A cou­ple of weeks ago I went to vis­it my par­ents, and my mom asked me to clean out some of my old stuff. I always avoid­ed clean­ing out old stuff because I don’t want to decide whether to throw some­thing out or not. I’ve been delay­ing it since I moved out of my par­ents’ house, and I feel bad for still tak­ing up so much space even though I no longer live there, so now I’m slow­ly get­ting into the process of dig­ging things out… And I’m hap­py to report that I’ve thrown out some things that I real­ly don’t need (like tried up tubes of poster paint from grade school and unfin­ished salt dough projects), and I’ve also tak­en home some real­ly inter­est­ing things that I’ve kept since I was a child but haven’t seen for ages and ages, to a point where I’ve for­got­ten that I have these things…

So, let me intro­duce… this is Mr. Rice Pad­dle, who was giv­en to me by my Gr.5/6 teacher. I need to fix his rice pad­dle because it’s kind of falling apart, but I think he’s a real­ly awe­some-look­ing oni­giri and one day I’m going to cro­chet one after him! (he’s also a bank and I actu­al­ly found hun­dreds of HK$ tucked inside him!)

And look! A tiny squir­rel! It was sit­ting in a box at the bot­tom of the draw­er, and I had to take her home because she has such a pre­cious expres­sion on her face, and the tiny blue bow… Plus, she looks per­fect with this acorn on our win­dowsill, even though she already has her own acorn. It was also a gift from my grade school teacher (in Hong Kong we got gifts for get­ting high marks in spelling tests, term tests, etc.).

And then there are things that I kept when I was a child, and actu­al­ly haven’t got­ten thrown out and made it across the ocean when we moved to Cana­da. Like this 20 cents coin here. I don’t know when I found it but I know I kept it because it has a hole at the top and I thought it would make a good neck­lace charm. But of course I nev­er made it into a neck­lace charm and it had been sit­ting in the bot­tom of my draw for­ev­er… until now! So, this is the side that says “20 cents”, which is equiv­a­lent to rough­ly $0.026 CAD.

And then on this side is a bauhinia flower. Along with this coin I also found a pur­ple bead that looked like a semi-pre­cious stone, prob­a­bly from a neck­lace that I took apart. So I thought they belong togeth­er, since bauhinia flow­ers are usu­al­ly purple-magenta-ish.

So, after I don’t know how many years this coin I saved for a neck­lace is final­ly made into a neck­lace! All it took was a cou­ple of jump rings. I also cleaned the coin with a bit of rub­bing alco­hol. :D I’m rather pleased with it.

And then I also found these beads I made in junior high, with the left­over fimo from a snow globe kit. I remem­ber buy­ing a book on fimo just to learn the tech­niques for mak­ing faux mille­fiori beads. Man, I don’t think I’d have the patience now…

These are tiny, and I don’t know what to do with those green beads yet, maybe com­bined them with oth­er things… But I thought the pur­ple one looks good on its own on a short chain. I actu­al­ly made a trip to the bead store to get gold-colour find­ings for these, but I got the wrong kind of head pins :( so I resort­ed to mak­ing my own head pin, with a spi­ral at the bot­tom and a loop at the top, like so:

And it looked like this, when I’ve short­ened the chain:

I also found this swirly heart, and Luna.

I real­ly don’t remem­ber when I made the swirly heart, but I prob­a­bly made it with fimo. I also don’t remem­ber where Luna came from, but I do remem­ber her being my favourite char­ac­ter from the Sailor Moon series, fol­lowed by Sailor Mars. Though I would have to say that my least favourite car­toon char­ac­ter of all time is actu­al­ly Sailor Moon her­self. Her whin­ing drove me crazy, espe­cial­ly in the North Amer­i­can ver­sion. I was also rather upset that in the N. A. ver­sion Luna was giv­en this real­ly scratchy old-witchy voice — her voice is sup­posed to be bright and ener­gized and cute like her char­ac­ter! The North Amer­i­can peo­ple got it all wrong… *shakes fist*

Any­way, I digress. I attached jump rings to both and put them on a chain for the pho­to but I actu­al­ly don’t know what to do with them yet. So they’re going back into their cap­sule — which is a heart-shaped box lined with red vel­vety mate­r­i­al on the inside and cov­ered in seashells on the out­side. I’ve had it since as far as I could remem­ber, but I’ve only recent­ly tak­en it home from my par­ents’ recently.

And speak­ing of the pas­sage of time, the next post will be my 100th post on this blog!! :D So! To cel­e­brate, I will be spend­ing the 100th post on the things I will make for Leethal’s 2nd Make-Along this Sat­ur­day. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the first Make-Along back in spring, about the time when I start­ed this blog, so I’m real­ly excit­ed that the 2nd Make-Along is hap­pen­ing around the time of the 100th post! :D I will be cro­chet­ing things that have to do with the num­ber 100, and if you’re inter­est­ed in set­ting aside some cre­ative time this week­end please join me and oth­er crafters in the Make-Along! :D