What I've been up to …

This is a long over-due blog. I wish I can write more but time doesn’t permit me to do so. I got many lovely gifts from these great ladies!! I wish to be able to list them one day, but no promise ya!

Date: 27th March 2010

Venue: My house

Time: 10 am – 5pm

Menu: Pot luck.

We certainly had a great time. I only cooked chicken rendang, and fried some beehoon. I also prepared guava cordial. The rest were brought by the other attendees. Nobody came empty handed. So much food and so much fun. There were Malays, Chinese and Indians – no need to listen to the 1Malaysia slogans. We are united in our hobby and passion for Needles and Crafts.

Let’s see the food:

I am going to cheat on this blog by linking you to some that blog entries that have been posted by some of these great ladies:

• Nik Ainun’s blog
• Alynn’s (See Alynn’s gift for me here, and mine to her too)
  
• Tini’s
• Mel’s (see the gift Mel made for me here)
  

Did I miss any other related blogs?

Anyway, here’s the group photo that I pinched from Tini’s page:

Tini, I hope you don’t mind me using this photo! By the time we took this group pix, some of us had left already .

Just the week before that I joined some friends of the same group in attending Rose’s son’s wedding reception at Hotel Singgahsana.

There are a couple of photos that I’d love to add here, maybe later?

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Today was relatively more relaxing than few days before. Yesterday the built-in wardrobes are almost done. Only the sliding door/mirrors are not ready. Nuni’s bedroom set also came yesterday. Yesterday too I finished sewing the curtain fabrics that I’ve got so far. I am not saying the curtains are all done – I only ran out of curtain fabric!

So, today started with some unpacking of stuff into the storage space that we’ve got so far.

Then, late in the morning I started to knit some old t-shirts into this rug:

Actually, some time back I was influenced by what Paul did to his old t-shirt.

Recently while cleering my old stuff, I came across the huge crochet needle that I bought in the 1980s when I was still a student in Adelaide. Here’s a pic of the needle, with the RM10 note and a typical Nokia phone as comparison:

I finished the above rug this morning too, and this evening I decided to turn an old bedsheet into another rug.

Here’s a pic of it in progress:

Unfortunately I am sleepy, otherwise I am sure I can finish it before midnight!

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Yesterday (Monday) I managed to have lunch with a close friend, Aisyah, who was my colleague during my UNISEL days.

She wanted to have Curry Mee so we went to one of the outlets at SACC Mall (arg, forgot the name of the restaurant). I became a bit adventurous and ordered Thai Laksa. It was not that bad, really. Here’s my lunch yesterday:

I also had a glass of soursop drink which was a bit too sweet to my liking. Aisyah paid the bill! Thank you, my dear friend.

And today, I had lunch with 3 of my current colleagues at one of the stalls in front of our office block. I seldom have my lunch there simply because it’s usually full during lunch time, and it can be a bit hot on a sunny day. Today we were almost famish and went out slightly earlier, hence we beat the normal lunch traffic. By 2.10pm we were back in the office (note: our lunch time is between 1pm-2pm)!

Unfortunately, of all days, today it rained .

So, there we were, sitting under one of those gigantic umbrellas, but next to me the bench was wet (wiped it up just before we sat down):

My lunch was very simple, “Nasi goreng kampung” and plain tea:

Tomorrow will be my last day of work for this week, and I wonder what I’ll have for lunch then….

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It’s been a complete week since I last blogged. Time really flies.

The week has been pretty hectic, not so much about work, but more on the preps for the new home. I felt lazy to blog because I didn’t (still do not) have interesting related pic to put with the blog. DH said a blog with no pic is boring!

Anyway, let’s recap what I’ve done in the past 7 days (not necessarily in order):

• Went to the new home for alarm testing and to measure certain corners of the house (I think I went twice, though DH went there more frequent).
• Went to the shop that makes and installs grills (went there twice!)
• Went to Al-jazeera, in Cyberjaya for dinner!
• Visited Ikea twice. First to get some ideas on what to have or not have in the new house. The later visit was to get some measurement and quotation for the kitchen cabinets (yeah, i think we are taking Ikea’s product for that).
• Visited a few furniture outlets and eventually bought (or rather ordered) some items (you’ll see much later when they are ready).
• Went to Nilai to look at and eventually buy some fabrics for the new curtains.
• Attended my niece’s son’s wedding (on Sunday). Yeah, my niece is 2 years older than me and that was wedding of her first child/son.
• Sent Aina for her music class on TUesday night (this is a weekly routine, it’s just that last Tue DH came home late, so it was only Aina and me).

Argh… And we have loads more to do before we could move into the new home!

Oh, on the crafty note, I’ve got a lot more yo-yos since my last post about them. I also carry an “in progress” doily in the car whenever I go out with DH. He’d be sriving, and me crocheting (if I feel like it..).

Today (yeah, it’s another off-day for me) we are going back to Ikea!

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While surfing the Internet, I came across this site:

It’s called “wool-eater blanket”.

I must remember this link:

http://sarahlondon.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/wool-eater-instructions/

I find the technique interesting, but right now my hands are just full with other things.

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I am now at the Penang International Airport, waiting for the flight home.

This is this morning shot from my hotel window:

Can you see the mountain peak at the back? I think it’s Jerai Mountain, what do you think?

It’s much clearer today, compared to the pic I took last Monday:

And before I forgot, I took the shot of my bed (the 3rd/additional bed in the room):

OK, the bed was in a mess, because the shot was only taken this morning.

I totally forgot to snap any pic during training, and almost forgot to distribute the evaluation forms!

The hotel conciege and En Ahmad was smart at optimising the space in the boot to fit in our stuff (we are bringing the server home – a huge bag to carry it). As En Ahmad offloaded from the Perdana that sent us to the airport:

I’m coming back to Penang next Saturday (not tomorrow). This time will not be for training, but to attend Nuni’s convo.

To be continued later – if I remember!

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I can only get free Internet access at the hotel lobby:

And I have to get the userID and password, which is valis for 24 hours:

Nice lobby (pic taken using my handphone):

while I “toiled” away with my notebook:

Anyway, today we had the training session at Level 24, KOMTAR.

Some of the pix of the training is session:

I was not the main trainer. My colleague, Anita is. Here’s Ita with Wani (From Unit HRMIS SUK PP) during one of the hands-on session:

SUK PP has high reputation in adopting HRMIS .

After the training, I managed to snap a couple of pix of the view from the balcony outside the computer lab where the training was held.

Note the Gama shopping mall:

Another view to the right:

After the training session, we walked back to our hotel which is just next door. I think walking back would be faster than driving, because if we were to drive, we would have to go round the KOMTAR building to get to the hotel entrance.

And here’s the right-hand side view from our hotel room (note Gama again):

And the view directly in front of our room:

Initiallly we planned to have seafood dinner at Batu Uban, but we later changed our minds. Instead we decided to go to Padang Kota for sight-seeing, and to have dinner somewhere there.

So, just before 7pm, we arrived at Padang Kota, thanks to En Johari.

En Johari, Ita and Aini with the Naval Base and  Fort Cornwallis in the background.

According to En Johari, we can get better pasembor at the New Padang Kota, near Gurney Plaza, so he took us there. It was difficult to get parking, so he parked the car near the roundabout:

I asked him, “Is it OK?”, he said it’s OK. Anyway we were not going to stay long. And don’t forget that this is our car:

Anyway, there were many other cars parked along the street, I comforted myself.

We sat at one of the tables, and ordered pasembor from this stall:

While waiting for our order to come, I decided to accompany Aini looking at other stalls. I managed to snap this one:

Then, suddenly someone called out my name, “Puan Sabariah?”. I looked at her, and noticed that she was one of my former “Diploma of Science with Education” (from UNISEL days) students! I had to apologise for forgetting her name, but Cecilia was prompt to tell me who she is. Cecilia who hails from Kuching, is here for a 2-week training at the Penang General Hospital. She told me that she’s very homesick already, but since she’s going back tomorrow, I am sure she can tolerate another day J .

A shot of Cecilia, with Puan Rokiah who’s from Melaka:

Now back to our meal, the pasembor was definitely better that those that I tasted at Padang Kota the last time I was there:

That was just one of the 2 plates. We also ordered char kuey teow and laksa penang .

Soon it was dark, and we decided to head back to our hotel:

En johari was very accommodating, he took us for a drive along the famous streets again – this time with the famous landmarks fully lit. Unfortunately, my instance camera’s not good enough to snap any pic while moving. I think I should come back here (these streets) when we come to Penang next month when we come for Nuni’s convocation, then DH can take some nice shots using his DSLR J .

That’s all for today… I need to do some report-writing (nothing to do with this training) that I promised another colleague back in the office that I’ll get mostly done by Monday!

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So far I’ve participated in 3 exchanges but never got to blog about them.

The recent ones are the granny square exchange and the bookmark exchange.

For the time being, please read here:

What I made for Paul

What I made for Zarina

What I got from Mel

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Date: 7 February (exactly a week before Valentine’s Day)

Place: Nik’s

Time: 10.30am – 4.00pm

And here’s the group photo:

I got the time wrong, thinking it was at 11.30am, and sent Aina to her friend’s house at 11am. When we reached the friend’s house, nobody was there, and I saw a missed call from Nik. I returned the call, and was told that everybody had arrived.  I couldn’t leave Aina because there was no one in her friend’s house, and Aina called her friend and was told that they were on their way home. We waited for about 15 minutes, and when Aina called her friend again, there was no indication that they would be home that soon.

Not wanting to leave Aina alone outside the house, I then decided to take Aina along with me to Nik’s place.

When we arrived, we immediately had our feast – so much food!

I only remembered to snap photos AFTER the meal (I have to admit that I was quite hungry by the time I reached there).

Here are the other photos. Mel demonstrating the “shrinking plastic” craft. She had actually printed earlier our names and flowers to go with the names:

Attentive “students”:

Wwe had fun cutting the pieces:

I wanted to capture the time Mel was busy “baking” the plastics, but she moved very fast, so most of the pix were blur, except for this one:

Can you see the over-exposed piece on the bottom right-hand side? After “baking”, it became as small as those on the fibreboard right infront of the oven (yeah, Mel actually brought the oven too!).

and this one:

Mel was so efficient with the pair of chopsticks (to bend or flatten the pieces, when necessary)

Some of the shrunk plastics:

The gifts for the exchange were neatly arranged:

I was in a hurry to leave early (sorry ladies and Paul!), so we started the gift exchange. I was given the honour to draw first, and I got the one from Anna:

(pic courtesy of Tini)

And inside it is a very nice crocheted bag:

(pic courtesy of Tini)

Thank you, Anna!

I didn’t take any more pic, though Aina did take a couple more, but since I didn’t get to snap pix of everyone, I might as well not put up any.

As for my handmade item, as blogged earlier, it is going to Diane (who resides in USA). I hope she likes it:

I don’t know what to call the yarns. The purple ones are for the stash. The handle of the  handbag was crochete.

View  into the inside:

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Today I am going to attend my Needlecrafts e-group 2nd anniversary meet. It’ll be my first time though, because I joined the group only last year. For the meet, we’ve agreed to bring a craft item that we made ourselves each, for the gift exchange  lucky draw.

I do have a few WIPs (work in progress) but unfortunately, due to the recent unprecedented busy-ness, I couldn’t finish any one of them.

All along, for the past few weeks I had been think of a back-up plan – an apron? Or maybe a quilted cushion cover?

Then 2 nights ago, I remembered the fluffy yarns that I got from Coolangatta on my way home from NZ last August. So I started to knit. I then continued to knit last night. At the rate I was going, I didn’t think I can finish making a scarf in time for today’s meet. Last night my progress was just this:

Then I got some idea… If I fold it into 2, I get something like this:

Hmm… I got excited, and started working on the idea.

I continued doing it this morning, and yes! I got it done only 30 minutes ago!

No.. I am going to put it up yet.. Let me attend the meet first, and blog about it later .

Before I forget, the needles are old – I got them in 1980 or 1981, when I was still a student . I’ve knitted a few cardigans before (all gone, or given away). I used the needles for knitting thick yarn and mohair (I just love mohair) because they don’t take so many stitches . Anyway, I used to have a knitting machine then for thinner yarns (3ply – 5 ply). My faithful needles (brand: Aero):

BTW, back to the draw later today, I hope who ever gets it is will be satidfied with it .

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