brings joy

Mike put up the tree last week. As we were look­ing through the orna­ments I real­ized that these rab­bit ones were made almost 10 years ago. The paint is a bit fad­ed and got bits of the tree stuck on them now but they held up quite well, giv­en that they were made of salt dough.

I thought they looked a bit cold this year so I made them sweaters. 

Also thought the Ice­landic Yule Cat needs some­thing spe­cial to stand on, so we all know it’s no house cat (though noth­ing wrong with house cats).

Small bits of craft­ing. Brings joy. (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion from work)

May your week be joy­ful and bright.

 

 

lately

Over the past month or so I’ve been work­ing on a cou­ple of hand pup­pets using a kit that I bought from my local yarn store. It was my sub­way project. I learned to make bob­bles! I real­ly like the toothy grin of this one. The teeth are crocheted :)

And I fig­ured out how to make tiny spikes with a picot cast-off/edg­ing tuto­r­i­al! Here they are, singing :D

My co-work­er gave me a stone that I think real­ly wants to be an owl, so I helped it along :) Now I think it looks like it’s wear­ing a pink sweater.

I watched a ran­dom video on Insta­gram about cook­ing an egg in a glass in a microwave. It worked for the most part! And it real­ly need­ed a Gude­ta­ma face :P

It’s the lit­tle things :) Have a good week, everyone!

 

anniversary rose

Mike bought me a small rose plant for our 10th (!!!) wed­ding anniversary. 

The oth­er day I used the handy macro band to take some pho­tos by the win­dow, where the plant is cur­rent­ly liv­ing. Kind of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe-inspired.

When it’s super close up the petals look like they’re made of fine sug­ar crys­tals. Think­ing maybe fram­ing one of these one day.

Have a hap­py weekend!

 

keep calm and carry moss

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I bought these beau­ti­ful vin­tage shad­ow box pen­dants from Etsy shop youarenot­the­bossofme to put moss in :D It turned out beau­ti­ful­ly, I’m so pleased. Looks like there are a few more of these pen­dants for sale, pop by the shop if you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing some­thing sim­i­lar! I bought the moss from the mod­el-mak­ing sec­tion of my local art store. Or one could put in small stones or yarn or tiny shells or what­ev­er one finds mean­ing­ful to car­ry around.

I’ve always felt more con­nect­ed to water-relat­ed analo­gies — like the riv­er, or the sea, going with the flow, fill the gaps, like what Bruce Lee said,

“You must be shape­less, form­less, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bot­tle, it becomes the bot­tle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

One can’t make a dent in water, it can’t be hurt. 

But I’ve been feel­ing drawn to moss late­ly. Ground­ed and tena­cious. It can be pulled out of the ground and be dam­aged, but it comes back again, reach­ing and cov­er­ing even fur­ther grounds. Its roots spread wider than eyes can see. It re-emerges always after win­ter frosts.

So maybe it’s about acknowl­edg­ing the hurt rather than say­ing to myself that things don’t or should­n’t hurt. And maybe it’s about stand­ing my ground rather than fill­ing what­ev­er gaps or needs oth­ers put before me, try­ing to be every­thing to everyone. 

A bit of reflec­tion as I enter anoth­er year in my life! :D Anoth­er year wis­er, hopefully.

Thanks for vis­it­ing today! 

 

macro fun

Photo 2016-02-25, 9 02 26 PM

There was an awe­some sale at Pho­to­jo­jo after the hol­i­days, so I bought this handy macro band for my phone! I’ve had it for a while, but just start­ed tak­ing pic­tures with it this week.

I bought a cou­ple of pairs of love­ly lucite ear­rings from Leeti Loven­dale on Etsy. The ear­rings in the pic­ture above are 5mm across. (there also appears to be a hair on my lens :S) (also, check out the shop! The lucite pieces used in their jew­el­ry-mak­ing have an inter­est­ing sto­ry :D)

We’ve got a bit of a snow storm here a cou­ple of days ago, and our win­dows were all frost­ed in the morning.

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 23 56 AM

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 24 15 AM

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 24 46 AM

I’m quite impressed with this sim­ple (and some­what sil­ly-look­ing) macro lens. Stay tuned for more macro pic­tures to come :D

Wish­ing every­one a hap­py weekend!

 

underwood 315

Came across a good quote that I want­ed to dis­play at my desk at work. Thought about hand­writ­ing it, or find­ing a good type face for it and print­ing it out, but then remem­bered that we’ve inher­it­ed Mike’s grand­moth­er’s Under­wood 315.

tolkien

 

It took us a while to get the imprints look­ing right. At first we thought the rib­bon was out of ink. After all, Mike remem­bered that the last time he saw it used was in the 80s. But then we tried to adjust a num­ber of things, and even­tu­al­ly we were actu­al­ly able to get a dark enough imprint.

I typed the quote 3 times over to end up with one that does­n’t have typos — proof that I’m far too used to typ­ing on the com­put­er and being able to eas­i­ly erase mis­takes. The first time I ever typed was on a com­put­er key­board; this is actu­al­ly the first time I’ve used the type­writer. And how did peo­ple use their pinkies on the type­writer? The keys require quite a force to make an imprint on the paper. I imag­ine get­ting cal­lous­es on the fin­ger­tips, much like play­ing the gui­tar. But I find it to be quite a reward­ing expe­ri­ence! To prac­tice and prac­tice and final­ly get it right :)

And it reminds me so much of print­mak­ing. Espe­cial­ly with the two-colour rib­bon. One just would­n’t know exact­ly how the words will appear, there are always slight vari­a­tions even if the let­ters are the same. Maybe I will try to make more things with it :D

Have a won­der­ful start to the week, everyone!

 

leucocoprinus birnbaumii

That is the very uncom­mon name of a very com­mon yel­low house­plant mush­room :D

Accord­ing to Wiki, it is also called “flow­er­pot para­sol” or “plant­pot dap­per­ling”. Very pret­ty names. One start­ed grow­ing in our spi­der plant!

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When we first spot­ted it it was very tiny, maybe quar­ter of an inch tall.

Then a few days lat­er we noticed the cap com­plete­ly open. It was still tiny, about half an inch tall.

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This is a bet­ter pic­ture from Mike.

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We took these pic­tures at night. The next morn­ing we found the mush­room already wilted :(

Have you had these mush­rooms in your plants? Accord­ing to this help­ful site, it does not hurt the house­plants, and it’s not harm­ful they’re eat­en. So maybe not so great when there are young chil­dren and pets.

Which reminds me, maybe some mush­rooms are out already in the park. I should go out for walks some­times and start look­ing :D

Hope you have a hap­py Sun­day and a good week!

 

hagelslag :D

Sprin­kles are one of Mike’s very favourite things.

One day he came across this video about break­fasts from dif­fer­ent parts of the world, and when it got to the part about the Nether­lands, he thought, “I’ve got to get some of that!”

So with a lit­tle research he found out that hagel­slag is sold at Dutch Dreams, our local ice cream shop (and favourite place in the sum­mer :D).

They came in a vari­ety pack with (very cute) small box­es that looked like mini cere­al boxes.

hagelslag

So we got our toasts but­tered and ready. Mike tried the reg­u­lar choco­late one.

milk chocolate

And I tried the fruit vari­ety, vrucht­en­hagel, which I think means “fruit hail”.

fruit hail
It turned out to be a bit sweet­er than I would like, but I do enjoy how, unlike the sprin­kles we get on cup­cakes and such, these melt in the mouth! Com­bined with the but­tery bread it reminds me of the dessert buns (i.e. pineap­ple buns or cus­tard buns) at the Chi­nese bakery.

I think my favourite is the choco­late shav­ings variety.

shaved milk chocolate

Hope your week is filled with small things that make you smile :)

 

 

 

space

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Oh my, it’s been 10 days since I last wrote >_< I must say, it’s been very busy since the begin­ning of Novem­ber. I start­ed a new job, and then our apart­ment build­ing start­ed under­go­ing some ren­o­va­tions, which required us to pack away and seal every­thing in plas­tic sheets and tape so that they don’t get cov­ered in ren­o­va­tion dust. So then we thought, we might as well rearrange our apartment!

I like rear­rang­ing the apart­ment once in a while, it’s like mov­ing into a new apart­ment! It’s just a lot of work that has to be done over sev­er­al weeks because we’ve got jobs to go to dur­ing the day (or night) and oth­er things to do and peo­ple to see…

But look! We were able to carve out a new work space for me over the week­end! I love the shelves above it. And I get to dis­play one of the hand paint­ed signs from Hon­est Ed’s (for 99 cents “Hol­i­day Marsh­mal­low Bis­cuits”), which com­mem­o­rates not only the icon­ic Toron­to land­mark but also the day in which my dear friend and I lined up for 7 hours to buy these signs (I also have an “Acrylic Ladies Sweater” one and an “Instant Noo­dles” one, but I don’t have frames for them yet. I think my friend got “Fleece Shorts” and “Ankle Weights”). It was prob­a­bly the most ridicu­lous thing I’ve done (and the whole time we were like, “oh, it looks like it’s just anoth­er hour of wait, we’ve been here for 3 (or 4, or 5) hours already, what’s anoth­er hour, we’ve spent too much time on this to turn back emp­ty hand­ed…” and poor Mike was wait­ing for us out­side Hon­est Ed’s to go to din­ner), but now we have “a piece of his­to­ry of Toron­to” dis­played on our shelves and great sto­ries to tell :P

And all my yarn colour-sort­ed and neat­ly tucked away in bins! For the past few years I’ve had the yarn just sit­ting in the shelv­ing unit like in a yarn store (see this post about the “wall of yarn” and my ini­tial excite­ment). It was nice to look at for the first month or so, but before long I had yarn spilling all over the place from the front AND the back of the shelves. So, now we don’t get to see the pret­ty colours of the yarn on the shelves, but they are much eas­i­er to manage.

In the mean­while, I’m work­ing on a sweater project that I can’t wait to fin­ish and show you, and new items for my shop :D Stay tuned! I’ve been feel­ing a bit slug­gish over the sum­mer and into the fall, so I’m grate­ful for the ener­gy that Novem­ber brings.

Have a fab­u­lous, ener­gized week, everyone!

 

p.s. And if you have crea­ture pho­tos for the 12 Days of Wood­land Crea­tures project, please feel free to send them my way before Wednes­day, Nov. 12! I will put togeth­er a cel­e­bra­tion post with every­one’s pho­tos short­ly after that :D

another day at the farmers market

farmer1

This time I got some black cher­ry toma­toes, pat­ty­pan squash, and some kale. I’ve nev­er had any of those before. The friend­ly farm­ers gave me sam­ples of the toma­toes and squash. They were very sweet.

Here’s what we did with the cher­ry toma­toes and squash — a sum­mer sal­ad with just some salt, pep­per and sesame oil.

farmer2

I sautéed half the kale, but found it a bit too chewy. So I thought I’d try to make kale chips with the rest of them. I’ve always been intrigued by them!

I fol­lowed this recipe. It’s real­ly rather sim­ple. Did­n’t even have to turn them over half way through bak­ing. Came out nice and crisp!

kale chips 2

Mike and I devoured the entire bowl in one evening.

kale chips 1

And this is the draw­ing of the week. Trea­sures from the earth.

treasures from the earth

May your week be filled with sim­ple joys and treasures!