Jumping for joy! XD
I can’t believe it, Marshie WON!! He won!!! AHHHHHH!!!
I’ve never won anything before… this is really kind of hard to believe… I think I need to like… make myself a cup of hot tea and sit down for a bit… I really wasn’t expecting this… so grateful for the kind people over at Instructables… sniff…
MARSHIE WON!!!
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
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!
Pattern for a chestnut! Pretty simple and straightforward. I suppose the finished size is about the same size as a typical chestnut. I jotted down this pattern while I was making it, and I’m new to this pattern-writing thing, so I apologize for mistakes if there is any, and please let me know if you spot them. Your feedback/comments are much appreciated!
So, anyways…
To make a chestnut you’ll need:
Note: the chestnut pictured is turned inside out, i.e. wrong side is facing out, because I liked the shape of the wrong side better than the right for the chestnut. It’s different for different yarn and different amigurumi, I think.
Pattern:
Row 1: with tan, ch 3, 4 sc in 3rd st from hook, sl st in top of beginning ch
Row 2: ch 2, sc in same sc, 2 sc in next sc, sc in next sc, 2 sc in each of next two sc, sc in next sc, sl st in top of beginning ch 2.
Row 3: ch 2, sc in same sc, 2 sc in next sc, 1 sc in each of next 3 sc, 2 sc in each of next 2 sc, 1 sc in each of next 3 sc, insert hook in top of beginning ch 2, drop tan yarn and pick up brown yarn, yo and pull through loop to complete sl st. Fasten off tan yarn.
Row 4 — 5: ch 2, 1 sc in each sc around, sl st in top of beginning ch 2.
Row 6: ch 2, 2 sc tog 3 times, 1 sc in each of next 2 sc, 2 sc tog 3 times, 1 sc in each of next 2 sc, sl st in beginning ch 2.
Stuff chestnut. You might also want to sew on the eyes and mouth at this point (before stuffing it), but I prefer deciding the placement for eyes and mouth after the amigurumi is stuffed and shaped. I usually make magnets or pin, so I hide the thread ends at the back where I would attach magnets or pin.
Row 7: ch 2, 4 sc tog twice, 2 sc tog over last sc and top of beginning ch 2. Fasten off, weave in end.
Sew on eyes and mouth if you haven’t already.
And there you have it, a chestnut! I made mine into a fridge magnet by attaching magnets to the back…
… and it makes sure I don’t lose the recipes I’d like to try but haven’t gotten around to make (like this pancake cake I picked up at Ikea!)…
I used those very strong magnets that look like watch batteries, and by putting an extra magnet behind the fabric I can wear it as a pin! Here it is “pinned” on my shower curtain…
Oooh, or it can be made into a key chain or cellphone charm… strung together with crocheted fall leaves perhaps? Here’s a lovely free pattern of fall leaves on CraftStylish)
Or it might just sit on your desk and smile at you while you work…
Anyways, happy crocheting!
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!
