Month: January 2017

happy year of the rooster!

Posted on by trish

Usu­al­ly I’d be hav­ing a reg­u­lar work day over Lunar New Year, but this year it falls on a Sat­ur­day! So I thought I’d cel­e­brate by try­ing out a rice cook­er turnip cake recipe :D

I remem­ber my Hak­ka grand­moth­er mak­ing lots and lots of turnip cakes in prepa­ra­tion for new year. Turnip cake is also Mike’s favourite at dim sum. So even though I’m not so good with cook­ing, I thought I’d give it a try. And it actu­al­ly turned out quite well, and tast­ed like turnip cake! The recipe I found is all in Chi­nese, but if you can’t read Chi­nese but are inter­est­ed in mak­ing turnip cake with a rice cook­er, here’s what I did :D 

The main ingre­di­ents are: (they can usu­al­ly be pur­chased at Asian gro­cery stores)

400g daikon radish (I don’t have a scale so I don’t know how much I used for sure, but used one aver­age size daikon radish)
80g Chi­nese sausage (I used one)
80g pre­served meat (?) (not sure what it is in Eng­lish, did­n’t use)
3 shi­itake mush­rooms (soaked for a few hours to rehydrate)
1 tbsp dried shrimps (soaked for a few hours to rehy­drate. I prob­a­bly used 3 tbsp, as pic­tured. Did­n’t mea­sure. 1 tbsp of shrimps just seems too few. I like shrimps.)
1 cup of rice flour (I used about 1/4 cup more because it looked like I had more daikon than called for)
1 cup of water (I used about 1/4 cup more, and used the liq­uid cre­at­ed from shred­ding the daikon, as well as the soak­ing water from the mush­rooms, for flavour) 
I also used a small amount of cilantro, chopped

Sea­son­ing for the daikon:
 1 tsp chick­en instant stock mix
1/8 tsp sug­ar (did­n’t mea­sure, used a pinch)
1/8 tsp salt (same as above)
a bit of white pepper

Sea­son­ing for mushrooms/shrimps/sausage:
 1/8 tsp soy sauce (a few drops)
1/8 tsp sug­ar (a pinch)
1/8 tsp rice wine (did­n’t use, because I don’t have rice wine)

1) Chop mush­rooms into thin strips. Rough­ly chop shrimps.

2) Chop Chi­nese sausage into small bits

3) Mix mush­rooms, shrimps and sausage togeth­er with sea­son­ing (the soy sauce, sug­ar and rice wine)

4) Heat wok (I used a fry­ing pan because I don’t have a wok), quick fry mush­rooms, shrimps and sausage with 1 tbsp of oil. Put in a dish and set aside.

5) Peel and shred daikon. Drain and save the liq­uid in a bowl, add water (I use the water from the mush­room soak, fil­tered with a cof­fee fil­ter) to make 1 cup. In a bowl mix this liq­uid with rice flour. Set aside.

6) Heat wok (I used a large fry­ing pan), quick fry the shred­ded daikon with the daikon sea­son­ing and 1/2 tbsp of oil. Turn down heat and cov­er, cook for a few min­utes until soft. Mix in the mushrooms/shrimps/sausage and cilantro. Turn off heat. Mix in the rice flower mix­ture quickly.

7) Grease rice cook­er, pour mix­ture into rice cook­er. Cook in rice cook­er on white rice setting.

It looked like I had enough to make 2 cakes so I made an extra small one on the steam­ing rack in the rice cook­er, on a greased tin plate. When the rice cook­er fin­ished cook­ing for the first time, the small turnip cake did­n’t look cooked, and I was­n’t sure about the larg­er one in the rice cook­er, so I cooked it again on the “quick steam” set­ting. After that the large one looked done (has a slight translu­cent qual­i­ty), but the top one still looked uncooked (opaque like rice pud­ding), so I steamed it the old school way, until it looked cooked.

Here’s the large one cooked in the rice cook­er. I’m quite proud of how it turned out! :D

The large one is for a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing tomor­row. The small one we cut up, pan fried and ate :)

It’s stick­i­er than it’s sup­posed to, I think I used too much daikon, and did­n’t drain it enough (I think one is sup­posed to press the shred­ded daikon to get all the liq­uid out). But it tast­ed like turnip cake! Which is a Chi­nese New Year mir­a­cle giv­en my culi­nary skills, or our rice cook­er is mag­i­cal :D

May the new year bring you good health, much suc­cess and lots of happiness!
 

sideways reimagined

Posted on by trish

I wrote the pat­tern for the Side­ways sweater a few years back, and want­ed to make a new ver­sion based on the design with sol­id dou­ble cro­chet stitch­es. But then I thought just rows upon rows of dou­ble cro­chet stitch­es would be too plain to look at and too bor­ing to make, so here’s what I came up with :D

It’s a very relaxed-look­ing pullover, with 3/4 sleeves. Use a soft yarn with nice drape. I used Caron Sim­ply Soft, and it worked real­ly well.

Size:
Fin­ished cir­cum­fer­ence at bust: 37″ 
Sleeve cir­cum­fer­ence at upper arm: 14″
Sleeve length: 11.5″
Length: 22″ 

Mate­r­i­al:
6.5 mm and 5.5 mm cro­chet hooks
Caron Sim­ply Soft yarn in Dark Coun­try Blue, 3 skeins

Note: 
Pullover is worked from side to side, start­ing from one sleeve cuff and end­ing at the oth­er sleeve cuff, then fold­ed in half along shoul­ders, and sewn togeth­er along under­arm seams and side seams. The con­struc­tion is fair­ly sim­ple, so it would be easy to mod­i­fy sizes. Pat­tern will include sug­ges­tions on mak­ing larg­er sizes.

Pat­tern

Sleeve

Row 1 (RS): with larg­er hook, ch 36, dc in 4th ch from hook, dc in each ch to end, turn. (34 dc — begin­ning ch 3 counts as a dc)

To increase sleeve cir­cum­fer­ence: for each addi­tion­al inch, add 4 ch to the begin­ning ch 36. Note that the total stitch count will be increased as well.

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as a dc through­out), dc in each dc to end, turn.

Rows 3–5: repeat row 2

Row 6: ch 3, 2 dc in next dc, dc in each dc until last two st, 2 dc in next dc, dc in top of turn­ing ch, turn.

Rows 7–11: repeat row 2

Row 12: repeat row 6

Rows 13–18: repeat rows 7–12 once more. (40 dc at row 18) 

To increase sleeve length: for each addi­tion­al inch, work row 2 twice more.

Row 19: ch 3, dc in each dc to end, ch 45, fas­ten off.

To increase total length: for each addi­tion­al inch, add 4 ch to the ch 45.

Front/Shoulder/Back

Row 1: reat­tach yarn to top of begin­ning ch of row 19, ch 47, dc in 4th ch from hook, dc in each ch, dc in each dc across sleeve, dc in each ch in the ch 45 from row 19, turn. (130 dc)

To increase length: if you’ve added ch to the pre­vi­ous ch 45, add the same num­ber of ch to the ch 47 in row 1.Note that the total stitch count will be increased as well.

Rows 2–5: work as row 2 in sleeve.

To increase cir­cum­fer­ence at bust to 39″ (41″): repeat row 2 once (twice) more.

Row 6: ch 3, dc in next 61 dc, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 7: ch 3, dc in each dc until ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 8: ch 3, dc in each dc until 2 dc before ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 9: ch 3, dc in each dc until ch 2 sp, [2dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2] twice, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Front

Row 1: ch 3, dc in each dc until 2 dc before ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc, turn. Leave remain­ing st unworked.

Row 2: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 3: ch 3, dc in each dc till 2 dc before ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, turn.

Row 4: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 5: ch 3, dc in each dc till 2 dc before ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] three times, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, turn.

Row 6: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] three times, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 7: ch 3, dc in each dc till 2 dc before ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] four times, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, turn.

Row 8: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] four times, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 9: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] three times, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, turn.

Row 10: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] three times, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 11: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, turn.

Row 12: ch 5, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, dc in each dc to end. Take hook off loop but keep loop on hold, don’t fas­ten off.

Back

Row 1: with a sep­a­rate ball of yarn, attach yarn to the stitch to the left of the last stitch of row 1 of front. ch 3, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Rows 2–12: repeat row 1.

Fas­ten off.

Front/shoulder/back

Row 1 (join row): place hook back in loop where it was left off in row 12 of front. ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 5 sp, ch 2, dc in 3rd ch of ch 5, dc in last dc made in back, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 2: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, [ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp] twice, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 3: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 4: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Row 5: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, ch 2, sk 2 dc, dc in next dc and each dc to end, turn.

Row 6: ch 3, dc in each dc till ch 2 sp, 2 dc in ch 2 sp, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Rows 7–9: ch 3, dc in each dc to end. 

To increase cir­cum­fer­ence at bust to 39″ (41″): if you’ve added rows in the pre­vi­ous front/shoulder/back sec­tion, add the same num­ber of rows here. 

Fas­ten off.

Sleeve

If you’ve made increas­es in the oth­er sleeve, make sure that this sleeve has the same num­ber of stitch­es and rows.

Row 1: From last stitch made, count 45 dc, join yarn at the 46th dc. ch 3, dc in next 39 st, turn.

Row 2: ch 3, 2 dc tog, dc in each dc till last 3 st, 2 dc tog, dc in top of turn­ing ch, turn.

Row 3: ch 3, dc in each dc to end, turn.

Rows 4–7: repeat row 3.

Rows 8–19: repeat rows 2–7 two more times (34 dc). Fas­ten off.

Fin­ish­ing

With right sides togeth­er, fold sweater along shoul­ders, and sew under­arm and side seams togeth­er. Weave in ends.

With small­er hook, attach yarn at shoul­der seam of neck open­ing. Work one row of sc even­ly around neck opening.

With small­er hook, attach yarn at side seam of low­er edge of sweater. Work one row of sc even­ly around low­er edge.

(2 sc in each end of row worked for me.)

 

Hope you enjoy this re-make! Drop me a note if you have any ques­tions, or if you spot any mis­takes, I’d great­ly appre­ci­ate it!

Hap­py crafting!

 

forest

Posted on by trish

First sweater project of the year is from a gor­geous pat­tern in Learn to Cro­chet Love to Cro­chet by Anna Wilkin­son. The patch­work pat­tern was a lot of fun to make, and it reminds me of the diverse foliage in the forest.

I made the ribbed bands using sin­gle cro­chet stitch­es in back loops, because I had a lack of patience for slip stitch­es :S But I’m hap­py with how it turned out :)

Also! This is made with yarn I bought in Hong Kong! It’s real­ly just acrylic DK yarn made it Europe I think, and it was on sale, so I bought a sweater quan­ti­ty. So glad that it’s put to good use :D

AND! Did you notice the new design of this space? :D Mike kind­ly did an update! It’s not very dif­fer­ent, because I want­ed it to still feel like home, but just more con­tem­po­rary and less late 90s blog-like, so it’s like a reno to the bath­room or kitchen and some recon­fig­u­ra­tions of fur­ni­ture. And I think the result is per­fect :) and it’s respon­sive! (that’s a new word I learned :D it means that the lay­out adapts to the mobile devices so it’s easy to read on any device) 

Here’s a great start to a crafty year! Look­ing for­ward to shar­ing more crafty adven­tures with you. Cheers! 

holiday crafting

Posted on by trish

After mak­ing gifts for months before Christ­mas I final­ly had some time to make the things I want­ed for myself! :D 

I lost my gloves on my first day off for the hol­i­days. It was like the 10th pair I’ve lost. I buy the fleece ones from the dol­lar store and they’re the best — they’re warm and the youth size fits me per­fect­ly. But I guess because they’re so easy to replace, I keep los­ing them! And most of the time I don’t even know how or where! So I thought if I were to knit myself a pair of mit­tens, I’d be more care­ful with them. 

I’ve always want­ed to try the Ancient Stitch Mit­tens by Purl Soho, the stitch pat­tern is just so beau­ti­ful. But the thumb part is knit­ted in the round with DPNs. Not that I haven’t done that before, but I’d much rather knit­ting with 2 nee­dles, and I did­n’t real­ly want to get a new set of short DPNs just for this. So I made up a way to knit them flat.

This isn’t a great pho­to, but you can see that I’ve knit­ted the mit­tens in 3 parts — back, thumb, and palm, then joined them togeth­er. Maybe I’ll write anoth­er post explain­ing how I did that in case oth­ers are inter­est­ed. And yes, I was also vis­it­ing with some old friends dur­ing the hol­i­days :) Mike found his copy of Bun­nic­u­la while going through some old stuff at his parents’. 

I also added cuffs so they’d tuck in bet­ter inside my coat’s sleeve cuffs. I was quite hap­py with the fin­ished mit­tens! But they turned out real­ly huge on me, and I’ve used 6 mm nee­dles instead of the 8 or 9 mm nee­dles that the pat­tern called for. My dad end­ed up tak­ing them because they fit him :D

I was deter­mined to give the pat­tern anoth­er try, this time using a lighter yarn and even small­er nee­dles. I used a skein of hand dyed wool that’s slight­ly heav­ier than the reg­u­lar worsted, and used 5.5 mm nee­dles for the mit­tens and 4.5 mm for the cuffs. And they fit much bet­ter! :D

Here’s a bet­ter pic­ture of them.

Anoth­er project I want­ed to make was the pol­ka dot hat. I used the Lov­ing Hat pat­tern by the Garter Stitch Witch, but knit­ted it flat of course. It is a bit of a has­sle to knit this flat because on the purl side I had to car­ry the white yarn all the way across. Some­times I won­der why I’m so stub­born about knit­ting every­thing flat… but any­way, the fair isle knit­ting made the hat extra thick!

My mom want­ed the same hat, and because this one end­ed up being too big for me, I gave her this hat, and made some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to make a small­er hat for myself, with wider spac­ing between pol­ka dots.

For the new year Mike and I decid­ed to make some soup jars for the pantry, since we so often come home from work in the evening with no idea what to make. We used this recipe from She Uncov­ered. 

Added a bay leaf because it’s pret­ty :D

More projects to come, keep­ing hands busy and mind hap­py with more knit­ting and cro­chet! :D Have a good week­end everyone!

 

one busy elf!

Posted on by trish

Now that the hol­i­day’s over, I can show you the Christ­mas gifts I made and all the fun I’ve been hav­ing since the fall! This was one busy elf!

So I made a num­ber of wash cloths, to give with arti­san soaps that I got from craft fairs, very prac­ti­cal gifts that I thought every­one could use :) The but­ter­fly wash cloth is from this Pail­lon Cloth pat­tern, which was a lot of fun to make with a var­ie­gat­ed cot­ton. The tiny fish ones are for my niece and nephews, from this pat­tern on Rav­el­ry. The hang­ing tow­el was a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Cir­cle Cloth pat­tern. Also made a cou­ple of these pineap­ple hang­ing tow­els.

 

I took a work­shop in Novem­ber with my co-work­ers at a glass shop mak­ing mille­fiori pen­dants. I’ve made one for myself before and it was a lot of fun, so I made anoth­er for a gift :)

While mak­ing pom pom hair ties for my sin­cere sock cup­cake project, I thought I’d also try mak­ing some soot sprites hair ties for a cou­ple of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans :D

Caught in a per­fect­ly tiny tin! :D (that used to hold some spark­ly tea)

These hedge­hogs mitts are for my niece, made almost entire­ly in com­mute. Excel­lent pat­tern from mom.me.

Spent a cou­ple of Sun­day after­noons at the Gar­diner Muse­um drop-in clay class, and made an army of orna­ments and tea bag hold­ers! It was a great way to spend a week­end after­noon cre­ative­ly, must go back sometimes!

And my newest inven­tion — sushi sock rolls! :D For my dear friend’s baby. I used this 2‑needle baby sock pat­tern, but had to mod­i­fy it quite a bit to get the black part long enough to roll around. So the socks are faaar­rr too big for the baby right now, they’re more for a tod­dler. But they’ll fit soon enough! And the idea is that when the child out grows the socks, they can be rolled up and sewed togeth­er per­ma­nent­ly and be used as play food, or a pin cush­ion :D

 Now, the biggest project ever under­tak­en — behold the polar bear blanket!!!

I’ve been work­ing on it for months and it’s for my par­ents! Wish I have a bet­ter pic­ture of it, but it’s just so big! I did­n’t have the room in my place or my par­ents’ for a good pho­to shoot. So here it is on my par­ents’ bed :) This is my first attempt at cor­ner-to-cor­ner cro­chet as well. I first made the polar bear blan­ket from Sim­ply Cro­chet mag­a­zine (issue 50), then thought my par­ents would prob­a­bly like a larg­er blan­ket. So I thought I’d add squares around it. I used the pine cone pat­tern from Make & Do Crew, then found and mod­i­fied some knit­ting and cross-stitch­ing graphs to make the snowflakes and the north star. Dis­cov­ered that Microsoft Excel is a great pro­gram to draft cro­chet charts! 

And now, one great gift I received from my sis­ter — from the awe­some Out of Print cloth­ing, a Miss Pere­grine shirt!

Stay pecu­liar and lev­i­tate!

(Well, maybe not too much lev­i­ta­tion this year. I haven’t tried tak­ing this kind of pho­tos for a while, and then after­wards my knees were a bit sore… anoth­er year old­er, after all. But stay pecu­liar, definitely!)

Hap­py first week of Jan­u­ary! Hope every­one had a re-ener­giz­ing hol­i­day and have a great start to the new year! :D