shawl / scarf in a knitalong with Beth! I brought it out for some caramel hot chocolate, which probably wasn't such a good idea because I got distracted and made some mistakes and had to rip and restart :)

I'm knitting the smaller version with Katia Austral yarn and 5 mm needles. In the original pattern, the short rows are done in stockinette but when I checked Ravelry, I saw an Abyssal done in garter stitch, so I decided to switch to garter instead.

I took a photo to show you the lace edge up close but now that I have uploaded the photo I realise that you can't see the lace at all. There are 254 stitches squeezed on the needles and I hadn't spread it out sufficiently. But believe me, there are yarnover holes in there :) Did you notice that my photos today are larger than before? That's because I finally upgraded my blogger to the newer version and the photos can be re-sized.

By the way, just a little update on my Noro cardi. I brought it to wear in my office, as the airconditioning tends to be too cold. So far so good, it gives me the right amount of warmth and doesn't feel as itchy as I had feared.

Date

2011-03-14T20:15:00.000+08:00

Over the weekend, my kids were at camp so my husband and I went on a date. This is what I wore. The off-white linen tunic and the fabric flower (from leftover fabric) are self-made. The pale pink shrug is borrowed from my daughter and the necklace is from Forever 21. This outfit made me feel happy because I was wearing things that I had made. It is a very different look from my usual weekend uniform of tshirt and jeans. I wish that I would take the effort to dress differently more often. And it doesn't really require a lot of effort. It can be achieved by just taking a few minutes to plan what to wear the next day, so that I don't end up throwing on my usual tshirt in a rush. But the difficult part is remembering to think ahead. I guess I need to do it often enough for it to become an effortless habit.

We went to an art exhibition (part of the Singapore Biennale 2011) at the Old Kallang Airport. It was a rare opportunity to step inside the walls of this old historic building, which has not been open to the public for more than 5 decades.

There were many interesting art installations housed in various rooms in the building, but I only took one solitary photo of this one in the foyer. Those "rolls" of paper are over 2 storeys high. Unfortunately I forgot to take note of the name of the artist. I enjoyed the exhibition very much and after that, it made me look differently at the things around me. Art is there in my everyday life, if only I looked.

I took a photo of the front of the Old Kallang Airport building (1937-1955). The art deco look is so charming, I hope that they will put the building to good use instead of leaving it closed to the public. You know, along the lines of, "we should enjoy the special things and not save them just for special ocassions"?

* Thoughts and prayers for the people of Japan *

Noro cardi

2011-03-10T22:10:00.003+08:00

My first cardigan for 2011. What I do like about this cardi is the rustic look of the Noro Silk Garden and the muted colours.

I finished the knitting last year but was not motivated to seam it up because the yarn felt like string and the knitted pieces looked kind of stiff and bulky. Finally out of guilt, and because my daughter commented that I seem to like to start new projects and never get round to finishing them, I buckled down to seam it up.

I used my favourite crochet edging pattern.

The cardi relaxed and softened up quite a bit after a rinse in water and detergent. It's not butter soft, but at least it's no longer stiff. I managed to block the cardi to the dimensions given in the pattern. Japanese patterns provide very detailed dimensions.

Unfortunately, the sleeves were a good 8 cm longer than the pattern's dimensions. Oops, apparently the knitting had not only softened up, it had also s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d. There was nothing to do but wait for it to dry and hope for the best. Thankfully the sleeve length turned out to be just right.

You know, I have a sneaky feeling about this cardi. I suspect that it is going to grow and stretch over time as I wear it. I also think it's going to felt a bit everytime I wash it :(

another weekend in pics

2011-03-07T20:00:00.000+08:00

My daughter and I finally managed to have our girls' day out. We had lunch. I had the seafood rice set and she had a yakitori chicken pasta at student price. Lunch was followed by a movie, Black Swan.

My daughter baked choc chip cookies for her friend's birthday and wrapped them up in a pretty little bag.

Sunday night dinner at KimDeli. A newfound place, good food, great price! We had bibimbap and saba fish.

I have an FO to show you soon. It is blocking right now :)

glimpses of my weekend

2011-02-27T16:29:00.029+08:00

My son and his new bike.

A new project. Capri from Rowan 43. Rowan calmer in a shade that goes by the pretty name of "blush".

Cardigan crush. Current fave is this one in the yummiest caramel colour.

Out for lunch. My daughter's new shoes. She's wearing one of the skirts I sewed for her last year.

green bag and misc

2011-02-22T21:35:00.002+08:00

I had wanted to crochet this bag in green yarn ever since I first saw it in the book. Butterfly cotton does not come in many colours, but I'm so glad that they had this shade of green. I like using Butterfly yarn for making bags because it is sturdy and has a slight sheen.

Besides the colour, I was also drawn to the shell stitch of the pattern. It is a compact stitch that would make a dense fabric, suitable for a bag. The only snag is that the stitch pattern seems to spiral to the right as it goes upwards. You can see the sprial in the picture below. But it's ok, I'm not too disturbed about it :) By the way, in my haste to line the bag, I forgot to block it.

Initially I was going to line the bag with a green fabric, but then I realised that would be too matchy-matchy. So I used fabric leftover from this top instead. I made 2 pockets, one on each side for keeping odds and ends. I'm not sure of the best way of attaching the lining to the bag. As usual, when in doubt, I hand-sewed it with tiny stitches. I hope it will be sturdy enough.

Since I was taking photos, I took one of what I was wearing. I have been trying not to dress matchy-matchy. Matchy-matchy used to be my mantra. Now I'm trying to dress out of my box and think things like beige with turquoise. The good thing about this is that my wardrobe is suddenly way bigger than before, because my options are multiplied and it is kind of fun to experiment with different ways of wearing the same old things.

I also took a close up of the lace cutout on the beige cardigan that I was wearing. Isn't it pretty? You can see from the label that it's from a shop called Stradivarius that opened here in Ion Orchard. Stradivarius is owned by Inditex (a Spanish fashion group) and they've brought in some of my new favourite shops like Zara, Bershka, Pull and Bear and Massimo Dutti.

And before I go, I have to tell you about my latest snack indulgence: Werther's chocolate-covered soft caramel.

By the way, I just realised that my blog has 2 followers. Big "hi" to Kikii and A Frog Named Purl! So I decided to "activate" the followers feature. Feel free to follow my blog! I also realised I have been stumbled upon. I'm not sure what it means but I hope it is good :) And, I love it that I've been hearted!

I want

2011-02-17T18:37:00.006+08:00

I want to sew myself a spring dress after I saw this cute dress. The design is the dress shown in the photo below. I'm using this Japanese print cotton fabric.

I want to finish my crochet bag. I managed to buy another skein of Butterfly cotton to finish the bag. Luckily for me it's the same dyelot, even though I bought my earlier skein something like 2 years ago. Gosh I haven't bought yarn for so long that I have forgotten how expensive it can be. The Butterfly cotton cost me S$18! Need to sew in all the ends, attach the linng and handles.

I want to finish my Noro cardi. The pieces are all seamed up and the sleeve edging is done already. What's left is to crochet 228 sc all around the cardi to set up the first row for the edging.

I'm also craving raisin scones with strawberry jam. I'm looking forward to my next girls' day out with my daughter. We want to try a new cafe and explore a shopping mall that is new to us.

bag lining repair

2011-02-13T15:36:00.004+08:00

My daughter 's cute new bag had a green lining that was so flimsy that it was falling apart before she even used it. In the photo below, you can see how it has already come apart at the zipper seam. I found some leftover black satin to replace the lining.

Before: The old lining below had a zippered pocket. The construction seemed quite simple, so I decided to replicate it.

After: I re-used the the zipper to make the pocket in the new bag lining below. This is the first zippered pocket I have sewn :) It isn't perfectly done but I am happy enough with it.

When I removed the lining, the bag zipper had come off as well. I wasn't sure how to put it back together. So I decided to sew the lining to the bag first. Then re-attach the zipper. I took a closer look at one of my zipper bags and noticed that the raw edge of the zipper is tucked and sewn in. I followed that little trick.

I'm quite pleased with how it back came together. Sewing the zippers wasn't as traumatic as I had imagined and I didn't have to use the zipper foot!

It feels good to be able to fix things like this :)

Gong Xi Fa Cai

2011-02-08T21:14:00.005+08:00

Gong Xi Fa Cai - wishing you all a properous year! Today is the 6th day of the Chinese New Year. On new year's eve, we had the traditional reunion dinner with my husband's side of the family at our house. Here's a photo of the food at the kid's table. You can catch a glimpse of my youngest niece in the photo below, waiting for the steamboat to cook.

Steamboat is really just a big pot of soup to which we added meat, seafood mushrooms, tofu and vegetables. The food is cooked at the table itself, so it's easy.

On the first day of the new year, we had dinner with my side of the family at my mum's house. We started with "yusheng" (below) which is an auspicious dish eaten only during new year. It is a salad of grated carrots, radish and cucumber topped with raw fish, crispy bits, spices and sauces. We used raw salmon, although I prefer abalone. Before eating, everyone will gather round to toss the ingredients with our chopsticks and utter auspicious wishes for the year. Wishes of good health, good progress in school, promotion at work etc, sort of like a toast galore. And the higher you toss the yusheng, the better the wishes :) The kids love tossing the yusheng and making a huge mess.

My mum will always cook our (my) favourite dishes. Nonya curry chicken with lots of liver and gizzard. She cooks it mildly hot so that the kids can enjoy it too.

A vegetarian dish consisting of different types of mushrooms (button mushrooms, straw mushrooms and abalone mushrooms) and napa cabbage cooked in fermented beancurd. Do you see the strands of black threads that look like hair? It's a dried vegetable called "fa cai" and signifies prosperity. It is an auspicious delicacy eaten at new year.

This last dish is a favourite with the kids. It is fried chicken that has been marinated in kunyit powder, also known as tumeric powder. It is fried with lots of sliced garlic and curry leaves. This dish has to be handled with care during cooking as the tumeric will stain everything yellow, from your fingers, to the plastic utensils and kitchen counter top. Next year I will wear plastic gloves :) to cook this dish.

I also started a bit of knitting during the 4 days of CNY holiday. Can you guess what I'm knitting? haha I'm knitting washcloths!

Love the moss stitch.

I did it!

2010-11-27T12:29:00.003+08:00

My daughter bought a school tshirt. It was a size S but it was too big at the shoulders and too long for her. She asked if I could fix it. I got really ambitious and managed to convince her to let me cut up her brand new tshirt :) I cut off the sleeves and adjusted the armhole higher up the shoulder seam and re-sized sleeve cap following one of her fave tshirts. I also took in the sides and re-shaped it like her fave tshirt which has a gentle girl-cut waistline.

I managed to put it back together!!

I had trouble hemming the bottom of the tshirt. In the end, I used this tape and sewed it over the raw edge of the hem.

I sewed 2 rows of stitching to mimic the 2 needle seam of the original hem.

Everytime she wears this tshirt, I'm going to smile to myself. I did it! I re-sized her tshirt!

stripey socks for me

2010-11-12T11:22:00.002+08:00

I started these socks in Jan 2008, so it took me only about 23 months to finish them. I picked them up again last month. It was fun getting back to sock knitting. Loved the mindless stockinette, even knitted some rows in the car, which is something that I haven't done in ages.

Yarn: Online Supersocke 100, colour - Sierra, 100g 420m
Needle size: Tulip bamboo 2.25mm
Pattern: Wendy's toe up sock

Note to self: I needed a stretchy bind off to fit my calves. Bound off using this method: knit 2 stitches, then knit both through the back loop, knit another stitch, then knit both through the back loop. Knit the k stitches and purl the p stitches.

I almost got the stripes to match except for this bit at the heel.

My son and I baked these cupcakes for his sunday school class barbeque last week. There were only a few boys and teachers so I thought that there would be leftovers but the boys ate up all 28 cupcakes! Boys have big appetites :)

Noro cardi update

2010-10-24T22:17:00.001+08:00

The last couple of weeks were swallowed up by work and stuff that crops up in life. I also got a little bit depressed over the loss of my sewing machine bobbin case. I looked all over the house but couldn't find it. I think I might have thrown it away by mistake when I threw away the leftover scraps of fabric from my last sewing project. But all is well now because I managed to order a replacement bobbin case from a Singer dealer nearby and she says I can collect it next week. Happiness!

Although I couldn't sew a stitch, I have been knitting. The Noro lacey cardi knitted up real fast. After I finished the right front piece, I decided to knit up the left front before I forgot what these scribbled numbers meant :) And the same thing for the sleeves as well. All that's left is the seaming and the crochet edging. This yarn sure goes a long way. I still have 2 balls left to crochet the edging. I usually seam the pieces together before blocking but this time I'm going to block the pieces before seaming. I wonder if that's going to affect the crochet edging which will not be blocked. I need to look for some place to block the pieces. I used to block my knitting on my kid's old baby mattress. But the mattress has been thrown away, so I need to think of an alternative.

Since I don't have anymore knitting pictures, I'll show you the choc chip cookies my daughter baked today. My house smells like Famous Amos now :)

I had to ...

2010-09-29T17:42:00.004+08:00

I had to start a new project. I had nothing to knit. My green crochet bag is stalled because I ran out of yarn. I won't have time to go the the yarn shop till next week at the earliest. And, I can't knit my peach sweater either because I brought it to the office, thinking that I could knit a few rows during lunch. Guess what? I never seem to have time to knit on the days when I lunch in my office, because that's when I am busy trying to catch up on some work. It has been sitting on the floor under my desk for weeks and I keep forgetting to bring it home. So, you see, I had to start a new project to knit at home.

This new knit is a lacy cardigan from a Japanese RichMore magazine pattern. I am knitting with Noro silk garden that I bought years ago in Hong Kong. Gauge is spot on and I think I will have just about enough yarn. Knitting with Noro silk garden is a bit like knitting with string. Reminds me of knitting with Jaeger trinity yarn, excpet that silk garden is thicker than trinity. And, I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but I feel like I'm breathing in fluff or something and my throat gets kind of dry.

Does knitting make you hungry? Well, I got hungry and I had to fix myself a snack between meals! Liver pate topped with an egg. Yum! I added black grapes to make it look more healthy.

Since I am showing you food pics, here's last week's dinner. Spaghetti with capsicum and button mushrooms in leftover bulgogi sauce and teriyaki chicken on the side.

We make a sauce with whatever is on hand, from rummaging in the fridge while the spaghetti is cooking. The trick for us is to add lots of chopped garlic. Have I mentioned before that we love garlic? Yum!

Hope you are having a good week, I am looking forward to catching the next episode of my current favourite Korean drama! an yeong haseyo!

Edited to add: Fall Knitty 2010 is out! The Brambles hat and Ringwood gloves are my faves. What's yours?

Saturday lunch

2010-09-25T13:05:00.001+08:00

Our typical Saturday is filled with activities even though there is no school or work. We also tend to have a hearty Saturday breakfast. So lunch is usually light. If we were at the Fairprice supermarket in the morning, we might buy some takeaway handrolls, sushi and sashimi.

Sometimes I will cook some kon-low mee with omelette strips and heat up some Campbell's mushroom soup. My kids love to add black pepper and furikake to their noodles and soup. By the way, the kon-low mee is just instant ramen, tossed in dark soya sauce, light soya sauce and sesame oil.

By the way, you may have heard that Bloglines is closing as of 1 Oct. Do you know where I can continue to be notified of your new blog posts via feed updates? I am totally clueless about such things, so your help will be very much appreciated :)

green and easy

2010-09-09T19:57:00.001+08:00

I started something easy and repetitive, no need to count rows. A simple shell stitch.

I'm using Butterfly Super 10 cotton. My favourite cotton yarn for crocheting a bag. It makes a nice firm fabric. Wondering if I should line it. I like green, even though I don't wear much of it.

I've been nursing a nasty sore throat and cough, but I'm on the mend. Looking forward to my long weekend as tomorrow is a public holiday. Have a good weekend!

Altered

2010-09-06T11:19:00.002+08:00

Some of my clothes don't fit very well. It took me a long time to realise that I could fix the fit (sometimes).

This tshirt had a neckline that was a tad too wide. Whenever I wore it, I was always tugging and checking if my bra strap showed. I needed to make that neckline a bit smaller. When I saw these ruffled tshirts that are all the rage now, I thought of adding a ruffle to the neckline. But I am too lazy to make a long strip of ruffles. So I settled for an easier alternative: this white cotton edging. It is not that wide, just enough to prevent bra strap exposure. I hand-stitched it on with tiny stitches. I love to stitch by hand. It is neater than machine sewing because it can be invisible. Now I don't have to tug anymore and it cost me nothing because the edging was some leftover sitting in my basket of odds and ends. Don't you just like it when things can be fixed so simply?

Next is this tunic (below) that was too big for me but I bought it anyway because I loved the colour, the lace at the neckline and the floaty light fabric with crinkly pleats. Each time I wore it though, I felt frumpy because it was too loose, too long and the armhole was too big. It was essentially a shapeless sack albeit a floaty lacey sack ... see the "before" pic below. But I couldn't bear to give it away. Last month, I found a hole in the net lace at the shoulder. I had to think of how to fix that hole before it grew bigger.

I sewed the shoulder seam up, just below the tear. That way the net wouldn't unravel anymore. It also gave a smaller armhole. While I was at it, I sewed one row of shirring elastic under the bust, which drew in the gathers.

It fits better now, no more frumpy me. I have too many ideas brimming in my head for altering my clothes to fit better or look better. If only I had as much time to get myself organised enough to get them done.

roadside fruit stall

2010-09-03T23:12:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, after dinner, we drive 15 minutes out to the roadside durian stall to have durian. These roadside durian stalls are open way into the night.

The sign on the wall with the 3 Chinese characters gives the name of the king of durians, the "mau san wang".

The durian is a thorny fruit. You can see how sharp the thorns are in the pic below. To open it, one uses a knife to pry open one of the sections at the bottom. Then you have to use your hands to pull apart the shell and then press the sides open completely.

Inside is the durian fruit. It is creamy and rich, very filling. Where durian is concerned there are two camps. Those who love it (my son) and those who don't (my daughter). I took only one photo because my husband and son were waiting to eat the durians. Of course, once we started eating I couldn't take any more photos. You hold the durian fruit in your hand to eat and it gets messy, the finger licking type of messy. By the way, this durian stall has tables and stools for customers to sit and eat the fruit there, with a sink for you to wash your hands after. There are advantages to eating the fruit there rather than bringing it home. The durian is very fragrant to some and pungent, to put it mildly, to others. So if we drive it home in the car, the car will need to be aired to get rid of the smell. No to mention that when we dispose of the shells and seeds in our dustbin, the smell lingers for days in the bin. Haha, we can always tell when our neighbours had durian, probably the whole neighbourhood knows!

This durian stall also sells local fruits. The fruit above is the duku langsat. Very nice and sweet. They are quite small in size and rather addictive, so when you start eating them, it's quite difficult to stop.

This is the dragon fruit. It looks very exotic but it is actually quite tasteless (bland).

These are starfruit. If you cut them crosswise, you will see the star shape. My family is not particularly fond of starfruits.

The red hairy fruits on the left are rambutans. They are very sweet. The lumpy green fruit on the right is the chempedak. Also very sweet and nice.

The green fruit at the top row left, that is wrapped in clingfoil is the pomelo. Sort of like a sweet version of grapefruit. On the right of the second row are the custard apples, a favorite of mine. I used to have a custard apple tree outside my house but it was uprooted when they upgraded my drainage system last year. At the bottom row are 2 different types of mangoes. The reddish green ones on the left are more fragrant but for taste, I prefer the yellow ones on the right. We love it when mangoes are in season. The easiest way to eat a mango is to slice it in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon.

Hope you enjoyed the visit with me to this roadside fruit stall.

What I wore

2010-08-31T19:38:00.001+08:00

I hardly think about what to wear everyday. I usually throw together something black for work and some tshirt and jeans on weekends. Last month I saw myself in some photos and realised that I hardly looked at myself. That started me thinking that if I keep a log of what I wear, I might put a bit more thought into it and hopefully, dress a bit better with what I have. Here's last week's edition.

Thursday (left)
Since I am a knitter, I thought I should start off with a handknit item. This is the first time I wore my Dawn cardi since I finished it earlier this year. Haha look at my awkward pose :)
Friday (right)
I made the effort to accessorise with a chain belt and a necklace. I don't normally tuck in my tshirts, but I thought I would give it a try. Must say that it looks more pulled together than if I wore the tshirt tucked out. The bag is one which I carry every day. I am too lazy to change bags. I think I am getting the hang of how to stand.

Saturday (left)
Another handknit sweater. Two handknit sweaters in a week! I haven't worn my handknits for so long, it's nice to take them out for some air.
Sunday (right)
What I wore to church. The tshirt has lace ruffles at the neckline and the cropped cardi is lace too. This is dressier than normal for me. I go to church too often in jeans.

Monday (left)
My work clothes are black, black and more black. Hmm, I never noticed before today that the skirt is so much longer then the lining. I wonder if I should shorten the skirt? I like this shirt because it has a crinkly fabric and is literally wash and wear, no need to iron! I normally wear it tucked out. Today however, I wanted to look less sloppy, so I tied the ends of the shirt together. It looks way better. Why didn't I think of it before?
Tuesday (right)
I wore green instead of black. The skirt has some sequins and embroidery down one side. Hmm, I am getting sharper photos when I use one hand to hold the camera.

Some thoughts on my first week of keeping a log of what I wore. Let's see, I wore my handknit sweaters. That's something I have not done in a long, long time. So that's an improvement, right? I also did make an effort with little touches to look a bit more pulled together than usual. Frankly if not for this, I really don't bother much about dressing. Sad, I know. I'm not sure how long I can keep doing this though. Taking the daily photos are a challenge. I am always rushing out of the house in the mornings and there isn't much time to take photos. And I have to take the photos before my family comes down otherwise they are walking around in my photos. That is, if I remember to take photos in the first place.

things that make me happy

2010-08-28T16:48:00.002+08:00

washing hanging in the sun.
We're not home during the daytime on weekdays because of work and school. So it's a real treat to be home when the sun is out. Can you see the skirt I sewed for my daughter? She does wear it after all, once in a blue moon :)

cooking with my kids
My kids like home-cooked meals and they like to help out with the food preparation, cooking and the washing up. My son's fave task is to peel potatoes and carrots. This is one of our usual quick lunches. Spaghetti with mentaiko sauce (from a packet) topped with seaweed and garlic mirin-soya sauce salmon on the side.

my pretty sock yarns
I was digging through my stash and discovered that I have sock yarns I have forgotten about. They have special sentimental value because they were gifts from family and friends. My yarn stash used to make me feel guilty but today it made me smile.

So tell me, what is making you happy today?

breathing new life

2010-08-25T18:36:00.000+08:00

I decided to breathe new life back into my olde blog. Changed the background and made a header.

I went through my 2008 and 2009 blogposts and counted what I knitted or crocheted. 3 items in 2008, 1 crocheted baby blanket, 1 crocheted wavy/ripple blanket and 1 knit tank top. In 2009, all I managed was 1 hat and 1 scarf. This year, so far there's been 1 crocheted market bag and 1 short sleeved cardigan. I knew that I was barely knitting for the last 2 years but I didn't realise that it was that meagre. It's time to get my knitting needles clicking again. See, I knitted while having a breakfast of chicken mayo sandwiches and a Japanese chocolate marble bun. We love these Japanese buns. They come in different flavours. Our fave is maple but they seem to have stopped selling those. My next fave is the cheese bun.

Talking about food, my daughter and I had our girls' day out last month. Now that she's older (17), we have our girls' day out more often, like once a month. I met her after school at Bugis Junction and we shared a yummy afternoon tea set at TCC.

We had egg and roast beef sandwiches, scones with cream and strawberry jam, and raspberry cake slices.

And oh my goodness, I checked my site tracker, something which I haven't done for ages and guess what? Someone googled for images of "huge soft shorts" and this photo of my daughter's blue with white polka dot shorts came up. I showed it to my daughter and we both giggled .... how on earth did the photo end up on google images? A scary thought ... what else do I have on google images?

where is this going?

2010-08-23T18:44:00.001+08:00

I'm not sure where my blog is headed anymore. It's no longer a knitting blog. I can't remember when I last blogged about knitting. It's not really a sewing blog either because I don't really sew seriously, as in, I don't use patterns or sew with proper sewing techniques. So many things have changed since the days when I first started this blog. Many of my knitblog friends have stopped blogging and I miss reading them. Sometimes I wonder if I should stop blogging too since I am not knitting or sewing much these days. But I am reluctant to do so because I am hopeful that my crafting life will pick up momentum again. So I'll just hobble along for now and blog a bit about this and a bit about that. Hmm, isn't that what I've been doing for the last 2 years or so? Haha, my dying blog refuses to die!

Anyway, here goes. Some photos of dinner last week.

salmon with garlic mirin-soya sauce

tori karage

I realised that I do have a bit of knitting to show you. I started knitting a lace vest some weeks back and then kind of lost interest in it. It required too much concentration and referring to the chart. So I frogged it and started this instead. Not sure if I will lose interest in this too, but we'll see. The yarn is Italian, Mondial Cometa, a gift from a dear friend. Extremely sturdy cotton. I know because I frogged and re-started this thing so many times and the yarn stood up to it. I am almost tempted to frog and re-start again because midway I changed how I did one of the stitches and I think it will look different. But then again, I decided not to. It will be my little secret and I don't think anyone will really notice.

It is supposed to turn into this sweater below. I don't know how to do the rosettes yet. I think they're some kind of embroidery? I will find out how to do them after I finish the knitting. Haha, I am an eternal optimist. I am also thinking of changing the neckline so that I don't need buttons.

It's Continuous Assessments week here. It's a fancy name for Tests week. My son will finish his ordeal by Thursday. Meanwhile, I'm on the lookout for crafty inspiration, to kick start my crafty life back into full swing. Hope you're having a crafty August of your own!

black linen pants

2010-07-22T19:12:00.001+08:00

I can't make up my mind about these pants. My feelings about it range from "it's so-so" to "it's downright ugly". I had to make adjustments to the sides and the inseam and it still doesn't hang right. It's wearable but it hangs oddly in some places. I won't be using this pattern again. It required too much adjusting and I'm better off trying another pattern.

I should have trusted my instincts about this pattern. It had a huge curve at the hip which I was skeptical about, but I still used it because I thought there might be something special about that curve. Sort of thought maybe it might accomodate and hide my tummy or something. But nah, it was just a weird curve that gave me poochy pant legs. And the bottom leg tapered slightly. I think a straight wide leg would have worked better.

The only saving grace about these pants is that the linen is really soft and comfortable. I'm going to look out for more of this soft linen the next time I go to People's Park. Next up is my satin tunic. I have many versions of that peasant style blouse that I want to sew and I'm going to look carefully at them and choose the one I think will work best. Wish me luck!

Some forgotten sewing

2010-07-12T18:31:00.012+08:00

I was going through my blog posts and realised that I forgot to show you School Skirt 3. I made it in April. My daughter wore it to school the very next day after I finished it but I forgot to take a photo, and thereafter it just slipped my mind. I am taking a break from sewing school skirts because my plan of encouraging (making) her wear skirts isn't working at all.

The next forgotten thing is this top. Over the weekend, while sorting out my fabric stash, I found it in its sorry, half-sewn state. I had trouble with the neckline, it was too small for my big head and frustration had driven me to abandon it. I was on the verge of throwing it away when I decided to take one last look at it. Then I realised that it could be salvaged by making a longer slit at the back neckline to accomodate my head. So I ripped and re-cut and re-sewed. Then I encountered another problem. The back neckline slit puckered badly. Sewing on some hooks for closure didn't help. So I sewed press studs instead and thankfully it worked somewhat. The back part of the collar is still wonky, one side is wider than the other. If it bugs me enough, I might unpick and re-do it another day, but for now, I declare it done! And I wore it to work today.

This was another of my attempts at making a pattern from an existing piece of clothing. A favourite top was wrecked by a too-hot iron, so I cut it apart and traced out the pattern. Note to self: if I want to re-use this pattern, I will have to think about how to fix the neckline. There's some weird pulling where the shoulder meets the neckline. You can see it in the photo below.

I should stop trying to draw patterns from clothes and start sewing from my Japanese sewing book patterns instead. I hardly sew from them because I can't visualise myself wearing any of those cute clothes modelled by girls younger than half my age. I think I would look and feel ridiculous. I tried persuading my daughter to let me sew them for her, but she would rather wear tshirts and shorts. I know some of you have told me that it's difficult to believe that she is a tomboy because she doesn't look like one in my blog photos. But sadly it is true :( don't let her long hair fool you. She's a tomboy with long hair :) who wears shorts everyday to school. Sigh, so I was resigned to just browsing my sewing books for pleasure.

It's not just sewing patterns. When I go shopping for clothes these days, I can't seem to find clothes appropriate for me. I went shopping with a friend the other day and we were both lamenting about how we can't find age-appropriate clothes that don't cost a bomb. We ended up in Marks and Spencer, scouring the sale racks and chanced upon some cropped wide leg linen pants which wasn't our usual style but decided to try them on a whim, because they were linen and a reasonable price. Much to our surprise, we liked the pants and ended up buying them. I liked how comfortable they were. Then I saw Siow Chin's linen pants from her me made holiday post. Why didn't I think of it? I could sew myself a pair of linen pants from one of the patterns in my Japanese books! So here's the design below (with my favourite elastic waist) and you can see the black linen I'm going to use at the bottom right hand corner of the photo below.

Pictured below is another top that I used to think was not suitable for me. All that gathered cotton fabric would just make me look fatter than I want to look. Until the day I was at Zara with lots of time to spare. I tried on a gazillion things which I normally would not even bother to try. I tried on a silk tunic in this design and I loved it. But I wasn't prepared to pay $99 for it because my mind kept telling me that it would be simple to whip up something similar on my sewing machine. So here's some satin for my experiment. I just hope I don't jinx things by saying that I am going to do this or that. Very often, I don't do the things I said I will do on my blog :)

Anyway, it's about time to look at my Japanese sewing books with a different perspective and see how I can make the designs more appropriate for me, maybe with a different type of fabric or perhaps even in a different colour or print. Cheers, have a good week and don't hold your breath waiting for my linen pants or my satin tunic :)

Shorts 3

2010-06-10T11:41:00.007+08:00

My daughter is having her mid-semester break and she's catching up on reading , which is a luxury she can't afford during semester time.

Shorts 3 is modelled after a pair of shorts I saw, which had cute ties at the sides. I am quite addicted to sewing these elastic waist shorts and skirts, haha, probably because they're all I know how to sew :) I would like to sew a floral pair of shorts next but I haven't found the right floral print in my fabric stash yet. Maybe a striped pair ... hmm what do you think? Are striped shorts weird looking?

I have been on leave but I haven't got much (any!) crafting done. I have been shopping because it's the Great Singapore Sale! It's kind of funny that my daughter will look at some clothing and if it's too expensive, she'll go, "mum, I think you can sew that!" Haha, but it's a pity because when we get home, we would have forgotten most of it.

I was drinking a cup of juice this morning and took a pic of these cotton coasters I crocheted some time back. I can't remember if I showed them to you before :) They're great for soaking up condensed water from icy cold drinks. The heat wave has eased over here and we're back to normal warm weather with the usual rain and thunderstorms. I'm looking forward to tomorrow because my 9 year old son will be back from his school brass band trip to Perth. Hope you'll have a good day tomorrow too!

2010-06-04T10:11:00.006+08:00

I didn't blog last weekend because it was a long weekend and we flew to Penang. Had a nice relaxing time, eating and shopping.

Had dinner at these street stalls.

Had lunch at this quaint old coffee shop

Prawn bee hoon, brings back memories of my childhood days.

Penang char kway teow

Near to the quaint old coffee shop, I found a shop that sold cotton lace for a steal. Look at what I got. Embroidered cotton lace edging and checked bias tape!

Shorts 2

2010-05-22T09:23:00.001+08:00

Shorts 2 was whipped out in one night so that my daughter could wear it to school the next day. Her friends asked where she bought them and she told them her mum made it :)

Shorts 2 fits better after I modified the pattern and added a bit of ease.

She's been wearing shorts everyday as the weather here has been really hot, too hot for jeans. I'm going to dig in my stash for fabric to sew more shorts. I want to try different variations, like different pocket styles and cuffs or hemmed with lace. When I go shopping these days, I look more closely at the details on clothes and keep a lookout for ideas I can incorporate into my sewing.

I added a cuff to the bottom hem. The fabric is black so you might not be able to see the topstitched cuff below but you can see the cute bunnies and mice.

Note to self (because I'm forgetful): Here's how I did the cuffs.
Sew the side seam of front piece to back piece.
Cut a rectangle. Length = length of the front + back hem. Width = 3 X the finished width of cuff.
Fold the cuff into three folds lengthwise and iron.
Then sew the hem to the edge of the first fold line, wrong sides facing.

Next, fold the cuff on wrong side once more (like making a hem) and sew.

Last step is to topstitch the cuff on the front to the shorts. Voila! easy cuffs.

Shorts 1

2010-05-16T09:16:00.006+08:00

I'm so excited about these shorts. It was a bit of an experiment. I've always wanted to try and sew a pair of shorts, but most elastic waist shorts patterns I've seen are huge. So I decided to try and draw my own pattern from a pair of shorts that fit my daughter. I had to do the paper pattern twice because it was difficult trying to get the correct shape.

Sewing the pieces together was another exercise in trial and error. The funny part was when I sewed the 2 front pieces together and the 2 back pieces together and realised that I couldn't sew the crotch together! Haha, I was supposed to sew each front to a back piece and then insert one tube (leg) into the other in order to sew the crotch.

All the time while I was sewing, I didn't have a clue as to how it would turn out. So imagine my excitement when I finished it and she tried it on and oh my goodness it fits better than I had hoped !!!!! But I think I will add 1cm to the front piece near the inseam so that it would fit more comfortably and not crease at that spot.

My daughter who has sensitive skin, says that this fabric (a poly cotton) is a little scratchy and itches, so I'm going to sew another one in cotton. I have some black cotton with tiny rabbits and mice that would make a cute pair of shorts. The weather here has been extremely hot lately so shorts will come in handy. In fact it was so blistering hot when we took the pics, that I only snapped a few and we quickly ran back into the shade.

reversible bag

2010-05-08T22:26:00.000+08:00

Last week, I made this bag.

It's the reversible bag pattern from very purple person. Her instructions are clear and easy to follow. I like the part where I turn the bag inside out through the handles. So cool.

It is a very useful size and I like the shape.

It has been extremely hot these days. I need to sew more school skirts but I am running out of skirt ideas. I need inspiration. Let me know if you know of any online websites with photos of cute skirts. Thanks and have a good weekend :)

School Dress 1

2010-05-02T09:00:00.000+08:00

I'm so excited to show you School Dress 1. Instead of just sewing a skirt, my daughter suggested that I sew the skirt to a tshirt and turn it into a dress. This took 4 steps.

Cut off the bottom of one of her old tshirts, about 2 1/2 inches (including 1/2 inch seam) below the waist. Saved the leftover tshirt hem for some other project.

Sew elastic band (slightly longer than waist measurement so that the elastic would sit just below the waist) to bottom of tshirt

Sew pockets and side seams of skirt. By the way, I like the pockets ... I drew the curve on the paper pattern using a rice bowl :)

Sew skirt to elastic band.

Notes to self: the skirt is 40 inches width. I could have made it narrower, probably up to 36 inches for a slimmer fit.

When I gathered the skirt round the elastic, it turned out poofy. But I couldn't simply cut off the excess at the edges as I had already made the pockets. So I unpicked the skirt from the elastic band and made 4 pleats in the middle. I think that helped to reduce the poofiness of the skirt. I am quite happy with how it turned out.

crochet bag

2010-04-27T20:15:00.000+08:00

In between knitting projects, I find it convenient to pick up a small crochet project to work on while I decide on the next thing to knit. This bag was started right after I finished Dawn. It took only a few days and I completed it a few weeks ago, but never got round to blogging about it. My photos today have an odd blue tinge probably because it was almost 7pm when I took them and the daylight was already fading.

I've crocheted this bag before but second time round was not necessarily easier. I re-started the base 4 times because I kept getting the stitch count wrong. When I was crocheting the pineapple motif, I had to rip back every other row or so because I kept making mistakes.

I lengthened the handles so that it can be worn as a sling bag over the shoulders and I added an inner fabric drawstring bag to keep things from falling out.

Yarn: leftover Butterfly cotton
Crochet hook size: 4/0

Knitwise, I'm stuck in a rut with the mori girl hoodie because I've reached the stage where I have to graft the stitches on the hood. Ugh. On a more positive note, I have a backlog of stuff I've sewn. Hopefully I can get my act together and show them to you soon.

random things

2010-04-11T10:25:00.004+08:00

School Skirt 1 has become a favourite and my daughter has requested more of the same in these fabrics. Meanwhile School Skirt 2 has been given the cold shoulder as it still hasn't been worn yet :(

I've made progress on the cardigan I'm knitting, here's how it looks like now. By the way, the two lengths at the side that look like sleeves are not sleeves, but the 2 fronts. I'm knitting the hood and should have enough yarn to knit some short sleeves. Still thinking of ways to "mori-fy" it if you know what I mean.

And to rund off my random things, here's a necklace my daughter made from a length of ribbon and 2 ballet themed charms.
A close up pic so you can see the ballet shoes and the dancer in her pink tutu

School Skirt 2

2010-04-04T18:33:00.001+08:00

Paper bag elastic waist. 45 inch width all round skirt. Made out of leftover curtain fabric from years ago.

Tied with a belt made from leftover floral fabric.

The striped pink cotton is very thick but still needed to be lined. I had a hard time figuring out how to attach the lining. In the end, I sewed the lining to the waist and then hemmed the skirt onto the lining before adding the elastic. I love how it looks so neat.

I have one problem with this skirt. The elastic kept rolling and twisting in the waistband. I resorted to sewing the elastic to the waistband at intervals.

My daughter thinks that this look is too dressy for school. She thinks school skirts have to be casual. Maybe wearing it with a polo tshirt without the floral belt would dress it down.

Improvising

2010-04-01T00:15:00.002+08:00

I started a cardigan on Sunday night for my daughter. Sort of following this pattern. I'm knitting at a different gauge (pattern gauge is 24 sts 30 rows to 10 cm, mine is 28 stithes 36 rows). I should get a width that fits my daughter. I measured one of her cardigans just to check. Substituted plain old 2X2 ribbing for the crochet border. She prefers it plain.

I haven't figured out what to do with the sleeves yet. I'll need to think of an alternative since I'm doing away with the crochet broder. It will depend on how much yarn I have left. It would be fun to improvise and use fabric for sleeves. If only I can find some blue knit jersey with white polka dots. I'm thinking of keeping the scalloped crochet edging around the hood but maybe doing it in a different colour. Or in a thinner yarn.

Meanwhile, I'm just knitting rectangles for the front and back. As usual, I can't understand the Japanese finishing instructions, so I'll just do what seems convenient to put the rectangles together. This is the first time I'm not following a pattern completely. I never realised that it can be such fun! Improvising opens up options of quirky ways to make this cardigan. And, there's no right or wrong way of doing it. Right now, I'm being inspired by mori girls. They're so cute, although I think it might be difficult to carry off that look on our streets. I don't think I could persuade my daughter to dress like that just to humour me :)

School Skirt 1

2010-03-28T12:32:00.001+08:00

I'm making my daughter some skirts for school. This is School Skirt 1. It's a simple gathered skirt with a black elastic waistband.

Notes to self:
I used 1m fabric. If I want to add a tier of ruffles, I will need more fabric.
Skirt length from waistband to hem is 15 inches
Width all round is about 50 inches. If using softer fabric, width can be retained. If fabric is stiffer, width can be decreased a little so that it doesn't pouf out so much.
The elastic waistband is 24 inches, one inch more than her waist

This elastic is super soft, not the usual type. It was a lucky find. I had enough leftover fabric after cutting out 2 panels for the skirt, so I made hidden pockets. Is that what they are called? I like pockets on skirts, so that one can wear them with a bit of attitude if one wishes.

I sewed the elastic on top of the right side of the skirt using the zig zag stitch. The 7cm deep hem is hand sewed. I like deep hems. They give a more finished look even though they can't really be seen.

And guess what? Oops, I forgot to sew on the lining! Fortunately the cotton seems thick enough to do without a lining. Anyway, I can tell that my daughter likes the skirt. She wore it out two days in a row :)

Tshirt Skirt

2010-03-21T16:00:00.001+08:00

My kids went to camp, my husband went for a meeting, and I ended up with a free Saturday afternoon. So I took a pair of scissors and cut up my Tshirt. It's a very big Tshirt and had enough width for a re-fashion project I've had in my mind for a long time.

There was enough fabric from each sleeve to make one pocket. I used the sleeve hem for the slant edge so I didn't have to finish the edge.

I folded down the raw edge at the top and sewed a channel for a waistband and inserted elastic. I added extra wide belt loops over the waistband. I didn't know how to machine sew them on without sewing onto 2 layers, so I hand sewed the loops to the front of the fabric with slipstitches. The front belt loops are sewn with the fabric wrong side out. I'm good at doing things like that :) But I'm too lazy to unpick, so it stays as part of the charm of my hand sewing.

It was my first time sewing a knit fabric. It wasn't all that different from sewing with cotton, except that I had to be careful not to stretch the fabric. After this, I'm going to be more adventourous and start sewing with my stash of knit fabrics.

This skirt is for my daughter. By the way, I love her red checked shoes. Got them from one of the little shops opposite Bugis Junction for $15!

Every Day Tank

2010-03-02T19:55:00.005+08:00

I sewed a simple tank top for myself from the Every Day book. It's the second top I've sewed from this book. The first one was the halter top I sewed for my daughter last year.

I'm between a size 11 and a 13. After comparing the pattern measurements with one of my tops, I chose size 11. And wowee gozalee, there's nothing like taking one's measurements to face the fact that one is not quite the same size as one thought!

Pattern: No 12 from Every Day Book
size: 11

My first attempt at gathering the front ended up with a neckline that was way too low. I unpicked the binding and gathered more of the fabric with smaller stitches and thank goodness it resulted in a wearable neckline. But I overdid it. As you can see, the gathers pull to the left and right.

I like the fit. The armholes are comfortable and there's just the right amount of ease in the body. If I sew this design again, I will make it longer, to tunic length.

Dawn

2010-02-25T10:11:00.000+08:00

This is the first cardigan I've knitted in months ... or is it years? In any case, it's been a long time.

Pattern: Dawn from Kim Hargreaves' Nectar
Yarn: Rowan Handknit Cotton, 5 balls
Needle size: 3.75 mm for ribbing, 4.0 mm for the lace

It was an easy repetitive pattern, other than having to keep track of increases and decreases for the front edges and the underarm. I seamed up the sides using the backstitch, as recommended in the pattern.

I joined the neckband at the back using the 3 needle bind off method because grafting tends to drive me nuts :) Anyway, the join is at the back so I don't think anyone will be peering too closely at it.

For anyone who might be thinking of knitting it and wondering about size and fit, I knit the S size because I didn't want as slouchy a fit as the one worn by the model in the magazine. I like the fit of the sleeves and armpit as there's just the right amount of ease, but I can't button the cardigan because the bottom band is a bit tight around my waist. I can probably solve that by blocking the ribbing, but I think I'll skip the buttons instead, because I usually wear my cardigans unbuttoned anyway. You can't really see the buttonholes because I made small one stitch buttonholes :)

knitting again

2010-02-18T19:53:00.001+08:00

It's nice to be knitting again. I'm sitting at the dining table, knitting and reading blogs, keeping my son company while he is doing his homework.

We've got a new chandelier over the dining table with 8 lightbulbs. It's bright enough for the kids to do their homework. It's also bright enough for me to read the pattern as I knit.

If you're wondering, I'm knitting Dawn (by Kim Hargreaves) with Rowan handknit cotton. It looks deceptively done but it isn't. I have joined the two fronts together and I'm knitting down the back, past the sleeves. There's the bottom part of the back left to knit.

It's Chinese New Year, so let me wish you good health and God's blessings in the year of the tiger!

Still here

2010-02-10T13:52:00.001+08:00

Logged into my blog after many moons and discovered an unpublished post written in November last year. So here goes, might as well publish it, even though it is late.

Came across a new haberdashery (I think that's what these shops are called) shop at People's Park. My daughter couldn't resist that cute polka dotted ribbon with the pig-tailed girl. And if you also spied the cute laundry line fabric in the background, well, I confess to buying a metre each in black, red and blue. It was too cute.

The ribbon is kind of flimsy on its own so I sewed it onto a wider black ribbon.

Then I added about 4 inches of same width elastic (I scored a gigantic roll of this lovely soft wide elastic for a steal at the same shop).

And now she has a hairband :)

Shirred sun-top

2009-10-21T09:05:00.011+08:00

I used the same heather ross sundress pattern but shortened it to a top. It took one metre of fabric and 2 bobbins of elastic thread for the shirring. I made wider straps this time.

Yippee, I actually remembered to align the checks when I cut the fabric! Shirring on this fabric was easy as I could just follow the lines on the fabric.

The sash was added after the bodice was shirred. It was hand sewed with little stitches onto the side seams. This top is a definitely winner because she wore it the day after I finished it :)

This skirt with the cute print doesn't fit me anymore. It fits my daughter but it was too long.

So I cut off 8 inches from the hem. My goodness, she looks so grown up in this photo!

And before I go, I have to show you this photo I took of a page in Chic magazine. I'm in cardigan love! I must go and look for an old cardigan in my closet and buy some cute lace trim and make this Chanel lookalike. By the way, if you live in Singapore, Chic costs only S$2.80 and is published twice a month, on Thursday of the first and third week of the month. It has fabulous photography and styling and gives you the scoop on fashion in the local shops.