“What I’ve Been Up To …”

This is my latest photo with my no.4, Nafis,  who had recently finished his stint at the National Service Camp, in Beranang.

Before I could blog about the event (which occurred last Tuesday), today I received the news of his SPM results. My boy got 8A+, 2A and 1B+. That’s  more than enough for me!

I am still in Kuantan for a training session, but would like to say this to Nafis - Well done!!!

For more pix of his stints in the Kem Millennium, Beranang:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nafisnaim/PLKN

And DH’s photos on his closing ceremony:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/matny6/20100309NafisPLKNClosing

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Touhid was one of my classmates during my e-Learning training at CICC, Japan in 2004. Together with other friends we had some great outings together while we were there. Since we left CICC, I’ve met some of the others during my travels:

1. Yudi in Jakarta
2. Mr Hiep & Mr Binh in Hanoi
3. Siriwan in Bangkok
4. Liang in Beijing.

Apart from meeting them there, Mr Hiep, Siriwan and Yudi had visited Kuala Lumpur and we had some time together too.

Last Thursday was Touhid’s turn to visit Kuala Lumpur. It was not really a visit.  Touhid and his family were on their way back to Gold Coast (he is a PhD student in Brisbane) from his homeland, Bangladesh. They arrived via MAS at 7.30am, and they were going to take the 9.40pm Air Asia flight to Gold Coast.

So, I took the day off and went to KLIA to fetch them. Rosaline,  Touhid’s missus is a charming lady. Rohn (the son) was shy but Anna (the daughter) is really a smart girl. I’ll tell you why later.

After leaving KLIA, our first destination was the LCCT to “dump” a couple of huge baggage at the “Baggage Storage” service. I could not send them back to LCCT later that day, so we thought it would be better to keep the bigger bags at LCCT so that it would be more convenient for Touhid and family to find their way back to LCCT from down town KL.

We then drove into Putrajaya. The obvious stop was the Putrajaya mosque. Despite being still early (about 9am), it was already very bright and hot, as can bee seen here:

We then stopped at McD (along the NKVE) for brunch before heading towards Genting Highlands.

It was my first time on the Genting cable car, and Touhid and I reminisced on our trip to Hakone (Japan) where we took a couple of cable cars, trains, and a river cruise - all in one day!

Here’s one shot as we went up to the top:

We only had less than 1 hour at the top, and since the outdoor theme park only offers day-passes, we had to give it a miss.

We then went to the Indoor Theme Park, and found out that we could buy RM8 tickets for single. Not to disappoint his kids, Touhid bought a couple of tickets:

His son insisted on the Ferries Wheel:

While Touhid took the ride, I looked around. The indoor park has changed a lot since the last time I was here (almost 10 years ago!).

I was surprised to see some gondolas:

On close examination only I noticed that they are mechanically operated, and the “Italians” in black and while shirt are just dummies:

Ah , well… I’ll wait for my real gondola ride in Venice - one day.. one day…

In the mean time, Touhid managed to get his kids another ride on the Merry-go-round before we had to head towards the cable car station.

We agreed that the signage in Genting can be improved a lot. Many a time we followed the signage only to come to a point where there was no more signage to our destination. We were grateful to Anna for being very observant and quick to retrack our paths! A smart 9-yr old girl she surely is!

We took our cable car ride down at 2pm. The first part of the ride was covered with clouds and the kids were so excited (actually, adults too!) to be “in” the clouds.

I finally left Touhid and family at KLCC (that’s the no.1 destination for Anna) at 3.30pm and headed back to Shah Alam. I had some other commitments to attend to hence I could not be with them any longer.

As I was saying goodbye to them, Rosaline handed over this little container to me:

When I was at a traffic light (getting into Jalan Sultan Ismail), I opened up the container and was pleasantly surprised to see the contents:

It’s a set of pearl necklace and earrings! Thank you Rosaline, I love them.

Soon we had to leave,

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Here’s the page 5 of a New York newspaper:

See the side note on the right-hand side .

See DH’s original post here.

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No, not the first earring I own, but the first earring that I made! Yes, earring, and not earrings, because I’ve only made one, and not a pair. Here it is:

I’ve used 925 silver parts that I bought recently, hence (hopefully) it doesn’t tarnish.

I’ll make the other one this weekend .

I’ve also made another pair of earrings but I haven’t got the pic yet.

In the mean time, if you care to read, Nuni has blogged about the Iceroom here.

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Remember the rose and daffodil that I made recently?

Tonight (or rather, last night if you consider that now is past midnight) I tried to make another flower, and here’s the result:

I think it’s much better than the previous rose, but if you take the top view, there’s still a lot of room for improvement:

Here’s the previous rose, for comparison:

The collection so far:

That’s all for now… I think I’ll take a breather from felt flower-making .

Thank you to DH for holding and capturing the bloom.

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I am still excited about this felt-flower making, so I made another one, attempting to produce a daffodil. Here it is:

Another shot:

The flower is still not complete:

Can do, ya? Now I need to find a satay bamboo stick for the stalk.

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I’ve made all sorts of flowers before. The first flowers I made were those using some velvety sticks, when I was in primary school. I also followed the craze in the 1970s to make flowers from rubber foam, plastic and straws.  When I was in secondary school I learned to make crepe paper flowers from my seniors. I also learned to make flowers from ribbons, stockings and tissue paper(I still make them for fun, esp during internal meetings/discussions).

I however have NEVER made any flower using felts! And to make things worse, I’ve not made any of those earlier mentioned flowers for at least 10 yrs now!

For our forthcoming NNC anniversary meet, I’ve enlisted myself  in the the lucky draw where each member is expected to handmake something, and on that day we will have a draw to determine who get’s what. One of the requirements is to have an accompanying felt flower.

It took me quite a while to find felts. Finally it was  Nuni who managed to get some for me from Lily Craft, Subang Parade.

So tonight, while watching “The Biggest Loser Asia”, I decided to try make a felt flower. And, here’s the product of the night:

Ah, too small for you to see? Here’s a close-up:

Actually the color is a very shocking pink! All the felts that Nuni bought (several colors altogether) are striking, except for the brown one.

I tried to get better shots of my maiden felt flower, but managed only this:

and this (on the sofa):

And finally, another perspective of the bloom:

I am glad that we are asked to only make ONE flower and not a whole bouquet!

Before the end of the tv programme, I managed to make a bud to go with it:

And here’s the combo:

Actually making this flower really reminded me of the foam/sponge flowers that my late mum taught me to make.

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Last Tuesday, when we went to send Fis back to his PLKN camp, we saw this new outlet:

We were not hungry, but we were certainly thirsty, so on our way back we stopped by, and ordered”Passion fruit and mango” something:

Yamy Yamy:

And something Avocado:

And today (Sunday), after sending Mae back to school, and visited Fis, we stopped by at Ice Room again. This time we were hungry, so we ordered main dishes as well as the cool smoothies/sorbet, whatever you call them!

Let’s wait for Nuni’s blog for a more comprehensive report on the place .

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Today I managed to make this bracelet for my friend, Siti.

I also decided to make a simple matching brooch for her. I promised to send these tomorrow, as my belated birthday gift for her. I used grey Swarovski crystals and Japanese imitation pearls.

While I was at it, I decided to re-do Nury’s broken crystal bracelet as well as her fresh-water pearl bracelet that was too tightly strung. So, Nury, here are your bracelets:

I used the extra crystals to make the brooch but I could not do the same with the pearls because the holes are too small for the pin. So I decided to have the dangling pearls added to the bracelets. I hope Nury likes it. And Nury, sorry for keeping the bracelets for so long…

Footnote: I used gold-filled wires (suasa) and gold-filled  little beads for all the bracelets, so they shouldn’t tarnish.

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Remember my recent blog about the Valentine Exchange?

I finally managed to open the packet on the morning of 14th February 2010, and here are the beautiful gifts that Nik has sent me:

The other side of the pouch has my name clearly embroidered:

These pix were taken from Nik’s blog .

Nik did the embroidery using her latest sewing machine, which she named Em.  With Nik’s creativity, she has produced quite a number of beautiful machine-embroidered items.

Thank you Nik for the gifts. They are just lovely. I’ve put some of my tatting threads in the pouch.  The little stuff (what do you call them?) will come handy when I do other crafts, I am sure.

As for my gift for the exchange, Usha from Klang is my partner and I’ve sewn her a tote bag:

It’s not so crafty, is it? Hmm….

Neverthe less, I hope Usha will find it useful. I even put a couple of pocket on the inside of the bag for her to put her wallet and othe small items such as her handphone, as shown here:

apart from the tote bag, I also gave Usha a patchwork/hand-embroidered handbag that I bought in Laos (or was it Cambodia) and a pair of panda keychains which I got in Chengdu. Dang, I forgot to snap any photo of these two. I was already late in sending the gifts, so in the rush I forgot to snap a pic of the handbag and keychains.

Anyway… one exchange done, and a few more to go, as listed here.

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