For my mom’s birth­day and moth­er’s day this year I made her fridge mag­nets, of a napa cab­bage and a chest­nut. She had told me that she want­ed some fridge mag­net friends ever since I start­ed mak­ing them two years ago, and after mak­ing batch­es of them for com­mis­sions and shows and stores I’ve final­ly got­ten around to mak­ing her two, which I’m feel­ing rather guilty about…

But any­ways, I made a napa cab­bage and a chest­nut because they are nick­names that my sis­ter and I gave our­selves when we were kids. My sis­ter was napa cab­bage and I was chest­nut. Actu­al­ly, we still call each oth­er by those names. Not exact­ly “napa cab­bage” and “chest­nut” (although that would be fun too), but napa cab­bage and chest­nut in Chi­nese, which sound like “Cil” and “Lud” respec­tive­ly (hence the pic­ture with the alpha­bet mag­nets :D). Napa cab­bage is one of my sis­ter’s favourite foods (prefer­ably cooked in a stew with chick­en) and chest­nut was one of my favourite things to eat (prefer­ably cooked in a stew, with chick­en). So I guess that’s where the nick­names came from.

Napa cab­bage was a bit of a free-form cro­chet project so I don’t have a pat­tern for it…

Chest­nut, on the oth­er hand, is a bit like saku­ra mochi, so I was able to jot down the pat­tern as I went and I will post it soon, maybe tomor­row! :D

The nick­name chest­nut may have also come from the time when my sis­ter and I were play­ing teacher and stu­dent, and I was call­ing myself “teacher chest­nut”, because there was a “teacher chest­nut” in Dr. Slump, which was a pop­u­lar Japan­ese car­toon when I was going up. This “teacher chest­nut” had a large head that looked like a — you guessed it! — chest­nut. I remem­ber the door to his home is even shaped like a chest­nut in the top part to accom­mo­date his head.

Appar­ent­ly, he dri­ves a tank (?). I don’t remem­ber that. And obvi­ous­ly I did­n’t look like “teacher chest­nut” here but I guess I just thought the whole idea of a chest­nut-head teacher is fun­ny so I kept call­ing myself that.

So I was real­ly excit­ed when San‑X put out Amagurichan, a chest­nut char­ac­ter. I even got the plush key chain from Hong Kong (I went to Hong Kong for oth­er rea­sons, of course. Yes, real­ly, I went for rea­sons oth­er than the plush key chain. But I did spend a lot of time look­ing for Amagurichan prod­ucts while I was there…). It had an out­er shell around its head with a Vel­cro clo­sure so it can be removed. Extreme­ly adorable. Bad deci­sion to chain it onto my back­pack and go to school with it, because it got stolen soon after :’( Will have to find anoth­er one if I ever go to Pacif­ic Mall, or, bet­ter yet, Hong Kong :)

So, any­way, a bit of fun mem­o­ries from my child­hood. Here’s wish­ing my mom a very hap­py birth­day and a sweet year ahead, filled with bless­ings, joy, and good health. And have a sweet Mon­day everyone!