Category: small things

Fraise!

Posted on by trish

We took a field trip to a straw­ber­ry field on the week­end! It’s some­thing I haven’t done since high school, so I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to it. We got there before 8am to avoid the crowd, and it was a bit rainy so we did­n’t stay very long, but we still had lots of fun!

I was struck by how per­fect­ly shaped the straw­ber­ries were! (and I acci­den­tal­ly pulled off the unripe ones along with it… made a good pho­to but I felt kind of bad…)

Spy­ing on the strawberries…

You can see the rain­drops on Mike’s coat, and also the thorny weed in the low­er right cor­ner! Mike found that the best berries were hid­ing under those thor­ney weeds!

And of course, I made a straw­ber­ry pin to wear for the spe­cial occa­sion :D

Was plan­ning to take a close-up pic­ture of it in the straw­ber­ry bush, but did­n’t get a chance to, so I took a pic­ture at home. This straw­ber­ry thinks that liv­ing is easy with eyes closed.

I did­n’t fol­low any par­tic­u­lar pat­tern to make the straw­ber­ry pin. In fact I ran out of time at the end of the week and had to make it while tak­ing the pub­lic tran­sit. I won­dered whether I should write down the pat­tern… but I did a quick search and found quite a few cro­chet straw­ber­ry pat­terns, and I have a feel­ing that mine would­n’t be too dif­fer­ent from the oth­er pat­terns, so it might be kind of redun­dant if I write anoth­er one… But if you’re real­ly inter­est­ed let me know and I’ll write it! It’s rather sim­ple so it won’t take me too long to put it together :)

Have a sweet Monday!

Favourite-things Sunday!

Posted on by trish

Acorns! ♥

I love acorns. They just look so cute with their caps.

The only thing more cute would prob­a­bly be small cakes shaped like acorns, made with this acorn cake pan I saw on The Kitchn. And the pan itself is shaped like an acorn!

$36 at Williams-Sono­ma… yikes.

So! For a much more afford­able (and equal­ly, if not more cute!) ver­sion of acorn treats, check out this Acorn Love recipe from Lip­stick and Laun­dry! :D

They’re made with Her­shey’s Kiss­es and mini Nil­la wafers! Isn’t that such a bril­liant idea? I’m total­ly mak­ing these for Thanks­giv­ing family/friends get-togeth­ers this year :D

And recent­ly I’ve come across these mag­i­cal acorns at Lil Fish Stu­dios.

They’re just the coolest things — the nat­ur­al acorn caps are paint­ed with met­al paint, which means that they will con­tin­u­ous­ly rust and change colours! It would be such a cool process to watch. And the felt­ed wool is so colour­ful and warm and lush. I love felt.

On a side note, while search­ing for the actu­al link for the acorns with met­al caps, I stum­bled upon an acorn tuto­r­i­al, also by Lil Fish Studio.

Mush­rooms! Also my favourite things, and made with acorn caps! Have got to make myself some of those some­times… I think they would look so sweet in a mason jar ter­rar­i­um. Sum­mer­time is the best time for long walks in the park and to col­lect things like acorn caps and twigs :D

And of course, can­not for­get about this amigu­ru­mi acorn I saw a while ago from Plan­et June.

With remov­able caps! How awe­some is that? It’s a free pat­tern too! I was so excit­ed when I first saw it and made one imme­di­ate­ly… that was almost 2 years ago. I want­ed to make an acorn that’s sim­i­lar in size to an actu­al acorn, so I used the pat­tern as a guide for the gen­er­al struc­ture of it but made it much small­er with few­er stitch­es around. I also did­n’t have brown yarn and round beads for eyes at the time so the acorn is yel­low and his eyes are made of french knots…

I think the bumpy cro­chet tex­ture is quite per­fect for an acorn cap. And I thought it would make such a love­ly fuzzy acorn if I cro­chet the cap and nee­dle-felt the rest. I’m sure it’s been done before, but I had been want­i­ng to try that myself for a long time and final­ly I got around to it a cou­ple of nights ago…

I quite like it :) But maybe I will try a thin­ner yarn and small hook next time. And maybe use tan for the cap instead of brown?

And final­ly, accord­ing to Wikipedia:

“Acorns appear only on adult trees, and thus are often a sym­bol of patience and the fruition of long, hard labor.”

Patience, that’s some­thing I need right now.

And I think just the fact that a mighty oak is grown from a small, sin­gle acorn is a mir­a­cle in itself.

That reminds me of a quote by David Icke — def­i­nite­ly skep­ti­cal about his views but this quote is one of my favourites:

Today’s mighty oak is just yes­ter­day’s nut that held its ground.

Have a love­ly week!

More favourite-things!

Posted on by trish

Tea, tea, and more tea.

A col­lage of TEA! And as you might know now mak­ing col­lages is also one of my favourite things to do. Cut­ting and past­ing and putting togeth­er, whether it’s with URLs or paper/scissors/glue. Though after a rather drain­ing work week (again) I’m feel­ing too lazy to set up a work space at the kitchen table today :P Set­ting up space on Big Huge Labs works for me just fine.

And I always learn some new things when I browse through pic­tures on flickr. For exam­ple, there are green tea and red bean KitKat bars in Japan! *drool* I hope I’ll come across one of those some day… And I’ve always want­ed to get myself a bloom­ing teapot… so pret­ty… The only thing stop­ping me is that I don’t real­ly like herbal/flower tea too much. Well, I don’t like tea that don’t go well with lots of cream and sug­ar. But bloom­ing teas are very pret­ty to look at and to take pic­tures of.

While brows­ing I kept see­ing pic­tures of minia­ture pas­tries, and they look just like real pas­tries and just as cute except they’re much small­er, which makes them so much cuter! So then I looked up the pho­tog­ra­pher’s blog — so impres­sive! Be sure to take a look if you enjoy eye can­dy — literally! ;)

Sweet week­end everyone!

Pho­to credits:

1. cup of tea, 2. Green tea and red bean KitKats, inte­ri­or, 3. Ice cube in ice tea, 4. tea tow­els, 5. Tea Eggs, 6. Mad Tea Par­ty (Explored), 7. 2009 Pho­to Chal­lenge — Day 43: Tea, 8. Green Tea, 9. Time for a Tea Par­ty, 10. Red tea, 11. Red Tea Field., 12. Black tea / té negro, 13. The March Hare, Mad Hat­ter and Dor­mouse Have Tea, 14. Numi flow­er­ing tea — after, 15. Tea Drips, 16. Camel­lia Japon­i­ca (Tea Plant), 17. new year tea, 18. A cow in the tea plan­ta­tion !!!, 19. Japan­ese Tea Flavoured Ice Cream, 20. 365/341 Tea set of unat­tain­able green, 21. tea&honey, 22. TERUHA TAKING A TEA BREAK, 23. Tea and Cake!, 24. Numi flow­er­ing tea — before, 25. Minia­ture Food — Pis­ta­chio Tea Tray

Favourite-things Friday!

Posted on by trish

1. pink all­sorts, 2. Tiny white (and pink) flower, 3. Pink Scol­lop, 4. Glo­riosa ten­dril with pink bokeh, 5. cup­cake: pink icing, 6. Pink and brown slime molds, 7. Cute <3, 8. Texture_Pink, 9. pink crea­tures

A col­lage (or, as I like to call it, a mon­tage) of pho­tos gen­er­at­ed by flickr and ran­dom­ly picked using the search word “pink”. Pink is one of my favourite colours. And I nev­er knew that mold could be pink!

Have a nice weekend!

Point & Shoot Wednesday

Posted on by trish

A very late point & shoot Wednes­day post, but I made it! And I’m bring­ing to you the rea­son why learn­ing how to use chop­sticks is good for every­one — now you can pick up any­thing! Even UFO’s!

Hope your Wednes­day was great!

Being resourceful

Posted on by trish

Often I find myself think­ing of ways to make things that I want to buy. It’s not so much about the mon­ey, I don’t think, because I can usu­al­ly buy books and yarn with­out much hes­i­ta­tion. But for cer­tain things I think it’s the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of com­ing up with a solu­tion and enjoy­ing the result of it that moti­vates me to think rather than just going out and buy. It’s not just about being fru­gal nei­ther, although fru­gal­i­ty has a lot to do with it. I think my par­ents taught me well. But I don’t think my par­ents are just being fru­gal. I like to call it being resource­ful. And I think cre­ativ­i­ty and resource­ful­ness can bring joy to life.

I vis­it­ed them last week­end, and saw inter­est­ing and delight­ful things around their house.

Yes, it is a roll of toi­let paper. In a CD can­is­ter. Hav­ing a box of Kleenex is of course much more pre­sentable than hav­ing a roll of toi­let paper on the cof­fee table, but for the every­day snif­fles toi­let paper would do just fine, and it’s much cheap­er than facial tis­sues in styl­ish box­es. This may seem strange to North Amer­i­cans but grow­ing up in Hong Kong that’s what most house­holds would have in place of box­es of Kleenex. They even make all kinds of dis­pensers for toi­let paper rolls. For exam­ple, here’s one that looks like cup noo­dles.

And you dis­pense the toi­let paper by tak­ing out the card­board tube in the cen­tre (squash­ing it on its sides a few times helps). Any­ways, I nev­er thought of using a CD can­is­ter and it actu­al­ly fits per­fect­ly :D Per­haps one could even make the CD can­is­ter look like a cup noo­dle. Now that’s an idea for a new project.

And then in anoth­er cor­ner of the house I dis­cov­ered this…

Dried man­darin peel! My mom uses it main­ly in soup. It’s sup­posed to be good for you in some ways, espe­cial­ly if you have a cough, and phlegm. One can def­i­nite­ly buy this at the gro­cery store (espe­cial­ly the Chi­nese ones), but it’s actu­al­ly not that hard to make. Peel man­darin orange. Eat man­darin orange. Save man­darin peel. Lay on plate/tray to dry. It takes patience though, because I think it needs to dry for months before it can be used. But def­i­nite­ly not dif­fi­cult. I actu­al­ly took the pic­ture main­ly because the orange peel looks rather strik­ing on the blue tray.

And final­ly, I found a pop­si­cle in the freezer.

It has noth­ing to do with resource­ful­ness, I just thought the colours were pret­ty. It’s cot­ton can­dy flavoured. Did­n’t taste as good as it looked (it basi­cal­ly tast­ed like frozen sug­ar water), but the pop­si­cle stick has a nice shape.

Two nights ago I was look­ing at this stick at my messy desk and was won­der­ing what I can make with it. I thought of mak­ing a cot­ton can­dy fairy so I took apart a fake fab­ric rose for it. But then I left my glue gun at work and PVA glue is just use­less for porous mate­ri­als, and I was­n’t too thrilled about the cot­ton can­dy fairy any­ways. So I set it aside and thought per­haps I will come across oth­er things that I can use the stick for… and I did! And you will see that project in the next post, tomor­row! :D

And just look­ing at the pic­ture of it now I think it would make a good bur­nish­ing tool, or bone fold­er. Will have to try that out.

Cheers!

Favourite-things Friday

Posted on by trish

Win­dowsills.

Two years ago we plant­ed some mar­jo­ram, among oth­er herbs, and it thrived on the win­dowsill. I think I might plant more this year.

Napa cab­bage is a sta­ple in our home. I was fin­ish­ing one up one day and was fas­ci­nat­ed by what I found at the core of the cab­bage. I thought it looked like some kind of deep-sea crea­ture. And I thought it would make a nice pic­ture with the fil­tered sun­light on the windowsill.

And yes­ter­day, I was feel­ing rather thank­ful for the earth beneath my feet. As I formed the earth in my hand it turned into a con­tain­er. And I con­tem­plat­ed the idea of the earth as a con­tain­er. I thought about all the crea­tures and the things it has been con­tain­ing through the ages. I won­dered what sto­ries it would tell of these things and crea­tures, if it could tell sto­ries. I won­dered how it feels about all these things and crea­tures, if it had feel­ings. And then I took a pic­ture of it bask­ing in the sun on the win­dowsill, with the peel­ing paint.

I like windowsills.

wisdom from an acorn

Posted on by trish

From this post by The Small Object Steno Pad.

It makes me think about what it means to hold my ground, and for what.

It makes me think about what it means to have faith, to be sure of what I hope for, to be cer­tain of what I do not see.

And I thought this is a rather beau­ti­ful reminder:

We believe sto­ries are valu­able, no mat­ter how many peo­ple read them.
We believe fol­low­ing your pas­sion is more impor­tant that watch­ing your site meter.
We believe in the hand­made, the first try, the small start, and the good effort.
We believe that small is beautiful.

From The Small is Beau­ti­ful Manifesto
(to learn more click on the “Small is Beau­ti­ful” but­ton on the side bar)

Just think­ing about the small things this morn­ing. More to come lat­er, hope­ful­ly today. But for now, I need to get some gro­ceries and some school work done (meh).