Month: May 2016

diana in seoul and hong kong

Posted on by trish

Final­ly got all the 3 rolls of film from our Asia trip devel­oped! They were tak­en with a Diana Mini in lomog­ra­phy style (a sort of extreme­ly low-tech pho­tog­ra­phy style, the Diana is basi­cal­ly a plas­tic toy cam­era with no elec­tri­cal mech­a­nism in it. Even the viewfind­er isn’t accu­rate. One would nev­er real­ly know how the pic­tures will turn out — a fun kind of sur­prise). Here are some of my favourite shots :D

These are from the palace in Seoul, it was a rainy day when we vis­it­ed, but cher­ry blossoms!

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I was just so amazed by how these stones have been on the ground for thou­sands of years.

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Pic­tures from the tra­di­tion­al Kore­an vil­lage turned out great! It was a real­ly sun­ny day.

These are kim­chi urns :D

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This one’s my favourite from all the rolls <3

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So in love with the architecture.

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And here’s a side street in Seoul we walked down to look for a mar­ket. Mope­ds every­where and no side­walk :S quite an adventure.

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Hong Kong is sim­i­lar, with more high-rise!

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Some sights from the streets. The sign says some­thing about express bus stop, veg­etable, fresh fish, chick­en, eggs, whole sale mar­ket (read­ing from left to right, sen­tence reads vertically).

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Yarn­bombed on Stone Slabs Street, a street with fair­ly steep decline paved with stone slabs and with ven­dor stalls on either sides of the street. I imag­ine the rail­ings are nec­es­sary espe­cial­ly when it rains!

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Sai Kung Pier, in an old fish­ing vil­lage to the east of the city, ven­dors sell­ing seafood from their boats.

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The vil­lage where I spent my child­hood. The alley­way is still the same :)

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Leav­ing the vil­lage, pedes­tri­an path and bike lane lead­ing to an underpass.

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To the west of the city, we vis­it­ed Tai‑O, also a fish­ing vil­lage on Lan­tau Island, famous for its stilt hous­es, also known as “Venice of the East”.

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It was an over­cast day, but this pic­ture of the red bridge turned out so great :D

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And I love the light leaks in the begin­ning of the roll.

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We’ve been back for a while now, get­ting the pic­tures back lets me relive the trip a bit and for a moment I wish I were still there. But going on that trip also reminds me that I could approach my sur­round­ings with the same curios­i­ty and enthu­si­asm wher­ev­er I am. There’s much to explore and so much I haven’t seen just a few bus/subway rides away. So, the explo­rations con­tin­ue, and more pic­tures to come! :D

Wish­ing you much joy in your adven­tures this week!

 

hello summer!

Posted on by trish

Well, it’s not offi­cial­ly sum­mer yet, but I think most Cana­di­ans see the Vic­to­ria Day long week­end as the first long week­end of sum­mer, and we’ve actu­al­ly got extra extra nice and warm weath­er this week­end after a rather cold spring, this week­end is such a gift! :D

We did­n’t want to let such nice week­end slip away, so Mike sug­gest­ed tak­ing one of the Dis­cov­ery Walks in Toron­to. We picked the Hum­ber Riv­er, marsh­es and Old Mill walk because it looked like there are a few dif­fer­ent things to see even if we did only half of it (the entire trail involves about 2 hours of walk­ing and it goes in a loop, but I’m not able to walk that long due to chron­ic foot pain >_< so we just did half the loop) and it’s close to pub­lic transit.

Parts of the trail was orig­i­nal­ly a trad­ing trail used by First Nations peo­ples trav­el­ling between Lake Ontario and the Upper Great Lakes.

In case you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing this trail, we took the Queensway bus from Keele Sta­tion and got off at Queensway and Kingsway South. We then walked north along River­side Dri­ve towards Old Mill, then hopped on the sub­way home from Old Mill station.

We first came across the Hum­ber Marsh­es. We could­n’t quite get down the river­bank but we could look down from a hill. There were peo­ple prac­tic­ing drag­on boat­ing! :D

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Then we pret­ty much just walked through a res­i­den­tial area. It was a nice walk through a neigh­bour­hood with real­ly nice hous­es, but I did­n’t take any pictures…

At the north end of the trail we arrived at Eti­enne Brule Park. There was the Old Mill Bridge and peo­ple fishing…

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… and geese com­ing back to the north.

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It was a nice walk along the river.

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Then we stopped in the his­toric Old Mill Inn to look around…

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It’s called Old Mill because it is built near the site where the first sawmill in Toron­to was built in the late 1700s. The prop­er­ty was built about 100 years ago, looks like an old tav­ern, but it was first opened as a tea garden :)

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Speak­ing of tea, Vic­to­ria Day week­end is the per­fect time to play tea par­ty with my dear child­hood friend :D I’ve been want­i­ng to go to the after­noon tea at Duf­flet Beach for a long time, because it’s one of the more afford­able places in Toron­to and I’ve nev­er had tea ser­vice like this before. Check out our spread!

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And the fan­cy table set­ting! I did­n’t expect a table cloth! We each had copi­ous amount of tea. I espe­cial­ly love this sweet tea timer.

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Close up of the sweet treats… and I was so glad that the scones were served with clot­ted cream :D

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It was a nice expe­ri­ence but my friend sug­gest­ed that next time we could make our own after­noon tea :D Look­ing for­ward to more fun sum­mer adventures!

Hope every­one has a great start to the week!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

Super adorable giant flop­py rab­bits, finger/arm knit­ting instruc­tions from Flax & Twine.

 

I like the cabled col­lar. From Lion Brand Yarn. (reg­is­tra­tion required to access free pattern)

 

*squish* these remind me so much of Neko Atsume :D Free Rav­el­ry down­load by Sarah Sloy­er.

 

Check out these beau­ti­ful­ly knit­ted fun­gi on BromeLeighad! The artist knits one kind of fun­gi every week in the 52 Forms of Fun­gi series.

I like this ele­gant mask from Live Craft Love.

 

More cats! And total­ly cus­tomiz­able. By Lit­tle Mee on Rav­el­ry.

 

Capelet per­fect for spring­time, from Clas­sic Elite Yarns.

 

Have a great week­end, every­one! :D

 

library love

Posted on by trish

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Anoth­er rea­son to love and sup­port the pub­lic library <3

I got this 3‑D print­ed at the Toron­to Ref­er­ence Library! :D If you live in Toron­to, the 3D print­ers are also avail­able at the Fort York branch and the Scar­bor­ough Civic Cen­tre branch.

Back in Feb­ru­ary I was feel­ing real­ly blah and stressed out at work. So I decid­ed to sign up for a course that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with my job, which was the 3D print­ing cer­tifi­cate class at the library. Once peo­ple com­plete the class, they can book the 3D print­ers to use when­ev­er they’re avail­able. They charge a very rea­son­able 5 cents per minute for the use of the print­er, and that was all. One can choose from many colours of plas­tic, and staff is there to help if any­one needs tech­ni­cal support.

I once saw some­one wear­ing a 3D print­ed bracelet and I was real­ly impressed, so I’ve always want­ed to make one. But of course I have not idea how to design one! So I down­loaded one I liked best from Thin­gi­verse, called the Sub­di­vi­sion Bracelet.

I must be hon­est that, after 3 months, I don’t remem­ber much from the cer­tifi­cate course so I had no clue what to do after down­load­ing the file. Kind of embar­rass­ing. Good thing Mike was there as well and he’s very techy. And the library staff were very cool with drop­ping us hints and reminders as we appeared to be clue­less­ly flip­ping through our notes try­ing to fig­ure out what the next steps are and all the set­tings we should be adjusting.

Our first try did­n’t go so well. For some unknown rea­son the print­er stopped work­ing prop­er­ly. Not only did the kind library staff not charge me for the failed piece, they offered to try print­ing anoth­er for me the next morn­ing on a dif­fer­ent machine, and I’d just have to go and pick it up!

I think the staff were also want­i­ng to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test out an intri­cate project on a new machine, but I thought they were super kind to offer!

And it worked! It took just over 2 hours to print and costs about $8. Here’s a dif­fer­ent side of it.

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I under­stand the 3D print­er as kind of like a very pre­cise auto­mat­ed glue gun, which squeezes out thin lines of hot melt­ed glue to build a form. You can see the lines of glue pret­ty clear­ly in the pic­ture above, and under the super macro lens.

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And this is how it looks on an arm :)

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The sur­faces are less smooth than I imag­ined, I think it can be improved by sand­ing, but I think I might be too lazy to do that :S I’m OK with the way it is.

I’m think­ing of going back to make some Christ­mas gifts this year :D

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone!

 

long trek

Posted on by trish

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I fin­ished this sweater in March and did­n’t have a chance to take a pic­ture of it until now. It’s the Tumult Sweater from the win­ter 2016 issue of Inter­weave Cro­chet.

It took a fair­ly long time. I start­ed work­ing on it over Christ­mas hol­i­day. It’s quite a repet­i­tive pat­tern so I got a bit bored, and put it down a few times, then work­ing a few rows at a time through­out win­ter. A long trek.

But final­ly we’re here :) I like how it turned out. I think I used a thin­ner yarn than called for, test­ed it a few times and fol­lowed the stitch count for size large to get the sweater mea­sure­ments to be size small. I like that it can look casu­al and it can be dressed up as well, with a floun­cy skirt, twirling around the Maypole… Hap­py May! :D